A study of one hundred consecutive female admissions for alcoholism reveals that thirty could find a specific factor with which the start of alcoholism could be related. For twenty-one of them, it was related to the 'empty nest' syndrome wherein the trauma was a change in, or a challenge to, their roles as wives and mothers. The age range was forty-five to sixty-four and examples of precipitating causes were: loss of occupational position by the husband, menopause, divorce, marriage of children, etc. In each case the woman's adjustment to life had been in terms of her role as a wife and mother, the challenge to which had been disastrous. The author does not attempt to discuss what characterological factors made these common vicissitudes of middle age so disastrous to these women.