o. The teacher in church and school may supplement the effort of the
parent but cannot and may not be asked to perform the work of parents.
The school is overburdened to distraction, the church tinkers at tasks
which in the nature of things must fall to parents or be left undone.
And the school is attempting to become an agency for the universal
relief of the home, which cannot be freed of its particular
responsibilities even by the best-intentioned school or church.

Another quite obvious thesis is that conflicts arise between parents
and children not during the time of the latter's infancy or early
childhood but in the days of adolescence and early adulthood. The
real differences--rather than the easily quelled near-rebellions of
childhood--come to pass when child and parent meet on terms and
conditions which seem to indicate physical and intellectual equality
or its approach. I do not say that the processes of parental guidance
are to be postponed until the stage of bodily and mental equivalence
has been reached but that the conflicts are not begun until what is or
is imagined to be the maturity of the child raises the whole problem
of self-determination. The latter is a problem not of infants and
juveniles but of the mature and maturing.

It may be worth while briefly to indicate the various stages or phases
of the relationship of parents and children. In the earliest period,
parents are for the most part youngish and children are helpless. This
period usually resolves itself into nothing more than a riot of
coddling. In the next stage, parents begin to approach such maturity
as they are to attain, while children are half-grown reaching ten or
twelve years. This is the term of unlessened filial dependence,
though punctuated by an ever-increasing number of "don't." In the
third stage parents at last attain such maturity as is to be their
own,--years and maturity not being interchangeable terms,--for,
despite mounting years some parents remain infantile in mind and
vision and conduct. Children now touch the outermost fringe or border
of maturity in this time of adolescence, and the stage of friction,
whether due to refractory children or to undeflectible parents,
begins. Coddling has ended, or ought to have ended, though it may
persist in slightly disguised and sometimes wholly nauseous forms.
Dependence for the most part is ended, save of course for that
economic dependence which does not greatly alter the problem.