ABSTRACT
On the slopes of Mount Parnis just outside Athens there is an unusual institution for unwanted children called the Metera Babies’ Centre. The name ‘Metera’ (‘mother’ in modern Greek) was chosen carefully, for it expresses the conviction of those who work there that a residential centre for the care of infants can only succeed if it performs the functions of a mother. From the time that the Metera opened in the mid-1950s, its declared policy was to provide every child, for as long as the Metera was its home, with a substitute mother with whom he might share that warm, intimate, continuous relationship which was acknowledged as being indispensable to normal human development.
