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25 U. Mich. J.L. Reform 239 (1991-1992)
Minor Changes: Emancipating Children in Modern Times

handle is hein.journals/umijlr25 and id is 247 raw text is: MINOR CHANGES:
EMANCIPATING CHILDREN IN MODERN TIMES
Carol Sanger*
Eleanor Willemsen**
Graze where you will, you shall not house with me.
Capulet to Juliet'
Parents and their teenage children don't always get along.
At some time during adolescent development, parents may
turn   into   embarrassments2 and          teenagers     into  domestic
terrorists.3 For most families this is a phase. Adolescence is
endured, the child accomplishes some degree of separation
from parents, and the transition to adulthood advances.
*     Professor of Law, Santa Clara University. B.A., Wellesley College, 1970;
J.D., University of Michigan, 1976. I would like to thank Albert Alschuler, Ed Baker,
David Chambers, Jan Costello, Iris Litt, Martha Minow, Tom Tyler, Michael Wald,
and Jeremy Waldron for their comments on earlier drafts. I also thank Margaret
Olson, Nancy Ota, and Robert Lohrbeer for their research assistance. The study also
benefited from comments received from participants at presentations of this research
at meetings of the American Orthopsychiatric Association, the University of Arizona
Law School Faculty Workshop, and the Society for Research on the Development of
the Child. Finally, special thanks are given to Valerie Houghton, J.D., M.M.C.C.,
who conducted the interviews with exceptional skill.
**    Professor of Psychology, Santa Clara University. B.A. 1960, M.A. 1962, Ph.D.
1964, Stanford University. Principal responsibilities in this collaborative project
were as follows: the design and statistical analysis of interview data were supervised
by Eleanor Willemsen; the Article was written by Carol Sanger.
1.    WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, ROMEO AND JULIET act 3, sc. 8.
2.    As the teenage narrator of Julian Barnes' Metroland explains: Every
morning, at breakfast, I would gaze disbelievingly at my family. They were all still
there, for a start-that was the first surprise. Why hadn't some of them run off in the
night, wounded beyond endurance by the emptiness I divined in their lives? JULIAN
BARNES, METROLAND 39 (1980).
3.    Alison Lurie presents a parental view of the morning scene:
Standing by the toaster, Erica contemplates her children....
... Jeffrey and Matilda were beautiful, healthy babies; charming toddlers;
intelligent, lively, affectionate children. There are photograph albums . . . to
prove it. Then last year, when Jeffrey turned fourteen and Matilda twelve, they
had begun to change; to grow rude, coarse, selfish, insolent, nasty, brutish, and
tall. It was as if she were keeping a boarding house in a bad dream, and the
children she had loved were turning into awful lodgers-lodgers who paid no
rent, whose leases could not be terminated.
ALISON LURIE, THE WAR BETWEEN THE TATES 4, 6 (1974).

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