The Perils of Puberty

Ever since old Marsullis farted in Holden Caulfield's face, we have
viewed adolescence as a time of inevitable storm and upheaval. But it
looks like we've got it exactly backwards.

After following more than 200 families and their children into and
out of adolescence, a Wisconsin psychologist claims there's turbulence
all right, but it's more in the parents than in their kids. Teenagers,
argues Lawrence Steinberg, Ph.D., "coast through life in a sort of
pleasant fog."

But the biological changes they undergo at puberty trigger a crisis
in their parents. First, a child's changing appearance is "a constant,
and perhaps annoying, reminder that we are growing older--and it marks
time in a way that is both indisputable and irreversible," Steinberg says
in Crossing Paths (Simon & Schuster).

Then there's the anxiety provoked by a child's changing size. "We
have underestimated the positive feelings parents derive merely from
being able to physically control their children when they are younger,"
Steinberg offers.

But the most anxiety comes from watching a child turn into a sexual
being. For many parents, it unleashed a torrent of emotions and conflicts
about their physical attractiveness, sexuality, and their marriage. Not
only were all the effects negative, a big one was dissatisfaction with
one's spouse.

So if there's a teen in the house, hang on.