Sister Wives' Janelle Brown Explains Impact of the Show on Her Kids

Kody Brown insisted he was ready to divide himself from first wife Meri Brown shortly after their 1990 vows. But "he led me to believe that he would work on things by saying, 'Oh Meri, when we move to Flagstaff, this will be a good time to have a new beginning for us,'" Meri shared in the Sept. 15 premiere, referencing their 2018 move. "Like he led me to believe those things. This is what he's done for many, many years."

Her main gripe, she shared, is "his lack of communication and how he really felt and what he really wanted or what he really didn't want and the story that he's been telling for all these years."

And while Kody acknowledged that there may have been "mixed messages," it was only because as he started to work on things, "I'm like, 'Why would I do this?'" he explained. "I would not court and date her now."

Either way, Meri's friends were thrilled when she finally pulled the plug in early 2023. 

"They’re like, 'OK, we're here for you, we’re supporting you. And it’s about damn time,'" she confessed. Blinders off, she now feels that he had been trying to get her to walk away for years by insisting he didn’t love her, "Because if he can push me out and I leave, he's not the bad guy because he didn't walk away."

Years after the family purchased the 14-acre plot of land they planned to build on in Flagstaff, Ariz., Kody confessed in the season premiere that he was ready to let the dream wither. Unable to build without paying off the full $820,000 price tag (which the family reportedly did in 2023), he told remaining wife Robyn Brown, "I’d almost rather scrap it or sell it and then just start again somewhere else."

As for Robyn, "I can’t talk about that," she responded. "That is so not where I’m at."

While second wife Janelle Brown previously told E! News, “We just kind of started to grow apart,” ultimately it was Kody’s lapses as a parent to some of their kids that pushed her to leave.

"The big spark for me was when his relationship broke down with my children and he didn't seem like he would move heaven and earth to fix it," explained the mom to Logan Brown, Madison Brown Brush, Hunter Brown, Garrison Brown, Gabriel Brown and Savanah Brown. "And I thought, OK, that was what was really holding me here."

Even when Kody broached the idea of reconciling in the Nov. 3 episode, it was a non-negotiable for Janelle. 

"I don't know how I would ever reconcile with him and have him not have a relationship with my kids," she said. "No, I'm going to always choose my kids."

That was the explanation Kody gave for not working harder to mend the rifts he was experiencing with several of his adult children.

"I don’t fit in the family anymore," he griped in the Sept. 15 episode. Noting he was still fully married to Robyn and parenting their five kids together—Dayton Brown, Aurora Brown, Breanna Brown, Solomon Brown and Ariella Brown—he added, "and then I have some relationship with some of the other kids and it's infrequent. And so I'm like, what do I do with all of this? It doesn’t feel like a family."

Despite being truly monogamous for the first time in their 14-year union, "We’re probably doing the worst we’ve ever done in our marriage," Robyn confessed in the season 19 premiere. "It’s been tough between us. He doesn’t know who to blame, himself or one of the other wives. Kody’s feeling a lot of rejection and so I think he’s kind of looking at me going, 'Are you going to reject me too?'"

As a result, she revealed, "I’m on my toes. I’m having to consistently make sure that he is not sabotaging our relationship." The hardest part, she summed up: "There’s no resource to help with the idea that I’m still married to a man who’s going through divorces."

Kody, meanwhile, was having a crisis of confidence, sharing, "I can’t look myself in the mirror and say, 'Hey, dude. I love you.'"

For Robyn, it was a struggle to watch her former sister wives embrace their new era. "They're all moving on," she noted in the Oct. 27 episode. "I feel like the idiot that got left behind." 

Add Janelle’s eldest daughter Madison to the list of kids Kody doesn’t currently have a relationship with. "I know that Maddie has not had any conversations with her dad," Janelle explained during the premiere. "He's not called, she's not called him, and she doesn't have any relationship with Robin. She's pretty much written them both off."

At issue, said Janelle, is Kody having a half-hearted relationship with Maddie’s kids Axel, Evangalynn and Josephine: "She doesn't really want him to have any contact unless he can commit to it."

As a result, Janelle shared in the Sept. 22 episode,  Kody "did sort of cut off communication” with Maddie and her husband Caleb Brush (whose sister was married to Kody’s brother) "when the family started to really dissolve.”

With Kody not visiting or calling, Maddie "has been Mama Bear to the extreme," added Janelle. "She has felt like until he can be consistent and show up and not be dramatic that she feels like it's probably better if they don't know about him."

And while Robyn noted she’s been encouraging Kody to reach out and mend things, she said, "I think the kids should be doing the same thing, too."

For now, though, Kody doesn’t seem ready to repair the rift, griping that every time he spoke to his daughter, "It was a fish for gossip and I got tired of it."

While spending time together on their 32nd anniversary, "He was alluding to the fact that he never loved me and he felt like he had to marry me," Meri shared in a chat with her friend Brandi during the Sept. 15 premiere. “And I said to him, I said, 'Kody,' I said, 'I know you loved me.'"

And if he didn't, the mom to Leon Brown said in a confessional, why did he ever propose? 

"When a single young man meets a single young woman, why would he choose to marry her and just affirm and force love for her when he didn't love her?" she wondered. "How cruel is that? To pick me out of a crowd and just be like, 'I pick you to try to force myself to love for the next 32 years'?"

Kody's response, he shared in his own confessional: "Oh, Meri has her little accusations now. Fine, she can say whatever she wants. I'm not going to comment on it." 

Though, he would share that they never enjoyed a honeymoon period. 

"This marriage was on the rocks the entire marriage," he insisted on the Oct. 20 episode. "And how would I know that? Because I had such a better relationship with Janelle, with Christine, with Robyn."

He admitted he "should have gotten out of the relationship 25 years ago," but he stayed out of fear, noting, "Leadership will never allow you to marry again if you're discarding wives."

Though she was undecided on if she’d like to build on Coyote Pass or simply sell it off, Janelle noted that step one was paying off the Arizona property. And with Kody unwilling to talk to her about the situation, "I think I'm going to have to lawyer up," she confessed to former sister wife Christine Brown in the Sept. 22 episode. "Because I think that's the only way I'm ever going to get any kind of decision out of him."

And Janelle acknowledged that without a legal marriage to Kody, "I really have no legal rights to make any kind of claim on Kody’s property." As she put it, "It's not like I'm just calling a lawyer and saying I need to divorce this person. No, it's really complicated because there's no legal marriage."

Kody's explanation for not talking with Janelle about their Arizona property is that he no longer trusted her. 

"We will pay off the property when the time comes," he insisted in a confessional during the Sept. 22 episode, "and I'm not giving you any details about what I'm doing or whatever because I'm tired of disclosing information that goes through the gossip mill of our broken family."

A bit of a pot calling the kettle black, Janelle said in her own interview. 

"He leaks like a sieve," she shared. "He told me stuff about his other relationships and his other wives that I was like, 'I don't think you're supposed to be telling me that.'"

Back when the family's love was still multiplying rather than dividing, they used to pool their money into one pot. 

"We would use all the resources to help one person, then we would all rally to support the other person," Janelle explained on the Sept. 22 episode. "That's how it always worked until the last 10 years or so. And all of a sudden it’s been about my estate and everyone needs their own estate." 

So when Robyn was in need of a home in Arizona, they all pitched in to buy her $1.65 million five-bedroom spread—which was listed for sale this past August. 

The intention was that it would be an asset for the family, said Robyn. But when Janelle suggested that they all put their names on the mortage, she was rebuffed. Kody was "like, 'No, no, we need to protect, you know, protect Robyn’s estate,'" Janelle recalled. So now that she's extricating herself from the family, continued Janelle, she'd like her portion of the Coyote Pass proceeds "and I'd like to recoup some of the money I put into Robyn’s house."

But that could be a tough sell. 

"We were working together for so long," noted Robyn. And with Janelle saying she's owed money from them, Robyn added, "It's like, how do you calculate? How do you figure that out? It’s so confusing."

Griping about the family’s inability to pay off Coyote Pass, Janelle said Kody claimed to have "all these other debts." And, yet, she’s watched him snap up other assets like trailers and home décor. "I see all the art on their walls," she said of Robyn and Kody's home. "I see all these things. And that’s fine, I have money and I’ve spent it on things, too." (For his part Kody said much of his cash went to buying cars—"Basically had a fleet"—and insurance for the kids.)

And while Janelle acknowledged she wasn’t sure how Kody and Robyn handled their finances, "I used to always be surprised at how nice her backyard was. It was completely finished. And there was always, like, stuff at her house. And I was like, 'Wow. Huh.'"

Bottom line, she said, "He doesn't prioritize what I need or what I want." And that issue eventually wore her down. "I think after a while, I began to see it, and my kids were getting very angry about it, like my adult children. Like, 'What the hell, Mom?'"

Robyn's take, however, was that she was very careful with her budget after her first marriage fell apart. 

“I used to be not so great with money," she shared during the Sept. 22 episode. "When I was young, I had hard knocks, and then I learned during my divorce really how to budget myself very, very well." As for her fellow sister wives, she said, "You just must have had a different priority of where your money was going to go than I did, that's all."

Calling their set-up with four homes on one cul-de-sac during their stretch in Las Vegas "the best time of my life," Kody said, "Everything was going along smoothly and Maddie and Caleb were around and it was great having them around. And I loved Caleb. He was definitely like family."

But "things started to fall apart" in Arizona as they clashed over coronavirus-related precautions. Then when his marriages fell apart, he said, his bonds with the kids followed: "It just made all those relationships go sour."

But Christine insisted their were issues well before she announced she was leaving in late 2021. 

"All the kids that were frustrated were frustrated way before I left," she said on the Sept. 22 episode. "My leaving didn't change his kids' relationship with him. Kody can still fix his relationships with his children."

Though it'll definitely take some work. 

"I'm so angry about how I've been treated that I haven't gotten past that," Kody explained. "Here's the thing is I'm not willing to take blame for things that my wife or ex-wife is sitting there telling them that I did. I hope the time comes when the contempt will subside. We'll be able to find forgiveness and love again."

Kody revealed he and Meri didn’t know each other all that well when they wed both spiritually and legally at the age of 21 and 19, respectively. (They eventually filed for divorce in 2014 so Kody could legally adopt Robyn’s three eldest children from her first marriage.)

"When we got married, she was very different and I think just there's some baggage that Meri had that I didn't know about,” Kody explained. "Initially, I felt like I could live with it." Claiming that everything was a fight, he said, "I can’t live in a world where she is constantly angry at me."

Yet, he was unable to leave. A man, in plural marriage, said Kody, "If he wants to stay faithful and in the faith, he cannot request a divorce. It’s not allowed. So I was not able to get out of that relationship. At the same time, I didn't necessarily want out of the relationship. I wanted to know if we could save and fix it."

Hence the mixed messages, he acknowledged of Meri thinking they would work everything out. But, every time they were together, continued Kody, "She wasn't nice, she wasn't fun, she wasn't kind, she wasn't interesting. I'm trying to be curious with her and I'm bored."

To be fair, he added, he could see why Meri felt abandoned, "But I didn’t kick me out. Christine, Janelle and Meri all chose to have me leave the home."

Though Janelle and Christine felt they didn’t need to divorce Kody because their marriage was never legal, Meri asked their church for an official separation, called a release, in late 2022.

"When each of us four ladies married Kody, it was through our church," she explained in the Sept. 22 episode. "Obviously we can't all be legally married, but it was what we called a covenant. So I feel like it's best to terminate that because we're not moving forward with any marriage and I don't want to be, like, sealed to him for eternity if he doesn't want me. And I’m at a place that, like, let’s just separate this completely."

Kody was resistant to the idea, she added, not wanting to "acknowledge the authority" of the church leaders.

"The damage was done so badly that we're not going to reconcile no matter what," Kody explained of his stance. "And so however, we are made accountable to God, I don't want to be accountable to this church and all their BS. So I'm going to let Meri go and do her thing because if I'm angry at her it, it becomes a fight. And I needed her just to go away because it just took forever for her to finally realize it's been done and over for years."

A text message discussion over a 2021 holiday gift exchange turned particularly ugly for the 18 Brown offspring. "It all went bad, it all went south," detailed Christine. "Kody and Robyn and their kids were on one side and they wanted nothing to do with Janelle, me, our kids. And there was a split that happened after this text thread."

Robyn’s take was that her three older kids felt the exchange was "emotionally unsafe" and said they needed to take a step back from the relationship. "But it was never anything about, 'We don't want to see you again, we don’t want anything to do with you,'" she insisted. "It was just about, like, 'Hey this got yucky.'"

For his part, Gabriel is hoping that they could find their way back to each other. 

"The thing I want most is to just have a relationship with Robyn's children again," he confessed in the Oct. 13 episode. "In middle school, Aurora was my favorite person to hang out with. And in high school, I would always try to hit Dayton up. But I'm, I'm not hopeful for a relationship with Dad And Robyn."

"I have been told directly, multiple circumstances by multiple different people, that I was not accepted," Aurora insisted of coming into the family when her mom wed Kody in 2010, "that I was not their sister, that they didn't consider or see me that way."

And her sister Breanna said she felt the parents "could have done a better job with, you know, connecting us as a family and it never really happened."

But Christine isn’t sure how they could have opened their arms any wider.

"Robyn’s kids and Robyn were invited to everything," she insisted. "I would just say, 'Just come in, come into the house anytime you want.'"

Meanwhile, she added, her daughter Ysabel Brown was very close to Robyn’s kids and Mykelti Brown Padron even lived with them for a stretch: "There were hard times and my kids were frustrated, but they always considered Robyn's kids their siblings just the same."

To hear Janelle tell it, Kody had a tougher time dividing his love after the family decamped from Las Vegas to Arizona in 2018. 

"When he moved to Flagstaff, Kody found it a lot easier to be away," she noted on the Sept. 29 episode. "A couple of times I had to remind him that he needed to come to my house." Revealing he'd try to beg off because he was tired, she shared, "I'm really tired. I'm like, 'Well, you can rest at my house just as much as you can rest at Robyn’s house.'"

Detailing the "separateness" her brood felt with Robyn, Janelle claimed, "My children were scolded if they would open up Robyn's fridge." For Christine's kids, though, the issue was that "they saw that Robyn and their dad were a couple and he wasn't in our home." 

And Robyn said her crew definitely felt the divide. 

"Meri, across the board, was very accepting of my kids and I, but the rest of the family really struggled to accept my kids and I," she shared on the Sept. 29 episode. "All we wanted to do was be a part of this family." 

But Gabriel would argue that he and his siblings went to great lengths to bring them into the fold. 

"I think that Robyn definitely has a victim complex," he said in the Oct. 13 episode. "I mean, to put it bluntly. And I don’t necessarily blame her for that. I think that different people do, you know, devise different strategies to keep themselves afloat."

However, he continued, "If she actually believes that we were mistreating her or her children in any way when she was constantly getting favorited by Dad and we were always working on our relationship with her kids, if she actually believes that, then there's no chance of me having a relationship with Robyn ever again."

Having their dad shuffle between four different homes did have an affect on Kody's 18 kids, he detailed during the Sept. 29 episode, sharing the time that his and Robyn's youngest, Ariella, who was born in January 2016, clung to his leg as he was trying to leave. 

"I had to explain to her, 'There’s another wife that needs me, another mommy. I got other kids that need to see me,'" Kody described. "And she’s just dragging along on my legs screaming, 'Don't leave me, Daddy, don't leave me.' And I’m like, 'Golly, man, this is hard.'"

Unfortunately, that's just a reality of plural marriage, insisted Janelle. 

"From the very beginning," she explained, her kids "knew that their dad was not going to always be there. I always felt like that Kody and Robyn mismanaged the situation with her children. He couldn't be away for more than three or four days because Ari just gets so sad or whatever. I'm like, I feel like that was poor parenting. Through all history of the family the other kids did it and they’re fine. They’re well-adjusted adults."

One of the few Brown kids who was still close to both Robyn and Kody and Christine and Janelle, mom of three Mykelti took on the role of peacekeeper during Kody's divorces. 

Tight with Robyn from the moment she entered the Brown family, Mykelti even invited her to be at the November 2022 birth of her twins Archer and Ace. 

"When Robyn first joined the family, I was trying to figure out who I was, and she made me feel special and she made me feel seen," Mykelti explained during the Sept. 29 episode. "Robyn was there for me when I needed somebody. She was there for me when I needed somebody to hear me, to love me."

And her mom Christine couldn't have been more thrilled. "When Robyn came in the family and it was obvious her and Mykelti had a great relationship, it was everything that I hoped for," Christine shared no the Oct. 6 episode. "When I was so excited about having a plural family, I was hoping that my kids would have a great relationship with other moms. "

Kody feels it's not only his wives who subtracted him from their lives. "They're purposefully leaving me out of their lives to punish me for a crime I did not commit," he explained during the Oct. 6 epsiodes, giving his take on his estrangement from some of his older kids. "I am only guilty of not falling madly in love with their mothers."

What's more, he continued, he think his former spouses are a bit to blame. 

"This disparity in relationship with my children is specifically in my mind because of s--t talk," he said. "There's this whirlwind of disappointment from the family breaking up or whatever, and it's like, 'Well, blame Dad. Dad screwed up.'"

But while he can shoulder a bit of that blame, he takes umbrance with the name-calling. Revealing, specifically, that he was struggling to connect with Hunter, Maddie and Gabriel, Kody shared that one of his kids responded to a text "saying, 'You are a piece of trash. I would never speak to you again anyway.'"

In a separate incident, he told cameras, "I've had one of my kids just say, 'You’re an a--hole. I’m never talking to you again. You manipulated me and you brainwashed me.'"

And it's that venom he's not willing to deal with. "I’m not going to reach out forever," he said, noting he thinks his adults should be doing more to fix things. "I'm willing to make the effort, but somebody else is going to have to be on the other end of that and make some effort too."

For Robyn, watching Kody's estrangement from his adult children hit far too close to home. 

"When I was little, my parents got a divorce," she explained during the Oct. 6 episode. "He lived with one wife in another city, and then my mom lived alone. I remember confronting my biological father saying, 'What happened? Why?' All he really did was just make a bunch of lame excuses as to why he wasn't there for me when I was young and it just sucked." 

So, no, she wasn't about to allow Kody's hurt feelings stop him from making an effort. "I’m having a hard time not, like, feeling like losing respect for you a little bit," she shared during their explosive on-camera argument, which took place in late 2022. 

And though Kody acknowledged he could be doing more to mend his relationship with his kids, he said he needs to mend his heart first. 

Saying he feels some of his kids are "colluding against me," he revealed, "I'm so angry about what has happened that if I talk to my kids, I'm worried that they'll trigger me with an accusation. I’m too hot-headed right now. All I’ll do is more damage."

Though much of the family was in attendance when Janelle and Kody's oldest Logan wed now-wife Michelle Petty in October 2022, they weren't really feeling the love. 

"You saw Madison take her kids and scuttle them away from me," Kody complained to Robyn in the Oct. 6 episode, noting that his daughter hadn't told him she was expecting her third baby, daughter Josephine, who arrived in February 2023. "She never told me she was pregnant." 

Frankly, Maddie doesn't tell her dad much of anything with the two rarely speaking.

"Really, Maddie doesn't have any contact with him," Janelle explained of why her daughter steered clear of Kody at the wedding. "She is very protective of her children. Kody has not been there since Evie was born and Evie's three-and-a-half. And she didn't want him to just drop in and like, be like, 'Oh, I'm your grandpa,' and them be like, 'What? Who is this guy?'"

Kody's take? “It’s unrealistic expectation for grandparents to be in their grandchildren’s lives all the time,” he said, referencing Maddie's life in North Carolina, “especially if you move your children to an entirely different coast. I have work and a life in Flagstaff."

While it's clear that Kody and his adult children have very different viewpoints of their ongoing estrangement, one sticking point is his demanding some sort of mea culpa. 

"After the COVID scare was over and we all went back to our normal lives, we still couldn't reconcile as a family because Kody felt like the boys needed to give an apology to him and to Robyn, especially to Robyn," Janelle shared of her sons in the Oct. 13 episode. "And after it sort of morphed into this, well, they just need to come and talk to me." 

Kody's issue, Janelle continued, was that he felt his kids hadn't been loyal to him "and the most precious person in this family who's given her heart and soul has been disrespected or some bulls--t like that," she summed up. "And I’m like, 'Whatever Kody. Yeah, whatever.'"

Gabriel shared a similar stance, describing one conversation with his father. "He kept like phrasing it like I owed him an apology," he recounted to Janelle. "Eventually I was just like, 'Hey, unless you're, like, actually ready to have a relationship and fix things, then we're not going to talk anymore.' He came back a couple of days later and texted me. He's like, 'Hey, I've been, like, thinking about what you've been saying. I forgive you, Please forgive me.' I was like, 'Forgive me for what?'"

Of the six children Kody shares with Janelle, he only sees his youngest, Savanah. "It's not frequently, but every couple months he'll call and they'll go out," Janelle described in the Oct. 13 episode. "The rest of the kids don't really have much of any kind of connection with him."

As for Savanah—who graduated from high school in 2023—she feels her four older brothers have taken on that father figure role, the teen already confessing to Janelle that she'd tap her siblings to walk her down the aisle one day. 

"I've talked to Savanah about it and she's like, 'Look, I just have come to realize that this is who he is," detailed Janelle. "'He's going to be kind of that dad who shows up and we have a lot of fun and then he's gone. I can meet him where he's at. It's OK.'" 

Janelle, however, is less forgiving. 

"I'm just so frustrated with Kody," she lamented. "Look, I've seen this happen. I have several women I've worked with over the years who divorced, and then the father just goes MIA with the kids."

Early on in their father-son rift, "Gabriel took it very hard because Kody was someone who would take Gabriel with him on business trips," described Janelle, saying that Kody was "a totally engaged father" up until the past few years. 

And while Gabriel is somewhat flummoxed over what he did to anger his father, he said during the Oct. 13 episode, "I told Dad that if he doesn't change and he can't take accountability, then I just won't ever see him again. And I'm perfectly OK with that."

As Janelle put it, "He's at peace that his dad is not in his life. And, you know, that's what I hope for all of my kids. And I think they're all getting here." 

For his part, Kody also seems resigned to the situation. 

"I'm really sorry that Gabriel feels that way," he shared in a confessional. "I have reached out to him multiple times only to get rejected. But it wasn't from a lack of trying on my part." 

Meri may have been the last wife to leave Kody, but she officially divided their love in late 2022, by requesting—and receiving—what their church calls a release, on the grounds of abandonment. 

"I know he doesn't like that word," she noted on the Oct. 13 episode, "because he doesn't feel like he abandoned me. I feel like he did." 

In fact, she feels he basically ignored her until she made the decision to leave "so that he could say, 'My hands are clean.'"

And Kody didn't totally deny that he had a bit of a strategy. 

"I had moved on a long time ago," he explained in a confessional. "But let's just be honest here, I was afraid of what she would do if I ripped off that Band-Aid. It's because Meri was never loyal to me, ever. That's what I've been worried about. It's just kind of reputation, because when you get divorced, your reputation is trashed." 

Instead, alleged Meri, it was hers that was being tarnished. 

"It's really just sad that Kody's talking about our marriage the way that he's talking about it," she said. "It feels like the narrative has changed with him, but the things that he's saying about me to other people and the people are believing are not true."

Years before Christina left Kody, she realized they weren't a good match on paper, thanks to an exercise proposed by their Las Vegas-based marriage and family therapist. 

Tasked with making a list of qualities she wanted in a husband, Christine wrote down that she was seeking a good communicator, someone who would be present in her and her children's lives and someone who was attracted to her, "And Kody wasn't any of the things on the list," she revealed on the Oct. 20 episode. "I told him the list and he's like, 'I'm not any of those things for you.’ I said, 'No, you're not.'"

The missive was part of the reason she knew so quickly that now-husband David Woolley was her person. 

"Family is his most important thing to him," she gushed of the widowed dad of eight. "He's owned his own drywall business. He has a reputation of being honest and real with people and he's really a great communicator."