In October 2017, Myka and James Stauffer adopted a toddler from China. By May 2020, after years of chronicling Huxley’s medical and emotional struggles online, the Stauffers announced they had placed their adopted son with a “new forever family.”
Their story is just one egregious example of the dark side of family vlogging, a popular genre of influencing that often sparks discourse over the exploitation of children, no matter how innocent the content seems on its face. An Update On Our Family, a new HBO documentary series, explores this phenomenon through the lens of the Stauffer family controversy in order to facilitate a conversation “about privacy on the internet, the nuances of trans-national adoption, and the unregulated industry of monetizing one’s family.”
According to Warner Brothers, the series dives into this topic by “weaving together YouTube footage of the Stauffers and other family vloggers, as well as insights from YouTube consumers, vlogging experts, adoption specialists, and parents” in order to explore “both the popularity and challenges of family vlog channels, revealing the sense of deep community that they provide to their subscribers who follow the families’ every move.”
Here’s everything you need to know about An Update on Our Family.
Wait, what did you just say happened?
After three years of rigorously documenting their journey raising an adopted child with autism, fans of of the Stauffer family began noticing Huxley’s absence from their vlogs and social media posts. In May 2020, the Stauffers, who also share four biological children, announced they made the decision to give up their adopted son in a since-deleted video titled, “An Update On Our Family.”
“Once Huxley came home, there was a lot more special needs that we weren’t aware of, and that we were not told,” James said in the video, per People. “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…we truly love him.”
