To understand the Baby Boomer generation, one first needs to understand the forces that shaped their parents & their childhoods. This episode examines the generation that experienced the Great Depression & World War II before giving birth to the Boomers. The program describes the impact of U.S. postwar prosperity, suburbanization, the G.I. Bill, and the departure of women from the wartime workforce. The year 1946 also contained often-forgotten tensions and conflicts, including clashes over labor relations and race relations. The 1946 episode concludes by looking at the unstable international situation, including a humanitarian crisis in Europe and ideological tensions that would lead the USA & the Soviet Union to their imminent face-off in the Cold War.

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