At the beginning of the second act of Schiller's Don Carlos, the young prince begs his father Philipp II to entrust him with at least some of the affairs of state. Faced with his father's refusal, on the grounds that he is too young and in experienced, Carlos exclaims ‘Twenty three years old, and I've done nothing to achieve immortality!’ By the standards of the late twentieth century, one might think a young man of 23 who is impatient, even despairing, at the thought that he has done nothing to secure immortality rather unrealistic. Yet in 1787 when the play appeared such a sentiment would not have seemed extraordinary. For the last decades of the eighteenth century saw the explosion of a veritable cult of youth. Schiller himself and a number of others had in fact achieved immortality by the time they reached their early 20s. Of course they were not typical. Yet they gave expression to an ideal of youth which had a significant impact at the time. They also established the basis of a long-term tradition.

Schiller and his contemporaries represented the first dramatic modern manifestation of youth rebellion and conflict between generations. To analyse the preconditions of this phenomenon and to try to define its character is to confront some of the most intractable of all historical problems. For the tension and conflict between generations was rooted in the core of the development of both the modern family and modern society as a whole.

The birth of the modern family presents us with something of a paradox: no sooner was it born than it was faced with dissension and dislocation.