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.

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.

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.

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.

We may be aware of small increments of getting older we may meet an increasing number of people who make us uneasy with their youth but the fact of being old ourselves comes as a surprise, and is often accompanied by the belief that there has been some mistake.

Adolescents do get very angry with their parents, and acknowledging this anger is part of acknowledging them. If the anger is notacknowledged then its expression is increased. The parent seems super-strong. The adolescent tries to become the super-attacker.

Old age is a strange country, and most of us enter it unwillingly.