Following Kody Brown’s breakups with three of his 4 wives, his relationships with most of his adult children have grow to be strained — including those with daughters Ysabel Brown and Maddie Brown.
Christine Brown and Kody’s daughter Ysabel, 22, got real on the Sunday, November 30, episode of Sister Wives about how her stepfather, David Woolley, has factored into her life amid her rocky dynamic with Kody, 56.
“When my mom and David first began dating, all of it happened, like, very fast, and I wasn’t used to a different man in my mom’s life. So, I used to be really fearful about what type of role he would take up,” Ysabel said, referring to Christine and David’s whirlwind romance before they tied the knot in October 2023. “I used to be fearful mostly that he would take up the role of pop in our family, which, we now have a dad.”
Ysabel confessed, “I assumed that he might take up an excessive amount of space,” revealing that David “doesn’t do this” and he “never oversteps.”
She gushed, “He’s very respectful. He’s very respectful of my dad. He’s very respectful of my mom and her kids and that she is a mom to us and that he’s her husband and never our dad.”
Ysabel shared that David’s place in her life — being hands-on without replacing Kody — is “a tough thing to balance, especially in case your dad isn’t very, like, prevalent in your life.”
She told the cameras that she and Kody haven’t spent a ton of time together since Christine, 53, left him in November 2021. (Christine and Kody share six children, including Ysabel.)
Ysabel Brown Courtesy of Ysabel Brown/Instagram
“My dad and I don’t talk fairly often, no,” Ysabel explained. “My dad and I aren’t, like, close, close, close, close, close, close. But I mean, he’s still my dad and I like him.”
Ysabel added that over the past few years she “realized how much of a job my mom has in my life,” calling Christine “two people in a single.”
“She might be the dad and she or he might be the mom and she or he’s perfect at it. After which David’s awesome too,” Ysabel concluded.
Elsewhere within the episode, Maddie, 30, who’s Kody’s eldest daughter with Janelle Brown, shared an update on her ongoing rift together with her father.
In the course of the latest episode of Sister Wives, Kody Brown put the blame on Christine Brown and Janelle Brown for his issues with their respective kids. “Christine and Janelle have kind [of] banded along with this whole thing,” Kody, 54, claimed within the Sunday, September 17, episode of the TLC series. “[They] principally shattered my whole […]
After Janelle, 56, revealed that Kody reached out to establish a time to go to her in North Carolina following their 2022 split, Maddie said she is hopeful that someday they are going to all be in a greater place.
“I believe there could possibly be forgiveness,” Maddie, who’s a mother of 4 herself, told her mom.
Janelle confessed, “It seems thus far on the market for him to have a relationship with you guys again,” referring to Maddie and her 4 remaining siblings. (Janelle and Kody welcomed six children during their marriage. Their son Garrison died by suicide in March 2024 on the age of 25.)
“I’m open to reconciliation and forgiveness and just closure,” Maddie explained. “But when he ever desired to be let back into our lives, there would must be a pattern of consistency.”
Madison Brown Courtesy of Madison Brush/Instagram
Janelle, for her part, noted that she and Kody are “pretty” good in relation to working together, noting they’d been in touch a number of times since Garrison’s passing.
“He called to envision on me on the anniversary of Garrison’s death. And on his birthday, he called to envision on me,” Janelle said. “And I actually thought of calling him, but I’m like, ‘Is that weird?’ But it surely was high quality. Like, it was all high quality.”
As Sister Wives fans know, Kody was married to Meri Brown, Janelle, Christine and Robyn Brown before their plural family began to crumble a number of years ago. (Kody and Robyn, 47, are still married.)
When Christine announced her split from Kody in 2021, she revealed that Kody had not been sleeping in her room for a while and said she considered herself a single parent.
Maddie Brown is opening up about her boundaries with members of the family and why she has “no contact with some” of them – including her dad, Kody Brown. “It’s due to stuff that has happened,” Maddie, 29, shared on the Monday, November 11, episode of her “The Authentic Society” podcast, later adding of her estranged father, […]
Janelle, meanwhile, hit a rough patch with Kody prior to their 2022 separation after he butted heads together with her sons Garrison and Gabriel, 24, over his rules in the course of the coronavirus pandemic shutdown.
Meri, 54, confirmed in January 2023 that she and Kody had parted ways. Their one child, Leon, 30, recently spoke out about their relationship with Kody after he claimed on Sister Wives earlier this month that he “reached out to each considered one of my children” on multiple occasions to make amends.
In response to Leon, that shouldn’t be the case. “Let me be so f***ing clear: I actually have not heard from that man since my brother killed himself,” Leon wrote via their Instagram Story on Tuesday, November 25, referring to Garrison’s death.
“Kody blatantly blew me off at Garrison’s funeral,” Leon alleged, calling Kody “a liar. He’s a joke of a father. That’s all.”
Us Weekly previously reached out to TLC for comment.
Sister Wives airs on TLC Sundays at 10 p.m. ET.