I'm really curious about this. It keeps getting mentioned without any explanation and I'm living in a different country from most of you. Maybe I'm really living in a different social climate. When I adopted my daughter I never expected approval and never felt like anyone approved. A lot of people were sort of neutral but a lot of people were mean and negative about it, starting with the local social worker who we had to file all of our papers through. Private adoption agencies are illegal here, so we only had the one person we could go through. Then, there were my husband's parents. Whoa. You don't even want to know. They've settled down but we watch them like hawks and if we see any sign of negativity, they will not be part of our child's "family." My husband agrees, even though they're his folks. My parents are better, but they have always shown me approval, even of my off-key singing, so they don't really count. My friends mostly just don't comment but all the comments I can think of, other than from my new friends from adoptive parenting classes, are pretty negative. The media seems negative. I was trying to find fictional books on adoption situations that might be fun to read and I couldn't find any recent books where the adoptive parents weren't portrayed as horrid. OK, books for toddlers are pretty rosy about it but they are rosy about everything. I read all the books about adoption anyway and a lot of them are good stories, even if they are usually about the poor adopted kid escaping from his/her mean adoptive parents. I like a good adventure story as much as anyone.

I'm not complaining. My friends and extended family who treat this like just one more normal thing are great people. They don't have to approve of me for doing something that is simply logical and natural. No one had a party because we adopted a child. In fact, they skipped the normal baby shower that they always hold for our friends who give birth. But they treat me and my child fine, so why would I need approval?

But now on this website specifically, I see all this talk about adoptive parents always getting the approval. Has anyone ever actually experienced this in real life or seen it with their own eyes or is it just another stereotype?
Our local social worker, who I mentioned, disapproves of adoption because she says children are better off in institutions than in most families. Maybe she's into Plato or something. I don't know but she has no grasp of the medical issues for children left in institutions.