The Stauffer Family Had a Hard Fall From Grace on YouTube Following Adoption Controversy
Myka and James Stauffer gave up their adopted son two years after bringing him home.
Published Jan. 16 2025, 9:46 a.m. ET
No YouTube family is perfect. But when the Stauffer family from the YouTube vlog The Stauffer Life announced they would be giving their adopted son up and "rehoming" him after having him home with them for more than two years, it was a shock to even their most dedicated subscribers. That was in 2020. So, where is the Stauffer family now? They may have completely gone away and out of the public eye.
Thanks to the docuseries An Update on Our Family on HBO, there is new light shed on what happened when Myka and James Stauffer made the controversial decision and shared it with their fans. And those who still followed them after the incident or who are just curious about the Stauffers at this point also want to know what happened to Huxley, the son Myka and James adopted from China when he was a baby.
Where is the Stauffer family now?
In 2020, Myka and her husband effectively went dark on social media. Years prior to that, they announced plans to adopt a baby boy from China, who they named Huxley. They were aware that he had a cerebral tumor ahead of the adoption and before they brought him to the United States, but they shared with their subscribers that they intended to welcome him into their family anyway. Due to Huxley's autism diagnosis, which Myka and James shared on YouTube, they made the decision to give Huxley up after they adopted him.
Today, Myka and James are still nowhere to be found on social media. Following the controversy on their channel, their account was shut down and they deleted the hundreds of family vlogs they had shared over the years. Before they seemingly left social media for good in in 2020, Myka released a statement that's still up on her Instagram account.
"I'm sorry for the confusion, and pain [I] have caused, and am sorry for not being able to tell more of my story from the beginning," she shared in her lengthy statement. "I could have never anticipated the incidents which occurred on a private level to ever have happened, and was trying my best to navigate the hardest thing [I] have ever been through. apologize for being so naive when started the adoption process, I was not selective or fully equipped or prepared."
She added that she hoped Huxley has "the best future in the entire world." And it doesn't look like the Stauffer family went back on their decision to give Huxley up years after they adopted him.
Do Myka and James Stauffer have other adopted kids?
When Myka and James adopted Huxley, they had two biological children together. Before Myka and James met, Myka had another daughter from a previous relationship, and then Myka had another child with James. But when they adopted Huxley and brought him home in 2017, he was meant to complete their family. He was also a big part of their content as they shared their adoption journey with viewers.
Gradually, however, the expenses and details of caring for a special needs child was too much for Myka and James. They shared in since-deleted videos on their now-defunct channel that speech therapy alone was too costly, and that they perhaps didn't know what they were getting into as parents to a special needs child.
It's unclear where Myka and James's biological children are today, five years after they left YouTube and said goodbye to the accolades and criticism that came with being a blogger family. But Huxley is now in a different home with new parents, as he has been since he was "rehomed" by the Stauffers, and he is no longer in the public eye.