In targeting consumers for research, the idea of life stage is often brought into the mix. Usually, this divides roughly into Young Independent Professionals (YIPs), parents of kids at various stages (babies, school kids, teens), empty-nesters (no kids, still working) and “elderly” assumed to be nonworking or working part-time.

Three times recently, I’ve had occasion to seriously question the idea of life stage. First was on a conference call about baby boomers in which we (one of us being a proto-boomer and the other firmly entrenched in Gen X) found ourselves spinning out the complexity of this “life stage” segment. The second was as I read a piece on salon.com about a study on young men. The last time was two nights ago when I accompanied my 19 year-old to a concert—not as a chaperone but as a fellow fan of the band. Turns out we were not the only young adult/parent combo in the house, and the kids seemed to be really enjoying the company of the graying (and paying) people they were hanging out with.

In the first two cases, someone is trying to dissect quantitative findings about people who happen to be the same age and give some sort of reasons for the numbers in order to figure out the life stage. All three stories suggest the real learning seems to be that the generations are not fitting an outdated cookie cutter.