Chip Gaines Regrets Putting Spotlight on Children: ‘We Were Naive’
By Movieguide® Staff
Chip and Joanna Gaines, stars of the HGTV reality TV series FIXER UPPER and owners of the Magnolia Network, recently reflected on how the show impacted their family.
While on the Kennebec Cabin Company, the Magnolia owner said that he always approached his career as a business and that the show came second.
He said: “Where we got a little dazed and confused through it, I think — even the kids, a little bit — was, ‘I don’t know. I mean, do the kids need to be a part of this, do they not?'”
“And for sure, we’ve gone through that and that cycle where — at the very beginning, we had a production company, and again, I’m not throwing them under the bus. I think it was a great strategy and we didn’t even mind it. We were kind of naive, and dumb, really, to be frank enough to be like, ‘Let’s have the kids be involved,’” he added.
However, when their children started to get recognized in public, their views changed.
“But then as the kids got into fourth and fifth seasons and they’re getting a little bit older in age, and now they’re getting recognized out in the wild, mama bear came out and papa bear. I’m like, ‘I don’t know that I want my kids to be visible in that way unless they want to be visible,’” he said.
“If this is the path they want to be on and they choose to go this route, well then I want to be the biggest cheerleader for them as if they picked up tennis or piano. Let’s go, let’s go make you the best in those spaces as you can possibly be. But none of my kids were really drawn to it that way,” he continued. “So Jo and I started realizing, ‘Man do we have to have the kids involved in this particular thing and that?’ And as we pushed back on that, the answer could be yes sometimes and no sometimes.”
Chip and Joanna share daughters Emmie, 13, and Ella, 16, and sons Crew, 4, Duke, 14, and Drake, 18.
Movieguide® previously reported:
In a recent Instagram video, Joanna Gaines read an excerpt from her new book, The Stories We Tell, reflecting on the difficulties that come from watching your child grow up.
“Today, we watched our oldest son drive away for the first time,” Gaines read. “I won’t lie; there were a lot of tears. Not from Chip—he was practically chasing Drake [her oldest child, 18] down the driveway cheering him on while I went back inside to gather myself.”
She continued, “It hurt to watch my son leave in such an obvious display of what it looks like to grow out of us. This right of passage now belonging to him.”
Gaines then shared that, when she went inside, she encountered their youngest son Crew, 4, “standing there as though nothing had changed forever.”
“He was simply wondering if I’d come back in to play with him,” she read. That moment changed Gaines’ perspective on what it means to be a parent.
She explained, “At that moment, I knew how essential this rhythm is; to lose and then gain, to have and to hold, only to let go. It was a gift of perspective.”
Having Crew there was “this beautiful and gracious reminder of the bigger picture,” she continued. “Showing me that highs follow lows, that sorrow and joy can go hand in hand, and that letting go reveals what else our arms were made to carry.”
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