The Adolescent as Delegate of His Parents

Abstract

The concept of the adolescent as a delegate of his parents illuminates many vicissitudes of the separation process between parents and their adolescent offspring, and also introduces differing treatment perspectives. Where an adolescent is delegated, he is encouraged and allowed to move out of the parental orbit—up to a point!! He is then held on a long leash, as it were, and his separation is made limited and conditional. Such qualified “sending out” is implied in the original Latin word “delegare”, which means, first, to send out and, second, to entrust with a mission. The latter meaning implies that the delegate—although sent out—remains beholden to the person who sends him out. This becomes possible only on the basis of a strong, though often invisible and selective, loyalty.