“Much has been written recently about bonding, the process that “attaches” mothers and their biological infants to each other, and several theories have evolved about how bonding occurs. But what about adopted children? How do such theories relate to them? What about bonding with a child who is adopted at an older age and who has already gone through some of the developmental stages deemed important to bonding? What happens when the child one adopts is handicapped or racially different from oneself? Since bonding involves others besides the adoptive parents and adopted child, how supportive are extended families and communities to adoptive parents, and how helpful are adoption agencies to them? How do foreign adoptions differ from domestic ones? Which factors lead to bonding and which to its opposite, distancing?” Dorothy Smith and Laurie Nehls Sherwen, authors