Maternidad Y Sexo (Maternity and Sex): By Marie Langer. Buenos Aires: Editorial Nova, 1952. 394 pp.

The point of departure of this monograph, as stated in the preface, is the recent book by Lunenberg and Farnham: Modern Woman—the Lost Sex. Through this book Dr. Langer became aware again of the disturbing incompatibility that is so commonly found between a woman's professional life and her maternal needs. When she was younger she had often thought about and discussed this problem, but in her own involvement with her profession she felt she had solved this problem for herself and hence put it aside. Now, as she dedicates this book to her daughter, one may presume that she wishes to speak with the authority of both an analyst and a mother.

The central thesis of her book is that modern woman, in acquiring sexual and social freedom, no longer suffers from such formerly typical psychoneurotic syndromes as grand hysterie; but, restricted in her maternal function she suffers rather from psychosomatic disorders of the reproductive functions. Analogous to Western women the women of the Marquesas, a primitive culture, have achieved social and material equality to the men, and similarly in this more primitive culture the women have to pay for their equality with the renunciation of emotional gratification that maternity offers. There is a considerably lowered birth rate in the Marquesas to support this assumption.

Dr. Langer embarks on a discussion of some of the factors reducing the affective ties of parents and children including all those factors which decentralize the home as the focus of family life. For example, with the development of the industrial age the use of women in industry leads to numerous working mothers; also the development of a school system outside of the home results in the increased estrangement of parents and children. Alongside these factors she also considers those social changes in the position of woman which have made the role of motherhood more difficult in