One of the main tasks of adolescence is to achieve an identity--not necessarily a knowledge of who we are, but a clarification ofthe range of what we might become, a set of self-references by which we can make sense of our responses, and justify our decisions and goals.

Preoccupied with her self, the adolescent sees enormous changes, whereas the parent sees the child she knew all along. For the parent, new developments are superficial and evanescent. For the adolescent, they are thrilling and profound.

Adolescent girls were fighting a mother's interference because they wanted her to acknowledge their independence. Whatever resentment they had was not towards a mother's excessive concern, or even excessive control, but towards her inability to see, and appreciate, their maturing identity.

Adolescence has been recognised as a stage of human development since medieval times--long, long before the industrial revolution--and, as it is now, has long been seen as a phase which centers on the fusion of sexual and social maturity. Indeed, adolescence as a concept has as long a history as that of puberty, which is sometimes considered more concrete, and hence much easier to name and to recognize.

Parents are never forgiven for not giving just the right response at the appropriate moment. Or, rather, there are particular times in the adolescent's or young adult's life, when a certain response is needed, and this need is not met, and the failure to meet this need is forever remembered, and is never forgiven.

One of the main tasks of adolescence is to achieve an identity--not necessarily a knowledge of who we are, but a clarification ofthe range of what we might become, a set of self-references by which we can make sense of our responses, and justify our decisions and goals.

The myth of independence from the mother is abandoned in mid- life as women learn new routes around the mother--both the mother without and the mother within. A mid-life daughter may reengage with a mother or put new controls on care and set limits to love. But whatever she does, her child's history is never finished.