Why Is Millie Bobby Brown Being Shamed for Adopting While Celebrity Surrogacy Is Celebrated?

Millie Bobby Brown became a mother of two this week. The Stranger Things actress and her husband, Jake Bongiovi, announced that they had adopted a baby boy , just over a year after welcoming their daughter through adoption. Brown posted a photograph of his tiny hand wrapped around her husband’s finger and wrote, “Hi little guy!” Across viral threads, strangers accused Brown of “collecting” children. One commenter wrote that unless the children were siblings or medically complex, she “refuse[d] to believe this was done ethically.” Another compared adoption to human trafficking. Someone else asked why Brown could not “just find a hobby.” By the way, Brown has not disclosed her children’s histories or birth parents. So, what are they even talking about? Celebrity surrogacy is treated very differently. When a celebrity announces that another woman carried and delivered her child, the story is packaged as a “journey” or a “miracle.” When Lily Collins announced the birth of her daughter by surrogate in 2025, Vogue responded to criticism with the headline, “It’s None of Your Business Why Lily Collins Used a Surrogate.” But when Millie adopted, the internet had a million problems. The hypocrisy is impossible to miss The same people who insist adoption begins with trauma ignore the truth at the center of surrogacy: a newborn is separated from the only body he or she has ever known. As a mom, the thought of the baby growing inside of me for months, and then given away for money while your breasts bleed milk is kind of morbid to think about. I’m not saying surrogate mothers don’t have good intentions. Many do so out of helping a couple who can’t get pregnant have a child. But in adoption, critics center the child and his biological mother so aggressively that adoptive parents are treated as inherently suspicious. In surrogacy, we are instructed to center the intended parents so completely that even mentioning the gestational mother can be framed as an attack on their family. Adoption, at its best, responds to a loss that has already occurred. A child cannot safely or permanently remain with his biological parents and needs a family. The child exists first; the need for adoptive parents follows. Ethical adoption should prioritize family preservation whenever possible, protect the rights of birth parents, preserve the child’s history, and place his interests above an adult’s desire to parent. Surrogacy reverses that order. Adults commission a pregnancy with the intention that the woman carrying the baby will surrender him after birth. The separation is part of the plan. That does not make every adoption virtuous or surrogate parents cruel. But we condemn a young married couple for offering an incredible life to two children whose circumstances we know nothing about for what? Apparently wealth matters only when someone adopts Brown’s fame and wealth may have given her unusual access to infant adoption. Wealth gives celebrities unusual access to almost everything. But that doesn’t mean Brown did anything wrong. It is also impossible to make that argument honestly without applying it to commercial surrogacy. Surrogacy is overwhelmingly available to rich people. The woman assuming the nausea, medical danger, delivery, and postpartum recovery is often far less affluent than the people paying her. America has no single federal framework governing surrogacy, while international arrangements can create even greater disparities. Yet celebrity coverage makes the surrogate disappear. She becomes a faceless supporting character in somebody else’s origin story. We learn how desperately the celebrity wanted a child, but little about what pregnancy cost the woman who endured it. The standard defense is that she consented. But consent matters in adoption too. If a birth mother relinquishes a baby while under financial pressure, critics rightly ask whether her decision was meaningfully free. Why does economic inequality become a sophisticated concern when discussing adoption, then vanish when a wealthier person pays a woman to carry a pregnancy? It makes no sense. Maybe the real offense is that Millie grew up Some of the anger has less to do with adoption than with Brown choosing a traditional life young. She married at 20 and became a mother at 21, apparently horrifying to a culture comfortable watching young women remain sexually available and emotionally uncommitted indefinitely. At 22, Brown can produce films, operate businesses, and support a household. Yet marriage and children supposedly prove she is naïve or “moving too fast.” The suggestion that a married woman needs a “hobby” instead of babies reveals contempt not only for Brown, but for motherhood itself. She is under more scrutiny than most celebrities despite seemingly having a great head on her shoulders, from her marriage to her looks. Brown has also shown unusual restraint. She told British Vogue that her daughter’s story is not hers to place in the spotlight and that the child can decide whether to share it when she is older. She has declined to turn her daughter’s identity or adoption story into a product. Love does not erase a birth mother’s grief, an adoptee’s questions, or the loss of biological connection. But acknowledging adoption’s wounds is not the same as declaring adoption predatory. Giving a permanent, loving family to a child who truly needs one remains profoundly good. We know almost nothing about the circumstances of Millie Bobby Brown’s adoptions. All we know is that she seems to be doing great things and gets judged for anything she does. Perhaps we should judge the family by what becomes visible over time: whether the children are safe and loved.