In this chapter I've selected just a few of the difficult questions one may have to face in bringing up young children.

We all know the story of Oedipus. Whether seen as history or myth, one can profit from Freud's genius in viewing it as the realization in adult life of the unconscious wishes every little boy has towards his mother and which necessitate that he in fantasy eliminates his father. The little girl has similar wishes towards her father that necessitate doing away with mother. Then, to make it more complicated, there are the so-called “inverted” Oedipus and Electra complexes, when the boy's attachment is to is father and the little girl's is to her mother.

Indeed, most children fluctuate from time to time in the preschool years in manifest and overtly possessive attachment to each parent in turn; however, the little girl tends ordinarily to settle most definitely for marrying daddy and making him the model of her future husband, and the little boy similarly chooses his mother.