Myka Stauffer Referenced Son’s Adoption While Discussing Biggest ‘Failure’

Myka Stauffer is no longer active on YouTube since sparking backlash over her son’s adoption dissolution, but some prior videos haven’t aged well post-scandal.

Myka and her husband, James Stauffer, were family vloggers whose popularity skyrocketed as they documented their path to adopting a child. In October 2017, they brought home son Huxley from China, but the transition wasn’t easy. The couple — who share another four children who were not adopted — eventually chose to place Huxley with another family in 2020 after he was diagnosed with autism.

The scandal blew up online as viewers following along with the journey grew concerned about Huxley’s wellbeing. While the Stauffer family’s YouTube channel has since been deleted, past footage was dissected in the new Vox Media Studio docuseries An Update on Our Family, which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival earlier this month.

Myka and James were all in on Huxley before even meeting their “gorgeous little baby boy” in person. “I love him so much,” Myka gushed in a vlog featured in episode 1 of the docuseries. “It was just an instant connection. … This is my little guy.”

In another 2017 video, Myka got candid about the potential of adopting a child who might require medical care. “The only need that our little boy has is a nice family that really, truly cares about him,” she said at the time.

Myka confessed that she didn’t know “what his medical diagnosis was gonna look like,” but she told viewers that she and James were confident about adopting Huxley. “If anything, my child is not returnable,” she claimed.

An Update on Our Family gives a closer look at the Stauffer family’s first in-person interactions with Huxley and the challenges they encountered after making his adoption official. In episode 2, Myka admitted that she was unsure how much of the “hard part” to share with fans.

“If I were daily vlogging every single moment, I feel like I would be really wrong,” she said in another YouTube video.

The family continued to document their daily lives, however, and Myka began to strike up deals with big-name brands. James referred to the YouTube channel as “a full-time business” in a video shown during episode 2.

Myka was even asked to share some of her tips of the trade in a sit-down interview at VidSummit in 2018. At the time, the Stauffer family’s channel had nearly 500,000 followers.

“There’s way better YouTubers out there, but one of the big things I did was I started studying analytics really hard,” she told Think Media’s Sean Cannell, adding that she lucked out with her “liquid goldmine” of content.

When discussing to name her “favorite failure” from throughout her career, Myka referenced Huxley’s journey. “Well, I wouldn’t call it a failure,” she said. “But I would call it something that was really, really, really, really, really challenging. We recently adopted a little guy from China, definitely not a failure.”

She continued, “When you adopt a child, it’s forever. And when you adopt a child and there’s stuff that you didn’t know … it just puts you in a spot you didn’t know you were gonna be in.”

Cannell appeared in An Update on Our Family and cringed while rewatching the conversation, saying, “This interview didn’t age well.”

Huxley began to appear in fewer of the Stauffers’ videos, which triggered red flags for some viewers. In May 2020, the couple explained that Huxley was no longer part of their family. Us Weekly confirmed at the time that an investigation was subsequently launched, but authorities found that Huxley was safe with his new adoptive parents. No charges were filed.

Amid the backlash, Myka apologized in a lengthy Instagram statement, which remains her last post on the platform to date. (Myka and James did not respond to interview requests for the Vox Media Studios doc.)

“This decision has caused so many people heart break and I’m sorry for letting down so many women that looked up to me as a mother. I’m 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 in June 2020. “I could have never anticipated the incidents which occurred on a private level to ever have happened, and I was trying my best to navigate the hardest thing I have ever been through.”

She insisted that Huxley was not adopted for the couple’s personal gain, adding, “We love Huxley and know that this was the right decision for him and his future. Praying that Huxley only has the best future in the entire world.”