ABSTRACT
Culture shock and disintegration of the community affect most severely the way parents perceive their place in preparing their children for adult roles. There are children who have never had a childhood: the boy who was his mother’s savior and protector; the girl who was her father’s mainstay and housekeeper. These children feel guilty when they behave like children, as though they were evading their true adult roles of being responsible for others. The adult can postpone sensual gratification in order to promote an interest other than his own survival or pleasure. A normal adult chooses to postpone gratification when this is required for the good of the group, even at the price of physical distress. Erik Erikson describes normal adolescence and its crises as a period of dangerous uprootedness and tension between the safe life of the child and the stable life of the adult.
