In French early childhood care institutions, professionals are made aware of the risk that separation from the mother represents for the young child. They are inspired by ancient works that have strongly influenced the sector: the theory of attachment of John Bowlby (and later, Myriam David and Geneviève Appell, 1973), and the « hospitalism » (« overt primal rejection ») of René Spitz. These works alert to the risk of early mother-infant separation and emphasizes the importance of the mother-infant relationship. The professionality of the workers in the early childhood care institutions is built on these psychological knowledges and one of their missions is to prevent the risks and to help maintain the bond between mother and child. This observation raises a number of questions and problems : 1) the professionals find themselves in a contradiction, since they welcome children who, according to them, would be better off with their mothers : can they do a "good work" under these conditions? Do they not identify themselves with a negative model, by default, which is always insufficient compared to that of the mother? ; 2) the emphasis on the mother-infant relationship implies very standardized patterns of parenting and a gendered construction of motherhood (Neyrand, 2011) : what place can they give to more diverse models of parenting? In this context of thought, do they not systematically refer women to motherhood, which is both mandatory and essential (« maternal instinct »)? ; 3) reflection in terms of risks leads to preventive practices whose effects are not thought of by professionals (Mozère, 2002). I will illustrate this last point with examples from my observations and interviews in a municipal day-care. The empirical survey was conducted using a clinical approach with psychoanalytic orientation (Gavarini, 2013) in order to obtain detailed qualitative data on the experiences and feelings of professionals. The aim is to show how sociological and psychological knowledge (social sciences and humanities discourse) contribute to the construction of subjectivities (theme 1) in the field of educational professionality and how educational practices are informed by them (theme 2). It will therefore be a matter of reflecting on the notions of trauma, attachment, separation, but also on the figure of motherhood attached to that of the infant, in order to examine what causes prevention : which theories, which categories induce the idea of risk, of trauma, of violence.

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