Following the last few years of the Brown family’s dissolution, Kody Brown, the patriarch of Sister Wives, is finally considering if there was anything he could have done better. Instead of placing all the blame on other people, could Kody for once be accepting some responsibility? It is a shift.
During the Sister Wives episode that aired on October 29, Kody evaluated his growing family. By then, one of his wives had already gone, and two more were on their way out. The majority of his grown children don’t communicate with him.
Reflecting on “some of the failures” he’s gone through, Kody wondered if he’d been “expecting too much from the family with this one family idea.” So then, still not his fault. It’s everyone else’s fault for not being “up to the task.” Hoo boy, this guy.
More successful as ‘cousins?’
He speculated, “If we had grown up in different homes with the kids growing up like cousins, we might have been more successful.” Do their cousins’ dads host sleepovers for all of their “aunts”? Indeed, that would differ greatly.
The Brown family celebrated their “family commitment” in 2014. A family mission statement honoring their new life together in the cul de sac of Las Vegas was penned by them. However, Kody believes that they have “shredded” their mission statement as they have become more distant from one another over time.
“What has happened with our family is very sad to me,” he bemoaned. “It’s just one of those things that’s happened. I have to move on.” As if he had no part in it at all. That’s what’s sad.
Hoping to “redefine” his life, Kody reflected on his membership in the Apostolic United Brethren, a fundamentalist sect of the Mormon religion. Despite having “always been a man of faith,” he now admits he’s “struggled for a long time … I’m [no longer] a fit in my old religion.”
The family crumbles as wives depart
The Covid pandemic was the death knell to many of Kody’s relationships. His strict rules alienated his older children and caused his wives to become much more independent than they already were. Living almost exclusively with his fourth and most compliant wife Robyn Brown, his three other wives discovered life without Kody.
In November 2021, Kody’s third wife, Christine Brown, formally parted ways. Janelle Brown, the second wife, came next in December 2022, and Meri Brown, the first wife, came right behind in January 2023. Kody is currently monogamous with Robyn, whom he refers to as the “love of my life,” following thirty years of polygamy and the birth of eighteen children.