ABSTRACT
The approach of the two watersheds of puberty and transfer to secondary education inevitably signals to parents a diminishing of their own control, as the child comes under new pressures, new influences and new temptations. The degree of chaperonage they exerted at 7, they know will no longer be feasible; freed from that chaperonage, they are aware that the child has the opportunity of engaging in behaviour, or acquiring knowledge, that it was formerly within their power to suppress if they wished. This chapter looks at parents’ attitudes to these issues, firstly in relation to the child’s mobility, secondly in terms of sexual awareness.
