A cropped thumbnail of Myka and James Stauffer in An Update on Our Family
(HBO)

‘An Update on Our Family’ highlights how the dangers of family vlogging go beyond exploitation

HBO’s new docuseries, An Update on Our Family, delves into the Stauffer family controversy and, in the process, highlights how the dangers of family vlogging may even go beyond child exploitation.

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Myka and James Stauffer began vlogging about married life and parenthood in 2014. Myka’s self-titled channel quickly blew up, growing to over 700k subscribers at its peak. The pair also created a family channel, The Stauffer Life, where they posted family vlogs with their three children. In 2016, the couple announced they were adopting a child from China. Over the next two years, they filmed the entire process, leaving viewers anxiously awaiting new updates on the child, who they announced they would name Huxley. They filmed the very first moment they met him in China, his first words, his first MRI, and their reaction to his autism diagnosis. He became the star of The Stauffer Life, appearing in multiple sponsorships and nearly every thumbnail and title on the channel. However, the Stauffers’ YouTube fame crumbled overnight in 2020 when they released the video “An Update on Our Family,” where they revealed their decision to rehome Huxley.

Five years later, the docuseries An Update on Our Family delves back into the Stauffers, Huxley’s rehoming, the extreme internet response, and what the incident means for family vlogging.

What An Update on Our Family says about family vlogging

An Update on Our Family briefly touches on the world of family vlogging, noting that family vlogger children like Huxley are the “first generation that’s living on social media.” Reporter Stephanie McNeal remarked that the next decade will likely be illuminating as these children of family vloggers become adults and speak out about their experiences because “We simply don’t know how these kids are going to feel.” An Update on Our Family explicitly questions the impact of family vlogging on children, but I feel it also indirectly begs the question of its effect on parents. What does family vlogging do to a parent psychologically? To their judgment? To their empathy?

The first episode of An Update on Our Family describes how Myka found YouTube fame. One aspect of her fame was pregnancy. She documented the birthing journeys of both children she shared with James; each garnered views with eye-catching headlines about “live births” and “home births.” Pregnancies are the perfect fit to stir interest and lead to check-ins because they come with an initial major announcement plus a lead-up to the event. While countless vlogging families were filming births, the Stauffers found something more unique: adoption. Viewers watched in real-time as the family went through the international adoption process and became wholly invested in the mission to bring home Huxley. Eventually, one of the producers of An Update on Our Family asks the ultimate question of whether the Stauffers adopted Huxley for views. A former fan of the Stauffers, Hannah Cho, admits that YouTube was likely at least one of the reasons for the adoption.

The problem with the Stauffer controversy is that they got vitriol for the wrong reason. In An Update on Our Family, the author of the Reddit thread “I Myka Stauffer’d a child last year, AMA,” points out that dissolutions of adoptions do happen and aren’t always the parents’ fault. The Stauffer’s most significant offense wasn’t that they dissolved their adoption, but they dissolved it after exploiting their adopted child for fame. If they hadn’t ever filmed Huxley, it’s possible they never would’ve received the intense vitriol they did for rehoming him. However, that raises another scenario. If they had never gotten into YouTube, would they have adopted him in the first place?

Family vlogging can be a catalyst for poor parenting choices

As I see it, the problem with family vlogging is twofold. First, there’s the apparent exploitation of children who cannot consent to being filmed. Second, there’s the danger that vlogging could be a catalyst for something even darker. After all, there’s strong evidence that views may have inspired Myka to naively rush headfirst into adopting a child. Then, after adopting him, as the views started to taper off, she immediately had another child even though she was already struggling with the demands of her newly adopted son and three other children. It should go without saying that YouTube is not a good reason for someone to make the life-changing decision to birth a child or adopt a child. If vlogging can influence a parent to make this choice, what else can the exhilaration of media attention drive a parent to do?

In the Stauffer case, it feels fortunate that a dissolved adoption was the outcome and not abuse because there is evidence vlogging can be a catalyst for abuse, too. The Stauffers confirmed vlogging can inspire a parent to adopt a child, but another channel, DaddyOFive, proved that it can inspire abuse, too. DaddyOFive was a family vlogging channel where Mike and Heather Martin shared their lives with their five children. Things turned dark when the pair began filming cruel pranks on the two youngest children and encouraged fights between the children for content. The documented abuse led to the Martins losing custody of their two youngest children.

There’s more than one example of parents making reckless decisions and even endangering their children for social media views. This really reminds us that we don’t know what vlogging does to parents. For a parent to even get into this exploitative practice makes one feel there must be some underlying narcissism or lack of empathy. Then, there’s the fact that few of us know what it’s like to get a million views, a million subscribers, or to have enough YouTube money to buy a $6,000 Cartier bracelet. We don’t know what it does to parents to experience the pressure or euphoria of practically winning the YouTube lottery and making it big. We know it might inspire impulsive and naive life decisions or abusive pranks, but no one can say how far these parents will go. What’s most startling is that so many complicit viewers or passive legislators are simply waiting to find the answer to this question.


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Rachel Ulatowski
Rachel Ulatowski is a Staff Writer for The Mary Sue, who frequently covers DC, Marvel, Star Wars, literature, and celebrity news. She has over three years of experience in the digital media and entertainment industry, and her works can also be found on Screen Rant, JustWatch, and Tell-Tale TV. She enjoys running, reading, snarking on YouTube personalities, and working on her future novel when she's not writing professionally. You can find more of her writing on Twitter at @RachelUlatowski.