ABSTRACT
If culture is the medium in which the animal homo sapiens takes on a properly human form of life, we might be tempted to measure a culture’s health by how hard it is for its children to become adults. Such a measure would not be entirely inapt, since youths often sense more keenly than others what is cramped and alien about the social roles for which they are being fitted. Still this measure would be quite crude. There are worthy and unworthy coming-of-age ordeals, and the difference between being groomed for excellence and being broken for the yoke is not marked by some simple quantum of exertion. The crucial question is not how hard it is to grow up but how it is hard to grow up: What kinds of struggles and transfigurations are involved in becoming an adult, and what is the value of these struggles? Do they conduce to the flowering or the disfigurement of the most valuable human capacities?
