Sister Wives’ Gwendlyn Brown Felt Like Her Parents Christine and Kody ‘Should Have Divorced’ Earlier Than They Did

Gwendlyn Brown knew from a young age that her parents Christine Brown and Kody Brown’s marriage wouldn’t work.

The Sister Wives star, 23, opened up about her complicated childhood, growing up around cameras and admitted that she wanted her parents to separate long before her mother Christine left her plural marriage.

“I felt like they should have divorced for a while,” Gwendlyn told Teen Vogue. “I remember one time as a kid, I saw them arguing, and my first thought was, I hope they get a divorce. What kid thinks that, right?”

Christine and Kody announced their split in November 2021 after being “spiritually married” for 25 years. The split caused a chain reaction, and within a span of 14 months, Christine’s fellow sister wives Janelle Brown and Meri Brown left the relationship in December 2022. Robyn Brown remains Kody’s sole wife.

Since leaving Kody, Christine has found love again as she wed her now-husband, David Woolley, in a large Utah ceremony in October 2023.

Elsewhere in her conversation with Teen Vogue, Gwendlyn shared how growing up on a reality show affected her childhood and how her attitudes towards cameras have changed as she’s gotten older.

“I was super into it as a kid,” she says of filming TLC’s hit show, Sister Wives.

In the beginning, Gwendlyn revealed that she would get bragging rights about being on television at school. She and her 18 siblings would also compete to get the attention of the film crew, hoping to get some face time.

She told the outlet that she first saw the show as a gift as it lifted the Brown family out of a “poverty situation,” and she came to know the crew as her “new uncles.”

“We just got thrown into fame and thrown into money. And I stopped wanting and needing things. Life is a lot easier for a kid that’s not going hungry. It was quite a blessing initially,” she explained.

Things changed when Gwendlyn started puberty, and she started to feel uncomfortable, knowing she was constantly being watched.

“I couldn’t have a hard day. There wasn’t a lot of privacy,” she said of her teenage years. “All that anger and all that publicity.”

“Oftentimes, I even wanted to be angry on camera. I think there were a few times that I probably [was],” she continued. “Even if as a kid, you want attention, you can look back at it as an adult and be like, ‘that poor kid.’ Also, poor me now.”

Sister Wives airs Sundays at 10 p.m. ET on TLC.