'Adults Adopting Adults' is abruptly canceled after online backlash. A&E says decision was due to 'ratings performance'

Adults Adopting Adults is no more.

After airing just three of an expected 10 episodes, the A&E reality show about adults adopting other adults just as they would children, has been removed from the network's schedule and online. Monday night's episode did not air.

The network confirmed to Yahoo Entertainment that it had pulled the show, citing its "ratings performance."

However, The Daily Beast reported Tuesday that the show, which debuted Jan. 31, was taken off the air following fan reaction to the storyline that involves Danny Huff, a 59-year-old from Ohio, as he attempts to make 20-year-old expectant mom Ileana part of his family. Huff is married to a woman named Christy, who's openly much less enthusiastic about the adoption. He explained early on that a previous attempt to adopt an 18-year-old had not worked out, because he'd developed feelings for the young woman. (A press release for the show had described the situation as simply "an inappropriate relationship.")

The first installments of the series showed him lavishing Ileana, a woman he met online and brought to the United States from Austria, with supplies and gifts for her unborn baby.

Huff told the Daily Beast that his relationship with Ileana was not the reason for the show's apparent cancellation.

"I never had any inappropriate actions, words, comments, anything to her," he said, calling any claims to the contrary "absolutely false."

The news outlet said Huff had not responded to requests for comment about a TikTok post, posted this time last year and recirculated online after the show began airing, in which he said that "racism is alive and well," and it "comes from the Blacks."

In one of the five other storylines on Adults Adopting Adults, 78-year-old Prince Frederic Von Anhalt, a former husband of Zsa Zsa Gabor, had sought an heir to inherit his title and estate.