The Online Backlash to Millie Bobby Brown’s Adoption Choice Is the Strangest Thing

When a Hollywood star diverges from the industry’s prevailing degeneracy and pursues something selfless, feathers sure get ruffled. After British actress Millie Bobby Brown, best known for Netflix’s “Stranger Things” and the “Enola Holmes” franchise, announced that she and her husband had welcomed another child via adoption, many online commenters reacted in the most ridiculous fashion. Folks from both political camps put her choice under an unfair microscope, missing the forest for the trees in failing to recognize that adoption is generally a good thing. Some questioned why Ms. Brown, 22, was raising children so young rather than partying at a club or going home with strangers. Others conflated her charitable decision to reportedly rescue a child from an orphanage with “buying babies” and “collecting kids.” Some cynically suggested that the couple were adopting for the aesthetic and lack the maturity to care for infants because they are young adults. Others doubted Ms. Brown’s womanhood because she has not yet borne a child naturally. The oddity of the saga was that the criticism wasn’t just coming from those on the Left, which perpetuates adolescence by discouraging marrying and having kids young in the name of self-empowerment. The bad faith arguments also came from some corners of the Right, which argued that the only proper family is one formed through traditional procreation, dismissing not only the fertility crisis but the fact that there are over 300,000 children languishing in the American foster care system.Such purist thinking fails to acknowledge how adoption gives children a home who would otherwise be abandoned, usually through no fault of their own, and who would otherwise be living alone with no stabilizing family unit — the greatest privilege one can enjoy in America. While not every parent can be blessed with the natural conception of a child, every child deserves to have parents. Adoption is very different from the medical engineering of surrogacy and other forms of reproductive technology that have become mainstream in American society, especially in Hollywood. Pop star Lady Gaga and her fiancé, Michael Polansky, recently had their first child via surrogate and singer Meghan Trainor welcomed her third child via a surrogate.With surrogacy, prospective parents essentially rent another woman’s womb to carry their child for them. Outside America, the women offering to do this service are often uneducated and living in poverty in India, Thailand, Nepal, and Mexico. In America, while the women involved may not always be destitute, it is typically women of lower status who offer to become a surrogate for affluent couples. Besides preying on women with economic insecurity, surrogacy obviously then forces a biological mother to part with her child, and a child to part with their biological mother. While surrogacy allows parents to fulfill their desire to have children without suffering the inconvenience and labor attached to it, adoption is chiefly done in the interest of the child being adopted. It’s true that adoption can require a lengthy process and financial investment that can look a bit like acquisition at first glance. But it is an action that corrects a wrong that was unfortunately done to a child, while surrogacy intentionally commoditizes children and undermines their intrinsic human value for the benefit of the parents. As for the claim that Ms. Brown and her husband, Jake Bongiovi, are in over their heads with the task of forming two small souls at the ages of 22 and 24 respectively, people have been undertaking that responsibility for many centuries at even younger ages without anyone batting an eye. Parenthood sparks and seals a person’s transition into adulthood more than any career choice. Millie Bobby Brown and Jake Bongiovi’s relatively young parenthood is shocking to contemporary culture precisely because so many of their Gen Z peers are stuck in arrested development, searching for meaning in trivial pursuits and coming up empty. Ms. Brown and Mr. Bongiovi are not engaging in folly but wisdom, having realized that the best way to grow up is to commit yourself to people who need you. For rich actors in Hollywood, the pressure and temptation to use surrogacy and avoid the drawbacks of pregnancy is growing. Ms. Brown and her spouse should be applauded for choosing a route that benefits both their adopted child and society.

The Online Backlash to Millie Bobby Brown’s Adoption Choice Is the Strangest Thing

The Online Backlash to Millie Bobby Brown’s Adoption Choice Is the Strangest Thing

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