In A Search for the Motherline, the narrator, an at-home mother of three young children, deals with the problems of life in a development from 1974 to 1975. While her husband copes with the problems of a modern dental practice, the narrator deals with house and children. She faces the trauma of coping with a difficult middle child, an unplanned pregnancy, and the husband pressuring her to find a job. She searches for balance between the demands of children and husband and her own interests as a person. She looks forward to a future of writing, a return to her career in librarianship, and the opportunity of training as a Jungian analyst. The setbacks in her life are more than compensated for by the happiness she finds seeing her three healthy, beautiful children develop and begin school.