In late adoption, the child arrives at the new home with a history, often full of ruptures and abandonment. It is in this context, with a demand to build a good enough environment, besides the search to satisfy their own motivations for an adoption, that adoptive families of older children will find important challenges when building a parental-child bond. This research aimed to investigate the construction of the parental-child bond in late adoptions, taking into consideration the parents motivations, children s previous experiences, and the fantasies and expectations related to the imagined child. In order to achieve the proposed objectives, 10 independent people were interviewed, 3 men and 7 women, who adopted children older than 2 years old. The interviews were analyzed by the content analysis method. Participants emphasized the following as main challenges for the bond construction: the child s aggressive behavior, difficulties with rules and authority, lack of legal certainty, delay in school and problems in the adaptation with family routine. The experience of parenting was found directly related to the feeling of responsibility and the imposition of rules. The main motivation was the desire to be a parent , as well as the desire to do something good. Expectations and fantasies emerged in the speeches linked to the fear of not being able to fully exercise the parental function. The singular way that parents welcomed difficulties, integrating past and present, in order to rebuild the lost family environment, as well as the support network offered was fundamental for the construction and maintenance of the parental-child bond.