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This is a book designed for the average intelligent reader. Its scope is clearly given in the first chapter, as follows: 'This study of the generations will attempt to make clear, not only the way in which the psychology of husband and wife as individuals affects their lives as parents, and how parents react upon their children, but, what is still more important, how the psychology of the child unfolds itself.'
Dr. Miller succeeds very well in this attempt, and has produced a book which should be helpful and stimulating to the lay reader. He has, on the whole, steered successfully between the Scylla of technicality on the one hand, and the Charybdis of superficiality on the other. There is a tendency to repetition, perhaps inevitable in any 'cyclical' study, and this gives a slight impression of lack of sequence. It is difficult to understand, for instance, why there should be two separate chapters, one headed 'The Development of Child Character' and the other 'The Development of Child Character in the Family'. If, however, these two chapters are taken together, they form a good description of the growth of the male and female personalities. This follows mainly psycho-analytic theory, and is put in such a way as to make it comparatively easy for the nonscientific reader to follow.
The book begins with a short, and necessarily selective, history of human marriage, and goes on to discuss temperament in men and women. Development is then traced through infancy, childhood, puberty and adolescence, until in its turn the child becomes a parent. Finally, there are two chapters devoted respectively to prophylaxis and to the future of the family.