extent. Nature, as we saw in the latency period, must not only prepare her biologically for womanhood but must ready her psychologically too. If the little girl were to maintain the total dependency on her parents that she has had up to this point in her growth, she would not be able to develop the fullness of personality, the strength and individuality necessary for successful wifehood and motherhood.
But she is not a woman yet by any means. Do not get that impression, for there are vital steps ahead which she must take first. The attempt some girls make to embrace true sexuality and feminine functioning around the age of fourteen or fifteen is generally disastrous. In normal development she will flutter between strong feelings of dependency on her parents and rebellion against them, or rather rebellion against her intense desire to be a little girl with them again. The success of this phase of her growth is marked by achieving the feeling that she has the "potentiality," not the actuality, of freedom from her parents.
At some point during this period she will become dramatically attached to a girl friend. This fact is so unalterable in normal development that the whole period of puberty is often referred to as "the chum stage" of development. She uses this friend to buttress her feelings of separateness, of independence from the parents. The two share secrets together constantly, pool their information on all matters pertaining to sex, boys, women, childbirth. The friendship is a liberal education for both and should be encouraged for the most part. The girl friend is sometimes older by a year or two or three, and the younger one's worship of her is clearly a substitute for her feelings toward her own mother. If the older girl is not too precocious sexually, nothing but good can come from this relationship.
Very gradually puberty merges into adolescence. This is the last stage before maturity. I call this whole period the
