The lives of seven children provides the focus for this penetrating look into the experiences that shape personality. As they emerge from the records collected over a twenty-year period by the University of Toronto's Institute of Child Study, they reveal the problems and frustrations met with in the process of growing up and point to the strong influences which family relationships have on mental and emotional development. The records themselves, drawn from interviews and questionnaires administered to mothers and children are unusual in their extensiveness. Covering the important years from nursery school through adolescence, they give unusual opportunity for a significant long-term study of the personality changes in individual children.

Room to Grow is a source of insight into the needs of children and the problems of parents. As such it is an important book for parents seeking to establish a just balance between domination and permissiveness in their relations with their children. In addition, in its handling of the heterogeneous data resulting from longitudinal psychological research, the book will serve as a  model of method and achievement for those who wish to build on the foundation its author has laid.