I have criticized and I will continue to criticize Gwyneth Paltrow for any number of things: her stringy center-part hairstyle, her basic af wedding, her ability to profit from shilling pseudoscience to dumb rich women. But I’ve always sort of believed that Gwyneth is probably a good mom, and a hands-on mom. Apple and Moses seem like happy, well-adjusted kids. They spend a lot of time with Gwyneth and Chris Martin, together as a family and separately as divorced parents. Gwyneth and Chris’s divorce even seemed to bring them closer together as a family, and I actually bought the idea that their kids were their #1 priority. So now that Gwyneth has married Brad Falchuk, what’s their home life like?
Gwyneth Paltrow is enjoying a bit of domestic bliss with her happily blended family. One month after marrying TV producer Brad Falchuk, 47, the actress, 46 and her new husband — who affectionately refer to themselves as The Faltrows — have settled into a cozy life together as a new family of six. They are enjoying living together at Paltrow’s Los Angeles home and divvying up parental duties like kid carpools.
“They enjoy quiet nights at home with the kids,” says a Paltrow pal. “Gwyneth cooks, and they all catch up over family time.”
Paltrow is mom to Apple, 14, and Moses, 12, with ex-husband Chris Martin, and Falchuk shares son Brody and daughter Isabella with ex-wife Suzanne Bukinik, whom he was married to for 10 years before filing for divorce in March 2013.
“She and Brad embrace all the kids as their own,” a Paltrow pal tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “They are planning holiday trips and vacations as a family. The kids are very accepting of each other and cute together.”
“Gwyneth takes her job as a stepmom very seriously,” adds the friend. “She loves it.”
“She is crazy in love with him,” adds the friend of the Oscar winner. “Brad is a fantastic guy. You can tell he is crazy about Gwyneth. They have a very special relationship.”
I sort of believe it? I believe Gwyneth and Brad are quite happy together and they suit each other. I believe she probably does like to stay in and spend time with her kids and his kids and do mom things. I also believe that A) Gwyneth has an enormous staff employed at all of her homes, and they’re the ones creating this perfect domestic image and B) it really is part and parcel of Goop 2.0. Goop 2.0 is all about the shill, and making Gwyneth look less like an elitist a–hole so she can sell more horsesh-t to dumb upper middle-class women.
Photos courtesy of WENN, Instagram.
I believe she and Chris Martin were able to figure out their divorce, and she is ok with this extended family.I can’t say nothing mean because it seems the well-being of all their children is the numb.1 priority for them all, so kudos to them.
I think Goop is completely full of it but I can’t shade her parenting.
i buy that she is a hands on mom. i’ll shade her parched ass skin but i can’t hate on her personal life. she seems like she genuinely learned from her rocky relationships in her 20’s and has her priorities in order when it comes to family. i can say if i had millions, or even hundreds of thousands, i would add a nanny, house keeper and chef to the payroll in a heartbeat.
I wonder what the Brad’s ex wife thinks.
I wondered too. I noticed in the wedding slideshow on goop.com, there was a photo of Gwyneth standing with Apple and Isabella, with the caption “Her daughters wore Monique Lhuillier.“ I applaud that GP is treating Isabella as her own daughter, I just hope that is a comfort and not a sting for Isabella’s mom. I remember the anger Brandi Glanville felt when Leann Rimes called Jake and Mason “my babies,” and how she asked Leann to stop. But maybe everyone in this scenario really are on the same page here … or maybe unpleasant feelings are for peasants. Cheers to them, I guess!
i noticed it too – there’s nothing at all wrong with calling your stepkids your stepkids. it’s accurate!! i have a stepparent and i’d rather they call me their stepkid because it’s what i am to them.
A friend attended a dinner at GP’s Hamptons home back when she was still married to Chris. My friend commented, “They have staff for their staff.” I recall a anecdote about a massage that occurred between courses of the meal to aid in digestion.
OMG, that’s hilarious and I totally believe it.
Anyways, Goop looks incredible at the moment, whatever she is doing, she is doing it right.
Agree. She looks happy and healthy.
Wow. no way! A massage between meals? That’s beyond sybaritic. It’s like the romans throwing . up between meals to make room for more food.. You are not supposed to do a massage on a full stomach.. but then people adopt eastern traditions as if they know better.
It wasn’t like a lay down massage. It was someone who came to the table to do pressure points, stuff like that.
Looking at the Instagram post i always find it passive aggressive to see a second marriage wedding day described as ‘the best day of our lives’.
It feels like history re-writing and is not sensitive to the children.
That’s a good point, I never thought of it that way! It does seem disingenuous to pretend their first weddings weren’t equally as happy and full of love, just because the marriage itself didn’t last.
Except that maybe they weren’t. Not every marriage starts out happy and turns sour – a lot of the marriages that fell apart (including my first marriage and my fiancé’s) had signs of trouble from the get go. I recently found the album from my first wedding and I was struck by how many of the issues that broke us up were present from the very beginning. My first wedding was NOT the happiest day of my life – if you asked me at the time, I would have said it was a really nice party, but it was far from magical.
That was exactly my thought too upon reading what Gwyneth wrote.–that it was kind of insensitive. I remember how happy she was back when she married Chris Martin. And her 2 kids resulted from that union. So personally I wouldn’t want to highlight the fact that I’m SO much happier marrying this new guy than I was when I married my kids’ dad.
I think she eloped the first time around though, so this is her first actual wedding.
Kids do better in life when they have happy parents. The best part of a marriage can be having children, so for kids seeing closeup a relationship that is really loving and that demonstrates true love is an extraordinary thing for a child to see (at any age), especially if it involves his or her parent. Just because it’s not with their other parent is no sin. Why on earth would you want your kids to think you cannot find true love after a divorce? To be really happy is such a wonderful gift that seems, in this case, to be shared amoungst six people.
my parents are divorced and i saw my mom get remarried and i’d hope she would call it the best day of her life. i don’t see what’s insensitive about that – my mom is not just my mom, she is her own person and shouldn’t have to filter her happy thoughts through the lens of “what would my kids think?” kids of divorce have seen an unhappy relationship fall apart. i was just happy to see my mom happy again!
Or it could just be that it is the happiest day of their lives. Maybe at some point the day of the first wedding was and is no longer. Nothing wrong with that. And it’s not insensitive to any kids. Nobody is going to say this is the 14th happiest day of my life after….xyz.
Lollll. I am totally going to start saying that!
There’s no need to quantify so specifically though. It’s not a competition.
Nothing wrong with talking about our ‘beautiful/wonderful day.
To me it has a little Julia Roberts/ A low Vera kind of vibe
Nice to hear about everyone co-parenting in a civil way. It’s probably fun for the kids to get bonus step siblings. I have a tiny family and just one sibling and always longed for more action, lol.
The birth of my daughter will always be the happiest day of my life. But to each their own. But I was also more medicated for generalized anxiety on my wedding day than ever thus far. When I relapsed hubs said he knew who he was marrying. I’m much healthier now thankfully.
Gwyneth will also make my eyes roll, but she and Brad do seem happy as do their kids. Blended families can be complicated and everyone has to sort out the “correct” terms. My parents divorced when I was young and I was an only child until I was about 13 when I gained two older step-siblings from my father’s second marriage. I also have two older step-siblings from my mother’s second marriage much later on. If my father and stepmother are introducing me to someone, they usually say “this is our youngest.” If my father is introducing me to someone, he will usually say “this is my daughter.” If I’m introducing my step-siblings, I will usually say “this is x’s son y and his wife and children.” I use “my parents” and “my dad and stepmother” interchangeably.
As a stepmother to my husband’s children and having no kids of my own, I will usually say “this is A’s daughter x.” or I may say “my bonus baby x.” My stepchildren call me “stepmom,” as in, “this is my dad and stepmom.” or “Dad! Stepmom! Come here!” We get strange looks, but it is what we agreed on; I see nothing wrong with being called what I am and have always thought calling a stepparent by their first name was a bit strange. Especially since I grew up in the South and was taught to address elders as “Miss FN” or “Ms. LN.”
I wish them, their children and their exes happiness as they create a new family dynamic.
The fact that she has help does not mean that she is not a hands-on mom. The two things are not mutually exclusive. If you can afford it, good for you and it is providing jobs. I remember the controversy over North West’s night nurse. My daughter is a week younger than North and I remember thinking that I would totally hire a night nurse if it was in the cards.
The only time I’ve had a cleaning lady was when my kids were little. That added help gave me more time to be a hands on mom, it was so awesome to have that off my plate for a good 10 years! Best money I ever spent.
I completely agree
Hear hear. When my daughter was 19 months and my son was a newborn, I would have given my right arm for a housekeeper and a cook. When I went back to work outside the home a few years ago, we lasted about three years without a cleaner before I nearly lost my mind. I swear hiring a cleaning service saved my marriage. 😀
Her face looks so different in these pictures that I wonder: true happiness, aging, or surgery.