Brooke Shields is an accomplished actress, model and author, but her most beloved gig is being a mom.
The Suddenly Susan alum shares daughters Rowan (born in May 2003) and Grier (born in April 2006) with husband Chris Henchy, whom she married in 2001. Though the New York native often shares joyful updates about the family’s life, she’s also been vocal about the difficulties of parenting — and pregnancy.
After welcoming Rowan, Shields was open about her battle with postpartum depression, discussing the topic on talk shows and in the memoir Down Came the Rain. “Having my first daughter obliterated me,” the Blue Lagoon actress recalled in her 2014 book, There Was a Little Girl. “It took away all my power. All of a sudden I was experiencing something so foreign, which I had no response for. I had no resources to rely on. … And with the level of depression I experienced, I was just waiting to figure out how to slip away. It was so acute. Becoming a mother didn’t ground me at all. At least in the beginning.”
As her children got older, the former Lipstick Jungle star wasn’t shy about the harder parts of motherhood. “Every day there’s a new challenge,” the Golden Globe nominee told Entertainment Tonight in February 2017. “My new thing is not screaming and not screaming back at them. I would engage in an absolute fight, and my husband would say, ‘What’s wrong with you? Why are you fighting with them?’ Chris, my husband, calls it FOFO — ‘find out before you freak out.’ So, before I react, I’m now trying to just count to 10.”
Despite the challenges, however, the Jane the Virgin alum was still devastated when her eldest daughter, Rowan, started college in 2021. “I miss her every day,” Shields exclusively told Us Weekly in November 2021.
In August 2022, the Endless Love star shared a teary-eyed Instagram video that she filmed after dropping Rowan off at Wake Forest University for her second year. “Turns out second time is NOT the charm when it comes to your baby going off to college,” the On Your Own author wrote at the time. “Sophomore year, here she comes. I’ll be crying if you need me… .”
The Law & Order: Special Victims Unit alum added in her video that she asked Henchy to drive Rowan to school by himself because she didn’t think she could handle it. “It was just too painful,” Shields explained. “I don’t think I could go through the driving away from campus again.”
Keep scrolling for some of Shields and Henchy’s best photos with their daughters.