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But if "family unity seems to be at an all-time low," school life can be just as bad. This is the time of the "i 5-year-old slump." Fifteen still roams in gangs, but "communication with others, the very thing he desires most, is all too often taken away from him by himself . . . Independence and liberty are his constant cry. You would think he had never had either."
The Pre-Adult. As the months pass, what seemed like rebelliousness changes into a sense of responsible independence. Sixteen wants to go his way and let his family go theirs, but he causes no friction. "Wholesome self-assurance," says Gesell, "is the cardinal trait [of Sixteen]. 'Don't worry about me,' he says reassuringly."
Sixteen has a way of approaching any new situation with ease and naturalness.
"Why be sad?" he will say. "Why not make the most of what you have here in life?" He is concerned about himself and with success, but he will take his time about settling on a career. Ethically, he is almost grown up. He even "seems a little surprised to realize that his ideas are about like his parents'. As one boy sums it up: 'I haven't found anything yet that was adverse to my parents' teaching.' " Thus, the cycle that began at ten has come to a full circle. "The 16-year-old youth, if he rises to tiptoe, can almost see the horizon of adulthood. He is him self a pre-adult."
Within Limits. Having brought his biography thus far, Arnold Gesell refuses to go beyond the somewhat limited boundaries he has imposed upon himself. Some doctors and psychologists claim that his case histories are too narrow, his probing too restricted, his findings too pat and superficial. In describing the progress of the normal child, he ignores the darker forces that would concern the psychiatrist, places the delinquent and neurotic outside his province, refuses to turn sociologist at the last minute and make generalizations and judgments about young America. He admits that "our present knowledge of the child's mind is like a 15th century map of the world—a mixture of truth and error. There are scat tered islands of dependable fact, but there are still unknown continents."
Nonetheless, the map performs a service. As much as any man, Gesell has illuminated the many mysterious forces at work in growing up, has shown that if the adolescent at times seems all fouled up, the situation can still be normal. The 16-year-old, says he, "was born with certain inalienable traits which are inherent in the very patterns of his development. At about the age of ten he ceased to be a child. Increasingly he has become an individual personality in his own right. He will continue to grow in obedience to the same deep-seated laws of development wh'ch have fashioned him thus far in a culture committed to respect the dignity and worth of the individual."