The Glue of the family is guilt

"It was not the neighbors on that first day of long pants I kept sprinting around the corner to outrun, it was my unworthy self, who lived in my parents' house. Almost everything they put their hands to, from my father's sorting of letters at midnight far downtown to my mother's three day kneading of dough for the brioche rolls I loved, had at heart the growth of the two children who were their chief business in life; now mine was to escape them. Though once a month I would kneel to confide myself to the priest's jowl in the dark of booth, an instinct was at work in me to devise my own kind of communion, and all he heard from me was that I had said two damns since my last confession. The secret I could not name, or know, was that I was forsaking my parents."

Pages 118-119, A Mass for the Dead by William Gibson