The period during which grown children leave home and establish a new, self-supporting family is called emerging adulthood. This paper uses psychoanalytic concepts and family-life-cycle theory to analyze the film Rebel without a Cause (1955) as a dramatic example of three families going through this phase. Freud's (1910) rescue-motif of the child trying to save an endangered peer to repay his parents for having been nurtured is also characteristic of this period and is considered practice for parenting the next generation. Proximate conflict and support enable two of the film's families to continue the path to reproduce themselves.