Given a deconstructive shift in the conception of mothers and mothering from a unitary category of women in a biological relationship with their offspring to a more fluid constellation of active maternal relations, transcending gender, and constructed through the work of intersubjective dyads, this article asks how we might begin to think about the representation and internalization of maternal relations. With reference to Bowlby's (1980) concept of internal working models of attachment, and to more recent infant research, the concept of maternal functions (specifically, functions of security, regulation, and recognition) is introduced as central to the mothering relation.