Such are the adjustments to adolescence, to independence, to marriage, to single life, to widowhood, to a marked change in income, to sickness, to physical handicaps, to work, to parenthood, to disappointment in love, to the first visit away from home, to school, to college, to divorce, to home after the children have grown up and left it. Life is full of other similar situations. Not all of them are met by everybody, and people who have been confronted by the same problem find that to each individual it has presented itself in a different aspect. Yet one need study only a few of these experiences to realize that underlying all is the fundamental question of adjustment.
During adolescence there is the adjustment that accompanies the awakening of the child to the world outside the home. Hitherto the mother has been the refuge of sympathy and understanding, the father the source of recreation and adventure, and both the final authority upon questions of taste, of information, and of right and wrong. The boy—and in this he usually anticipates the experience of his sister—now discovers a kinship with those of his own age and develops an increasing respect for their standards of life and conduct. He becomes impatient of parental
