Legacies and Leaving Home.

Each spring, another generation of students in U.S. high schools don their caps and downs and march down the aisle to receive their high school diplomas. For many of these students, this important event marks the end of a familiar way of life within the confines of family and community and signals the beginning of the process of leaving home to attend college, to begin a career, to pursue a relationship, or to begin a family. Because women value relationships and define themselves in part through their relationships (Stern, 1989; Surrey, 1991), this "home leaving" for the young women in each year's high school class may be particularly complicated and stressful (Carlson & Lewis, 1993; Carter & McGoldrick, 1989; Golan, 1981;  1991). How do these young women face this transition and how can school counselors help young women successfully negotiate this experience? According to the theories developed in both the literature on women's development (Gilligan, 1982; Miller, 1986; Stern, 1989; Surrey, 1991) and on multigenerational family systems (Carter & McGoldrick, 1989; Papero, 1990), women's identities are connected to and shaped by their family biographies-who we are as women is in part what we have inherited from our families. As adolescent girls prepare to leave home, what thoughts and feelings do they have about what they have inherited from their families? What aspects of their mothers' and grandmothers' legacies might these adolescent girls take with them, in a literal and a figurative sense, when they leave home? What role might these matrilineal family legacies play in girls' transitions from home? Answers to these questions could help us to have a better understanding of adolescent girls' experiences in making the transition from home. However, because of the lack of empirical knowledge about how their mothers' and grandmothers' legacies might function in adolescent girls' understanding of themselves and in their home-leaving experiences, these questions remain largely unanswered: The purposes of this article are: (a) to report on a study that examined the possible role that matrilineal family legacies might play in the home-leaving transition of rural adolescent girls, and (b) to illustrate how school counselors can use the concept of legacy to help young women face this important transition. The existing research on female adolescent development, on women and family relationships, an transition, and on the transmission of family legacies provided a foundation for this study, yet no previous studies have adequately addressed questions regarding the possible role of matrilineal family legacies in the home-leaving transition of adolescent girls. For example, the literature on relationships between women in families consistently cites the importance of these connections in women's lives (Baranowski, 1982; Creasey & Koblewski, 1991; Fischer, 1991; La Sorsa & Fodor, 1990; Nussbaum & Bettini, 1994; Ruebush, 1994), yet none of the studies has specifically examined the role of these relationships in the home-leaving transition of high school girls. A small body of literature on late adolescents' transition from home focuses on the experiences of first year college students (Allen & Stoltenberg, 1995; German & Sperling, 1991; Kenney, 1987; Quintana & Kerr, 1993). What is lacking is research about the preseparation period and research on noncollege-bound senior girls who plan to leave home after graduation. Of the few studies that have used a multigenerational sample (Csikszentmihalyi & Rochberg-Halton, 1981; Krause, 1991; Lieblich & josselson, 1994; Thompson & Walker, 1983; Troll, 1986), none of the studies has focused on the perspective of adolescent girls. However, these studies do contribute an understanding of the impact of historical eras and social conditions on the development of women in families (Krause, 1991; Lieblich & Josselson, 1994) and an understanding of the transmission of values and beliefs from one generation to another (Krause, 1991; Roberto & Stroes, 1992; Troll, 1986). …