emotional connection between the child and a caregiver. For most people, this person is the mother, but in the absence of a biological mother, she can be replaced by any person who is able to establish an attachment relationship with the child. The creator of attachment theory, the British psychiatrist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby, put forward the idea that the early experience of the child’s interaction with the mother (or the main “caregiver” figure) forms the basis for all future human connections with other people.