A maternal bond is the relationship between a biological mother/caregiver and her child or baby. While typically associated with pregnancy and childbirth, a maternal bond may also develop in cases later on in life where the child is unrelated, such as in the case of an adoptee or a case of blended family.

Both physical and emotional factors influence the mother-child bonding process. In separation anxiety disorder a child becomes fearful and nervous when away from a loved one, usually a parent or other caregiver. New mothers do not always experience instant love toward their child. Instead, the bond can strengthen over time, or fail to develop. Bonds can take hours, days, weeks, or months to develop.

The maternal bond between a woman and her biological child usually begins to develop during pregnancy. The pregnant female often adapts her lifestyle to suit the needs of the developing infant, for example by eating or refraining from eating certain foods or undertaking or avoiding certain activities. At around 18 to 25 weeks, the mother begins to feel the fetus moving. Similar to seeing her child for the first time in an ultrasound scan, this experience often leads the mother to feel more attached to her child ^{[citation needed]}.

Once sufficiently developed, the developing fetus has some awareness of the mother's heartbeat and voice and can respond to touch or movement and hear sounds from the surrounding environment. By the seventh month of pregnancy, two-thirds of women report a strong maternal bond with their unborn child.

Some mothers who did not want the pregnancy may not have a close relationship with their child due to a sense of foreigness/unfamiliarity. They are more likely to suffer from post-partum depression or other mental health problems and less likely to breastfeed.

Childbirth is an experience that can strengthen the mother and child bond. Factors such as a traumatic birth, the mother's childhood, medical stress, lack of support and the influence of a spouse or partner/family or socioeconomic factors like poverty can weaken the bond.

Physical contact between infants and caregivers is very important to building, and bonding is still possible for infants which require hospital care which reduces the opportunities for physical contact, for example those infants who are born prematurely. Parents and premature infants can still bond by cuddling and hugging, by touching in and around incubators, and by playing, with skin to skin like firms of contact particularly effective.

Emotional bonding theory first appeared in the mid-1970s and bonding theories outlining descriptions and causes of good bonding and poor bonding were established understandings by the mid 1980s.