Kody Brown wasn’t always a distant and uninvolved father.
In recent years, the Sister Wives star has become estranged from a number of his 18 children. Tension over Kody’s relationship with his fourth wife Robyn Brown, his response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and other issues have all contributed to the fraught relationships with his offspring. To make matters worse, Kody has dug in his heels and refused to reach out to the kids who he feels “betrayed” him, as he shared in a recent episode of the family’s TLC show. But it wasn’t always that way. When the children were young, Kody was a good dad, his former wife Janelle Brown recently said.
Janelle Brown says Kody Brown was a ‘very engaged’ dad
Janelle was a guest on a recent episode of Reality Life With Kate Casey. She opened up about parenting with Kody. Janelle is mom to six of Kody’s kids. He also has one child with Meri Brown, six children with Christine Brown, and five children with Robyn Brown, including three from her first marriage.
“I always thought that he was very present,” Janelle recalled. “In fact … one of the things that I really admired about him is he was very engaged with his kids. He really did love his kids.”
Kody felt so connected with his children that at one point his then-teenaged daughter Maddie said that “his soulmates were really his children,” Janelle said.
Although Kody had a strong bond with his kids when they were young, that changed as they grew up.
“As they got older, it was harder for him, I think, to relate to them as adults,” his ex-wife said. “And honestly, he has changed. We all change, we all evolve. But I don’t recognize this guy, who he is now. I don’t know who this guy is. He’s not who I married all those years ago. And I probably am not either.”
Kody Brown says he wants to be a ‘loving father’
In the latest season of Sister Wives, Kody has repeatedly vented about his children. He has complained about them spreading family gossip, as well as accusing them of going out of their way to “punish me for a crime I didn’t commit.”
But Kody has also expressed sadness that he does not have a great relationship with most of his adult children. He’s vowed to do better. In the Nov. 3 episode, he celebrated his 55th birthday, declaring that he had “reasserted myself to, from here on out, be the loving father and the dad that has always given me purpose in my life.”
In a recent interview, Kody also admitted he had some regrets about how he’d handled his relationships with some of his kids, particularly his and Janelle’s son Garrison, who died by suicide in March 2024. Garrison and Kody had a strained relationship leading up to the former’s death.
“The only regret is just, take advantage of the time,” Kody told People. “I want to go out to dinner again. I want to sit down. I want to have a beer. I want [Garrison] to try and make me laugh because he was that way.”
“The only regret is just, gosh, I would just do that more often,” he added.
“There will always be the moment you said, ‘I wish I would’ve taken advantage,’ and there’s the regret,” he said later.
“But see, that’s all over now and everybody’s healing,” he went on to say. “And so now we can move forward, and we can just take those steps that create less regret.”
New episodes of Sister Wives air Sundays at 10 p.m. ET/PT on TLC.
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