This chapter explores the circumstances of Mahler’s childhood – the physical, social, and psychological conditions in which he was raised – taking at face value his claim that the character of an artist was determined by his experiences between the ages of four and eleven. The external factors of his upbringing, including the physical surroundings and economic circumstances of the family and their social position and religious engagement as part of the first generation of emancipated Jews in the Habsburg empire, created a set of emotional and psychological conditions that we now know to be characteristic of Mahler’s family: ill-matched parents and frequent conflict, the illness and death of half of his siblings, and the outsized presence of Mahler’s raw talent within these family dynamics. The survey of relevant details presented here clarifies the range of experiences in the young composer’s background as he turned in the mid-1870s to serious musical endeavors.