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Our understanding of conflicts inherent in being a parent has been profoundly affected by psychoanalysis. The first and best opportunities to help the child bind instinctual energies, develop an adequate body image and a psychic capacity for normal defense structures occur in early childhood. Well-developed children are expected to have constructively concerned parents with whom they can identify.
Testing these premises, the authors, psychoanalytically trained psychologists, set themselves the momentous task of examining the effects of adequacy of early mothering on the child's performance in latency. Finding their previous seven categories cumbersome, they now use the terms “more adequate” and “less adequate” for mothering. Hypotheses pursued in this volume offer that more adequately mothered children are more advanced emotionally and more capable of cathecting objects. As a result, they can think more abstractly and perform better in school than children who received less adequate mothering. This formulation is verified, and the conclusion drawn that adequacy of mothering persists from infancy to the middle years and is cumulative. Contrary to what is frequently proposed, variations of maternal responses to the child's developmental stages were not significant. However, no attempt was made to compare mothering during the symbiotic and separation–individuation phases of infancy.
In listing the qualities affecting the child's growth, Brody and Axelrad conclude that favorable development was promoted by the mother's sensitivity to clues from her infant, by empathy, control and efficiency in her care. The single cardinal contribution to unfavorable development of the child was found to be neglect, intentional or not. Ignorance, an inability to recognize distress or age-appropriate behavior in the child, intolerance and overhasty judgments of the child's motives, leading to erratic or excessive expectations of behavior, were major detracting factors. Disinterest shown i