AN APPROACH to our appraisal of family success may well be made through the scrutiny of certain basic patterns family situations. These situation-patterns, appearing the course of the joint life of man, woman, and children, should be thought of as moving phase by phase from the early adjustments of marriage, through the coming and rearing of children, to the readjustments involved as children reach their independence. Passing one into another by gradual changes, these phases should each mean an advance from one level of interrelationships within the family group to a new level of enriching personal potentialities. Successful family life is recognizable where we can see a cycle of growth the interests that are fostered a family circle. Let us look at two or three such situation-patterns. First there is the period of adjustment between a man and a woman during the early months of marriage when they are in This phase is characterized by an intimate sharing of emotional experience that makes for an enlargement of personal outreach-makes for it, we say, since the enlargement does not inevitably follow. In-loveness, ordinarily regarded as a simple enmeshinent sex attraction, involves itself also a mixture of gratified ego. To be the supreme centre of interest to another person is one of the most flattering experiences life offers. Where two people seek, however, to keep up their mutual expression on a candy-and-flowers level, their devotion tends point of beauty and poetry, to grow stale. If their love is to last, it inust mature; it must grow and expand through a sharing of common interests of a vital sort. This first type of situation must progress into a second type. A second patterning of their situation appears with the coming of children, when another interest competes with the absorption of the young couple each other. With time a still further interest-the man's work,-comes to bulk largely his thought. The problem of maintaining a mutuality of interest becomes more complex. The usual interest on which the two join is the children and the bettering of the home. This may develop into a shared concern with their complementary roles as homebuilders, or it may get stalled as merely two people caring separately for the same thing. In certain divorce suits, for example, where husband and wife each seek custody of the children, one gets an impression that the child has not been a shared interest, but has merely afforded each party an egoistic claim for the same satisfaction. The maturing of relations on this level begins to demand of man and wife a social imagination that encompasses a fuller pattern of values and activities than appeared at the first level. A concrete illustration may make clearer the idea of family situations moving from one level to another. Here is a young man and wife, both personally attractive and both love. She is intelligent and capable, before marriage a successful saleswoman, whereas he, though a steady worker, can command but a small wage. His earning capacity, moreover, is distinctly less than that of his own brothers and sisters, all of whom are prosperous working people. The wage he earns however is sufficient to keep two people, and the couple get along happily on the mating level. As children come the situation