ABSTRACT
The most forceful fighters of developmental determinism are probably found among parents of kids in the sweet age of adolescence. Whatever determines the behavior of adolescents, it certainly is not the parents’ good advice and lessons that they teach. It’s true, there is a certain form of determinism, in that adolescents are in general very determined to do what is stupid and inadvisable, and the only form of determinism they themselves seem to support is that of self-determinism, if any such philosophical concept exists. Of course, the preceding comments are nothing but the lamentations of a developmental psychologist who has gone through the purifying experience of parenthood. The trouble with educating kids is that parents are almost forced to believe in some form of determinism, preferably environmental determinism, which teaches that what children do and the kind of people they become is, to a considerable extent, a consequence of what their parents and schoolmasters taught them, but very often kids grow up in a way that strays so markedly from the life course that parents had in mind. Que será, será.
