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This well-written book is divided into three parts, the first of which is entitled 'Approaches to the Study of Mothering', the second 'An Investigation in Maternal Behaviour', and the third 'Sources of Maternal Influence'.
Part I consists of a brief introduction followed by a long and detailed survey of the literature, including not only many different aspects of Mother-Child relationship in different cultural milieux, but also a wide variety of detail of mother-offspring behaviour in animal species other than the human. The value of such an extensive survey of the literature lies in the biological orientation which is given to the reader before he is confronted by the main thesis of the work as expounded in Part II. The macroscopic survey of the subject, i.e. the consideration of the literature of mother-child relationships as a whole, emphasizes and delineates Part II, which is in fact a microscopic study of a small number of mothers and their respective babies in the ecological setting of Western culture modified for America. The survey of the literature is presented factually and largely without comment. In it are mentioned details derived from many schools of thought, and the degree of detail gives this section a somewhat compendious aspect. This characteristic, however, serves only to increase the impact of Part II, in which is described with great clarity and sensitivity the survey of the behaviour of 32 mothers towards their respective babies. The records of the behaviour of the mothers and of the babies, both as individuals and in relationship to each other, in the context first of the Clinic and then of their respective homes, are concise and scientific, objective but never cold.
The mothers of this series of 32 are part of a larger series of 128 mothers. These mothers were classified into four groups, ranging from the most casual and laissez-faire through the golden mean to the most rigid and manipulative on the one hand, and the irregular variable m