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Adolescence, a phenomenon which closely keeps track with the increasing complexity of Western societies, raises an anthropological issue relating to the end of childhood or “the murder of the child”. The emergence of the “person” introduces, as Jean Gagnepain put it, an internal confl ict that will last for the rest of one’s life. The parents, therefore, also live with this confl ict and the entry of their son or daughter into adolescence gives it new life. Though the parents and the adolescent experience this crisis at the same time, the social context endows it with quite specifi c characteristics that affect the parent-adolescent relationship in unexpected ways.