YouTubers Myka Stauffer and James Stauffer ignited a firestorm of controversy when they gave up custody of their adopted 4-year-old son with special needs in 2020. Now a new HBO documentary series, “An Update on our Family,” revisits the Stauffers’ story.
The limited three-part series, which will premiere on HBO on Wednesday, Jan. 15, uses the Stauffer controversy to explore wider issues about what happens when parents decide to make their private family lives public.
But why are the Stauffers’ decisions so controversial? Take a look at how the family rose to social media stardom … and then enraged their followers.
Who is Myka Stauffer and her husband James?
Myka Stauffer had a parenting and lifestyle YouTube channel with more than 700,000 subscribers. Together with her husband, she and her four biological children — Nakova, Jaka, Radley and Onyx — had a family YouTube channel, The Stauffer Life, with more than 300,000 followers.
Neither channel is publicly accessible on YouTube at the time of this story’s publication.
The Ohio-based vlogger parents began inviting viewers into their international adoption journey in 2016, via social media. Myka Stauffer produced 27 videos with the boy they named Huxley, sharing everything from fundraising to grappling with the ever-changing rules surrounding international adoption to learning about their potential child’s special needs.
Why did Myka and James Stauffer adopt a child?
In an article for Parade in September 2019, Myka wrote, “My husband was resistant (to adoption) at first, but after letting him reflect on the idea for several months, we both agreed to start researching and see what surfaced.”
The couple felt compelled to pursue an international adoption, “and we kept being lead to China,” Myka Stauffer wrote. Because Chinese adoption laws would only allow U.S. couples to adopt children with special needs, the couple had to decide if they were prepared to take on additional challenges.
And then, Myka Stauffer wrote, she “saw a little face that I couldn’t walk away from.” This little boy had a brain tumor; Myka Stauffer said that since she was an oncology nurse, “tumors didn’t scare me.”
She wrote, “Ultimately, his sad little face won our hearts over and we just knew that he was our little guy.”
Who is Huxley, the boy the Stauffers adopted?
The boy was 2.5 years old when the whole Stauffer family flew to China to meet him and bring him to their home in America. They renamed him Huxley.
Over the years, the Stauffers updated their followers on their experience adopting a child with special needs, sometimes on posts that featured advertising from major companies.
Not all videos about Huxley were monetized, but many of the videos about adoption were some of the most watched on the channel, raising the Stauffers’ profile and clout online. In the last two years, the video on their channel with the most views, 5.5 million, was “Huxley’s EMOTIONAL Adoption VIDEO!! GOTCHA DAY China Adoption.”
Why did the the Stauffers find a new home for their adopted son?
At the age of 4, Huxley was just starting to form words verbally and had learned a few words in sign language.
Myka Stauffer said, in her Parade essay and in now-deleted videos, the family learned eventually that Huxley did not, in fact, have a brain tumor. Instead, they shaed, he had a number of different medical issues: he suffered a stroke in utero, and had autism and sensory processing disorder.
Eagle-eyed followers began to notice that Huxley was missing from photos and other posts on the family’s social media and YouTube channel. In May 2020, the Stauffers posted a video that was viewed by TODAY.com and has since been deleted, explaining what was happening with their adopted son.
“Once Huxley came home, there was a lot more special needs that we weren’t aware of, and that we were not told,” James Stauffer said in the video, titled “an update on our family.”
“For us, it’s been really hard hearing from the medical professionals, a lot of their feedback, and things that have been upsetting,” he continued. “We’ve never wanted to be in this position. And we’ve been trying to get his needs met and help him out as much as possible.”
“There’s not an ounce of our body that doesn’t love Huxley with all of our being,” Myka Stauffer added. “There wasn’t a minute that I didn’t try our hardest and I think what Jim is trying to say is that after multiple assessments, after multiple evaluations, numerous medical professionals have felt that he needed a different fit and that (with) his medical needs, he needed more.”
“Do I feel like a failure as a mom? Like, 500%,” Myka Stauffer said, adding that Huxley was living with a “new mommy” in a “forever home.”
“The last couple months have been like the hardest thing I could have ever imagined to going to choosing to do … after pouring our guts and our heart into this little boy,” she said. “He is thriving, he is happy, he is doing really well, and his new mommy has medical professional training, and it is a very good fit.”
Why are people upset by the Stauffers’ decision?
An online uproar followed the Stauffers’ announcement.
Almost 50,000 people (as of publication of this article) have signed a Change.org petition demanding that the Stauffers remove all monetized content featuring Huxley from YouTube. And in a now-completed case, local authorities investigated the “well-being” of Huxley Stauffer in response to compaints. No charges were filed.
TODAY.com reached out to the Stauffers’ attorney and did not get a response. In 2020, in a statement to People magazine, Myka and James Stauffer’s lawyers, Thomas Taneff and Taylor Sayers, said:
“We are privy to this case and given the facts at hand, we feel this was the best decision for Huxley … In coming to know our clients we know they are a loving family and are very caring parents that would do anything for their children.”
“Since his adoption, they consulted with multiple professionals in the healthcare and educational arenas in order to provide Huxley with the best possible treatment and care,” Taneff and Sayers continued. “Over time, the team of medical professionals advised our clients it might be best for Huxley to be placed with another family.”
In the adoption world, failed adoptions are called “disruptions.” While a disruption may seem stone-hearted from the outside, according to experts TODAY.com spoke with, these anguished acts are complex and soul-crushing for all concerned.
Myka Stauffer responded to some of the backlash in an Instagram post on June 24, 2020. That screenshot remains the most recent post on her page.
“I am sorry for the confusion and pain I have caused, and I am sorry for not being able to tell more of my story from the beginning,” she wrote, adding, “I was naive, foolish and arrogant.”
She also debunked a few rumors, writing that the Stauffers “did not adopt a child to gain wealth.”
