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Young people who keep diaries between the ages of twelve and twenty-one often see these writings as a tool to clarify their ideas and justify their behavior or personal decisions. Whether written under the supervision of parents or educators, or kept on the initiative of the young people themselves, they provide unique material to study this age group’s views on the rules and norms taught to them from an early age. They can also provide information on how their writers respond to these rules and norms, revealing their ideas about time and age, and their awareness of the successive phases: childhood, adolescence, coming of age. The diaries also contain essential information about their future life—reflections on marriage and choice of profession are analyzed in this paper. It is clear that, over the diary-keeping period, the subjects begin to idealize their own childhood, which is in the process of fading.