One big, happy family? The Sister Wives cast gave a glimpse of how their plural brood celebrated the holidays amid multiple breakups.
Janelle Brown spent the holiday weekend with her kids following her split from ex-husband Kody Brown. Daughters Savanah Brown, 18, and (née Brown), 27, were by her side, along with Maddie’s husband Caleb Brush and their children, son Axel, 5, and daughter Evangalynn, 3.
“Merry Christmas 2022! ,” Janelle, 53, captioned the post on Sunday, December 25.
Christine Brown commented, “Awww so cute.”
Janelle’s son Robert Garrison Brown shared his festive tree, which featured only a picture of Chris Pine. “A family portrait, DISCLAIMER: Catthew was forced to take this photo,” Garrison, 24, captioned the photo with both of his cats on his lap.
Paedon Brown, meanwhile, shared a holiday group snap with Robert. “Gotta love the holidays with the fam!” the 24-year-old son of Kody Brown and ex Christine, 50, captioned the photos via Instagram on Christmas.
Meanwhile, Janelle commented, “I love this so much !!”
The family festivities came shortly after Meri Brown confirmed in part one of the Sister Wives: One-on-One special that she and Kody called it quits after 32 years of marriage. During the December 18 TLC episode, the Wyoming native confessed that he doesn’t “really consider” himself married to Meri, whom he wed in 1990.
“It just doesn’t make sense to me that he would be so frustrated with Christine and be like, ‘She just made this decision. We didn’t consult. We didn’t talk.’ … And then he says, ‘No, I don’t consider myself married to Meri,’” the California native said in response. “He just made the decision. I have never heard him say that to me.”
News of the twosome’s split followed Janelle’s revelation that she and Kody have been “separated for several months.” The duo, who entered a spiritual union in 1993, share six children.
The Brown family has been in disarray since Christine announced the end of her marriage to Kody in November 2021. Sister Wives fans watched the breakup drama play out during season 17, which showed the Cooking With Just Christine star leaving Arizona and settling in her native Utah with youngest daughter Truely, 12. (She shares a total of six kids with Kody.)
Amid the relationship shakeups, Kody’s marriage to Robyn has remained strong. The twosome legally wed in 2014 so that the businessman could adopt her children from a previous relationship.
“It’s hard to be a plural wife when your husband has a wife leaving him,” Robyn confessed in the season 17 finale. “Most men in monogamy they go do stupid stuff and they date whoever. And they’re angry and they’re pissed. And [think that] women suck.”
The mother of five pointed out that Christine’s departure from the family has been a challenge for them all. “He’s dealing with that while he’s married. And I’ve told him several times, I feel like he’s lining up all women and I’m there too,” Robyn added. “And he’s shooting us all down because Christine is a woman. And he’s angry and he’s hurt.”
In a confessional interview, Kody admitted that sometimes the polygamist lifestyle causes him stress. “Plural marriage isn’t all beer and Skittles. It’s not for a man,” he told the camera. “There’s a different burden — I don’t want to sit here and mansplain to you. It’s just obvious that it’s difficult. ‘You’re going to share your husband? Why would you do that?’”
The patriarch previously opened up about the “double standards” that exist within a plural family. “I don’t feel like I’ve got the right to say, ‘This is over, this is ending,” he exclusively told Us Weekly in February 2021. “I have dominion over my own body and where I’m at but I’m not in a place where, like, I can say, ‘Hey, I’m divorcing you.’ I can’t do that. … There’s other double standards that we have in the family that we sort of tolerate. And that other double standard is I don’t get to leave, but they can.”