This study of three contrasting types of maternal attitude, the overpermissive, the moderate, and the rigid, begins with the mother's attitudes in pregnancy and childbirth and follows the vicissitudes of her relations with the child for the next three years. Although the three mothers had been exposed to the same philosophy of child care, the records show that each applied it differently in practice. The case histories indicate that the basis for the divergence in attitudes of the mothers is to be found in their own background of experience and interpersonal relations. There is an interesting comment about the relative traumatic effect of insistent permissiveness and extreme rigidity on the children, and the degree to which different types of mother may be more readily susceptible to change through therapeutic influence and cultural pressures.