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The author contrasts what she considers the family situation in Europe with that in America. In the former the father is said to have greater authority,
whereas in America the mother often has greater authority and tends to dominate.
According to this premise fundamentals of childhood development are reviewed with emphasis on the effect of authority. The author feels that in the case of the boy the erotic attraction to the mother who is in authority reinforces guilt feelings, a tendency to suppress emotion, and leads to feelings of insecurity and unsteadiness. The problem of sexual attraction to the parent of the opposite sex is much less important if the child feels generally secure in the love of his parents. 'The more the little boy feels that he can count on his mother's steady maternal acceptance, no matter what happens and no matter who else is around, the less intense and compulsive is his craving for other proofs of mother's love in the form of sexual wishes and phantasies with regard to her.'
Fromm-Reichmann discusses then the question 'to what extent is the mother's psychological rôle determined by maternal instincts and drives?' She feels that psychoanalysis 'has not yet dealt adequately with this problem', and that Freud's hypothesis stressing the feminine wish for a penis was the result of his 'patriarchal European tradition, culture and thinking'. The author feels that 'neurotic girls may regard menstruation as a repetition of the passive castration phantasies of their childhood. Depressive moods during menstruation in emotionally healthy girls are usually due to disappointment over the egg that leaves the body unimpregnated, not due to the memory-phantasy of a lost penis.' Her general conclusion is that this is an as yet unsolved problem.
The remainder of the paper is devoted to a discussion of 'the ideal, desirable functions and rôle of the mother in the modern family group', and in this section she cites some material to illustrate the danger