Kody Brown, the central figure in the reality television series Sister Wives, is currently not involved in the life of his adult daughter, Maddie Brush, whom he shares with his ex-wife Janelle Brown.
During the Sunday, November 9 episode of the TLC program, Janelle, who is 56 years old, revealed a significant detail about their family dynamics, confirming that Maddie, who was 30 years old and pregnant with her daughter Emilia during the filming of the episode, does not maintain any communication with her father, Kody, who is also 56.
In a confessional segment filmed for the show, Janelle was asked by producers a direct question about whether the family patriarch was “in the loop of what’s going on?” regarding Maddie’s life and pregnancy.
“No, Maddie doesn’t really even tell him that she’s pregnant,” Janelle answered candidly. “He’ll find out.”
“There’s no really reason to, they haven’t spoken for a long time,” she continued, providing further context to their estrangement. “It’s probably been two or three years since they’ve spoken.”
Maddie and her husband, Caleb Brush, welcomed their daughter Emilia, who is now 7 months old, in March of this year.
The couple are also parents to a son named Axel, who is 8 years old, and two other daughters named Evie, who is 6, and Josephine, who is 2 years old.
In a previous interview from November 2024, Maddie appeared as a guest on The Authentic Society podcast and opened up in detail about her strained and difficult relationship with the Brown family patriarch, admitting frankly to the host, “I have no contact with some of my family.”
“My dad would get very angry when I would, I’m a straight shooter, you ask me a question, I’m going to tell you what I think, and he would get very angry when I would be like, ‘I don’t know why you’re surprised here,’” Maddie explained, describing the communication breakdown.
“And so that was one of the reasons that I went no contact because it was like, he didn’t like a mirror being held up, or my opinion,” she continued, elaborating on her decision. “There was a lot of anger, and he’d be like, ‘That’s not true!’ and I’m like, ‘It is true. I know this firsthand.’”
Maddie further noted during the podcast conversation that she and her father are fundamentally unable to get on the same page regarding their interactions and relationship expectations.
“He doesn’t have any respect for boundaries, and you have to play by his rules, and I just don’t care to do that,” she remarked, summarizing the core reason for their ongoing estrangement.