The response of adults to the behavior. of adolescents is often more strongly influenced by the adults' own needs than by the way the adolescents are acting. A whole range of emotions and feelings from concern to outright hostility is evoked, leading to perceptions and actions which impact on our entire society. The adult world clings tenaciously to social order, resistive to the young people whose questioning, risk-taking, and spontaneity threaten existing arrangements. Adult fears that adolescents will escape their control, with the concomitant anxiety about unplanned change and disorderliness, lead to determined efforts to restrain young people through familial and societal regulation. Equally important is the loss of self-esteem that many adults feel when faced with the adolescent challenge to the tenets by which their lives have been ruled. Convinced that success is the measure of worth, unwilling to admit to doubt about the path taken or the value of the prizes secured, the adult defends equally against the serious probing and the ingenuous disaffection. The youth who searches for and attains what his parents had yearned for and then denied them- selves, attacks the most vulnerable facet of the adult personality --the fragile self-esteem. It is no wonder, then, that rather than an attempt at loving understanding, the parent responds with bitterness and antagonism. Which of the following statements is neither expressed nor implied in the passage?