The maternal landscape has changed substantially since Winnicott wrote those reassuring words. They were addressed to a mother about whom certain social assumptions were made: that there was a breadwinning partner to enable her absence from the workplace throughout the child’s early years, and that her extra- maternal pursuits, if she had them, could be cheerfully put on hold for the duration. In the subsequent decades, the available maternal models have evolved, in often contradictory ways—partly as a result of women’s revised ambitions for themselves, and partly as a result of economic changes that have put financially secure stay-at-home motherhood largely out of reach, even for those who might want it.