I'm finally ready to talk about this story after two days of shaking with rage: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemcneal/myka-stauffer-huxley-announcement?fbclid=IwAR2xDkcYCxFCEuDwyULgGBYmNLgjBy8Xo46nx_lWzXsjq6gOpmnwOVCDy10 (This will be long and I will not apologize. White adoptive moms need to be the ones calling out this horror and not make people who were adopted do the emotional lifting.)

To recap: a Youtube couple adopted a 2 1/2 yo from China, publicized and monetized the adoption journey before and after, and then REHOMED THEIR CHILD AFTER HE LIVED WITH THEM FOR THREE YEARS.

THREE. YEARS. He was their son.

Let's get into this: I have a daughter who came to our family from China. That's all you're going to know about her; the rest is private and her story. I also have a neurotypical child. I'm deeply offended by this story, and not just because it hits close to home.

I know some things about the journey the YouTubers were on. And REHOMING THEIR CHILD (I can barely type that phrase) was their latest mistake, not the only one. I don't want to give them more attention, but we don't talk enough about adoption in our country and we need to.

So, since this has brought to light a dark underbelly of adoption many people were unaware of, we need to name some things.

1) The values and desires in adoption should be ironclad and in this order:
the child's needs
the birth parents' needs
the child
the child
the child
the birth parents
the child
the birth parents

...

(Adoptive parents' needs don't even make the list).

I don't mean adoptive parents shouldn't be prepared--their "needs" consist of getting ready to meet their child's needs. Corruption in adoption happens when adoptive parents' wants and desires are at the center, when agencies view pre-adoptive parents (PAPs) as their clients.

So, PAPs NEED to get ready for adopting a child, especially a child who has been through trauma (more on that in a sec). But it is my absolute and unwavering opinion that adoptive parents shouldn't enter into adoption unless they're willing to turn themselves inside out.

(I don't mean lose themselves, I mean, not giving up when things get hard and REHOMING THEIR CHILD. And believe me when I say, I've seen hard in my own life and in friends' lives--there are a million options that do not include giving away a kid.)

It's my job as an adoptive parent (dads too!) to give up my career if I need to, to stay in a job I don't love to support them, to move to a different city or school so they have people who look like them, to find therapists--whatever it takes so my child's needs are met.

As an adoptive mom, the hard work is mine to do.

The hard work is MINE to do. It is never the child's work to fit into the family. It is our work to shape our family to meet the needs of our children.

That's what parenting is, adoptive or biological. But in a case like mine and in the YouTubers, when adoption is a choice, PAPs have to begin with the absolute understanding that the hard work is ours to do. If they're not ready to do that, they're not ready to adopt.

2) The child's story should be his/her own story. OF ALL THE ABSOLUTE AWFUL THINGS in this story, making money off of the adoption of a child is a level of gross that I can hardly bear. None of us should know about any of this.

3) Adoption is trauma. It just is. Kids should be able to stay with their birth parents. That's not always possible for a number of reasons, but adoption isn't "saving" a kid.

I heard a podcast recently that described adoption as building a house on the grave of someone else's family. You can't enter into this without recognizing that grief--it will come out in physical ways for a small child, as it should. That grief is visceral.

It is at the DNA level. "Sensory processing" is one of the things the YouTubers included about their son and that's a classic trauma response. There's one video on their IG page (not linking because nope) where their son is clearly communicating his rage and grief and

they're talking about why he's not featured on their YouTube videos more because he's always grumpy.

Um, to bring home a toddler from the only life he's ever known feels like kidnapping to him. He's not "grumpy," he's responding in a very valid way to the grief of adoption.

And I just--I feel so sucker-punched that they would do that to this child again.

4) Doing the work means researching until you know every possible outcome--years and years of research--and then recognizing you still don't really know what it's actually going to be like. Really, the only thing you can know is you're committing to your kid no matter what.

In 99% of adoptions, children have experiences that therapists designate as Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), which are markers of trauma. Even if it really was the loveliest, glowingest story of all, there is still trauma involved. That also has to be a baseline for PAPs.

Again, the hard work is the adoptive parents to do--going to classes and seminars and workshops, reading books, lining up trauma-informed therapists in advance: at least talk therapy, if not art therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy,

psychology, other therapies. It's hard financially (there are options--I don't think only rich people should adopt) but mostly, the work is going to be deeply, deeply emotional. We have to lead the way in knowing ourselves and knowing our children so we can attach and be healthy.

5) Adoption should only ever be ethical. Poverty or lack of maternal health options do not make a mother unfit to care for her kids. You should be a bigger supporter of maternal health than anything else (start with @HeartlineHaiti).

When money is involved and PAPs' desires are privileged (for a certain kind of baby--"healthy," whatever that means, young, a girl, etc.), adoption gets corrupt. It just does. Cambodia, Ethiopia, Guatemala...I could keep going.

Not all adoption is corrupt—not at all—but corrupt adoptions are one of the pure evils of the world. Taking another person's child is horrific. It requires real diligence and a deep desire to keep the child and birth parents centered--that list again--to ensure ethical adoptions.

Knowing what's ethical and what's not takes years and years of work on your part--ask questions, ask to see documents, push your agency, dig and dig and dig and commit to not supporting anything that takes a child from their family.

Support kinship care in the States; root and pray and financially support programs that help parents whose kids end up in foster care to keep their kids. The goal is not--and never should be--for the system to work in the favor of adoptive parents.

6) There are really great resources out there for families who do find themselves in dire straits. I have seen it with my own eyes in friends' lives, what happens when good therapy gets involved. But saying that a "kid is happy in his new forever home" or whatever they said

is just a statement to make the parents feel better. It just is. It has nothing to do with the needs of a child, one who went through the trauma of adoption already.

And to be clear--I'm not anti-adoption at all. I'm pro-adoption, as long as it is ethical, informed,

child-centered, birth-parent-centered, well-researched, and based on the adoptive parents' desire to enter into the life of their child in whatever way they need to. SUPER pro-adoption over here, just anti-bad-adoption, especially one that's used to help grow the parents'

platform (of which this is just one example).

This thread is long enough. I could go on. I'm sure I've left something out, but it's long enough already and I'm still angry. I hope, at the very least, this story sparks some necessary conversations about adoption in this country.