The author, a psychoanalyst and anthropologist, describes her observations of Mosuo culture in regard to family arrangements and child-rearing. Her psychoanalytically informed fieldwork leads to observations about how a matriarchal culture without formal marriage or fatherhood deals with issues of attachment, sexuality, aggression, and socially flexible yet stable social structure. She concludes with observations on her own experience in a culture quite unlike the European culture in which psychoanalytic ideas have been developed.