Children in the Family. A Psychological Guide for Parents: By Florence Powdermaker, M.D., and Louise Ireland Grimes. New York and Toronto: Farrar and Rinehart, Inc., 1940. 403 pp.

Addressed to parents and others who have to do with the management of children from birth through adolescence, there is almost no subject from bowel training to religious teaching that may not be found in the very complete index of this book and amply discussed in the text. It is simple and nontechnical in its approach, drawing on medicine and psychoanalysis for its point of view.

This can be numbered among the very few popularly written books on how to bring up children that get away from the 'habit training' bugaboo and the notion all too common with physicians as well as parents that fixed schedules and rules rigidly adhered to are the secret of success with babies. Early in the book the authors declare: '… schedules are laid down for the baby's health and comfort and … when these two requirements are endangered by too strict adherence to the letter of the law, "the law's an ass" and may be changed to fit the emergency.'

With this as a starting point it is not surprising to find the important problems of nursing, weaning, eating, bladder and bowel training, sleep, sucking, biting and all of the infant's early physical activities approached with consideration for the child's early instinctual needs and with attention continuously directed to individual