How do generations work?

Question:For example, if my mom was born in another country and moved here, would she be first generation, or would the first kid born in the US be the first generation?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: For example, if my mom was born in another country and moved here, would she be first generation, or would the first kid born in the US be the first generation?

A generation is the time it takes for a person or group of people to "generate" offspring. The term usually means the time it takes for the offspring to be old enough to begin producing their own children. I suppose it equates to about 20-25 years.
"First generation" would mean the first offspring to be born in a new location, meaning their parents weren't! If they had been. THEY would have been the first generation.

that's a hard one id say the kid is first gen

First generation American means you were the first in your family to be born in the US.

There are different kinds of generations.

You, your siblings, your first cousins and your second cousins are all one generation if you count down from your great grandparents. (Your third, fourth and fifth cousins, too - out to as far as you want to research.) That one is the generation you use to count removeds, as in secons cousin three times removed.

The first people in a family born in a new country are first generation {Americans, Canadian, Australians . . .}. If your parents had 3 kids before they moved, then three after, the first three would be immigrants and the last 3 "First Generation". It is a loose term. First generation kids tend to speak two languages, the one from the old country and the one from the new, and marry within their old nationality.

By the second or third generation, usually, they don't speak the language of the old country and marry into a general pool of people of roughly the same race and religion (Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox or Jewish, not the exact denomination) but not necessarily people from the old country. Note again it is just a common thing, not a hard and fast rule. My English ancestors were marrying Dutch people in New York as early as 1691. I knew a fifth-generation Chinese-American born in San Francisco who didn't speak English until he went to grade school. He probably married a Chinese lady. (I knew him in college, when we were both young, slender and single.)

Then you get people born in the same decade, like the "X" generation or the Baby Boom generation.