ABSTRACT
This chapter describes attachment theory and the attachment research carried out on child-care centres. It shows how a design for the 'management of emotions' is offered within attachment theory; a design in which the separation of tasks between the caring parent/mother and the working parent/father plays an important part. In his attachment theory, J. Bowlby distances himself from the psychoanalytical concepts on which the maternal deprivation theory was based. The ambivalent emotions of love and hate felt by the child towards the mother are no longer of importance. According to Bowlby, all separations from the mother or attachment figure before the age of 3 are a potential risk to the child. According to 'maternal deprivation' theory, the mother must help the child to regulate contradictory emotions of love and hate. Bowlby introduced new contradiction in the attachment theory that between close contact and exploring the outside world, which also had to be regulated with the help of a mother figure.
