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Out of a neat and circumscribed research study of the presenting behavior of thirty-two mothers and their babies, derived from an overall sample of one hundred twenty-eight mothers, has grown a valuable source book of information on patterns of mothering. The excellence both of the literary style and of the clear grouping of a wide range of topics, makes it a model of presentation and easy assimilation. In brief, the desiderata for the ideal mother have been realized, as between Dr. Brody and her readers in need of easy access to recorded data. And, to continue the metaphor, the range of relevant literature provided is so wide as to be omnivorous. It does not stop at human patterns of mothering, no matter how primitive, but continues on into other species of the animal kingdom. This is very interesting but, although wide in scope, it seems to leave out some of the most important modern works and to include exemplification from old material, which could be misleading.
The modern work, which bears so closely on the examples provided and the author's discussion of the variations of maternal behavior within the same animal species, readily brings to mind such names as Tinbergen and Lorenz. While its attractiveness lies in the fact that it is largely concerned with the patterns of behavior of animals in conditions either of freedom or of its closest counterparts, as contrasted with the aberrant behavior of the laboratory animals of Masserman, or other confined creatures, e.g., the baboons and monkeys studied at close quarters by Zuckerman and quoted here, its importance is paramount.