Sister Wives star Kody Brown has had a difficult relationship with his partners and his children, which has led many viewers to call him out.
Since Sister Wives debuted on TLC in 2010, Kody has been criticized for being a terrible husband and father. The reality TV show, which follows the life of a polygamist family, frequently documents Kody’s lack of care towards his family.
Kody Brown’s worst moment is considered by many as the moment he refused to support his daughter Ysabel’s spinal surgery. Even worse than his refusal to travel with Ysabel and Christine, he was acting like the pair were traveling to New Jersey to go on holiday rather than have a major correction of his daughter’s scoliosis.
Why Kody Brown Didn’t Support Ysabel’s Spinal Surgery
Sister Wives star Kody Brown made the controversial decision not to accompany his daughter, Ysabel, when she had intense spinal surgery. Ysabel struggled for years with a curved spine, but her father was reluctant to approve his daughter’s surgery.
On the reality show, Kody’s ex-wife Christine headed to New Jersey with the 18-year-old to correct her scoliosis. Kody refused to travel with the two women, citing concerns about traveling during the COVID-19 pandemic as his reason for staying behind.
“I’m not traveling with Christine and Ysabel on the way to surgery, I’m not going to surgery, I think it’s very risky,” he mentioned on an episode of Sister Wives. “I also feel like a total hypocrite if I’m not keeping the rules that I’m asking — begging, literally begging — everybody to keep.”
His ex-partner admitted she was upset that Kody would not be involved in the medical procedure, and she was worried about how her then 18-year-old daughter would cope with it. “I mean, honestly, it’s Ysabel that I care about more.
I think Ysabel is really going to have a hard time being without Kody,” Christine said in her confessional.
“She really, really relies on him when she’s in pain.”
Ysabel was emotional about her father’s absence, citing his priorities as being “a little screwed up.”
“And l don’t want to disrespect him because he is my dad and I understand, I do. I do understand why he’s doing it, it’s just really frustrating and really, really hard.”
Christine was concerned about the big surgery but focused on staying “as upbeat as possible” during the two-week quarantine prior to surgery.
Discussing her daughter’s scoliosis, the mother of six admitted the X-rays were “one of the hardest things” due to how curved her daughter’s spine was.
“It’s heartbreaking,” Christine explained. “The first time I saw her curve was heartbreaking, when I showed it to all the parents what her curve looked like… it’s hard.”
“It’s hard to see an X-ray like that on your kid. It’s real hard.”
Kody Brown is estranged from many of his children, who have struggled with their father’s behavior. While reflecting on his tense relationships with his 18 kids, Kody admits that there’s “a lot of pain from divorce and the separation of family.”
“For the goals that I had in my life, this situation is very, very disappointing. My goal from the beginning was that my family would be under one roof,” he admitted. “I wonder if some of the failures in plural marriage were my part in expecting too much from the family with this one family idea. We might have been more successful had we been in different homes with the kids kind of growing up like they were cousins.”
Recently, Kody admitted he lost contact with his daughter Maddie after splitting with her mother Christine, but he is not sure why. “(It) might have been COVID. Or I have no idea what was going on, but she quit reaching out to me,” he admitted.
Janelle Brown later shed some light on why Maddie lost contact with her father.
“Maddie doesn’t call him because of his behavior lately. She’s like, ‘I don’t know what to do with him. I don’t know who this guy is. She has to consider her children. She has to consider the stability of what they see or perceive as a grandfather. There’s a lot of things at play here. It’s not just Maddie not calling him.”
Janelle Brown also admitted her sons Gabe and Garrison Brown don’t talk to their father anymore and “generally ignore him.” Kody also clashed with his late son Garrison over his choice to join the military, as well as the distance the COVID-19 pandemic put between them.
After refusing to travel with Ysabel for her surgery, Ysabel’s relationship with her father became even more strained. While it had “never been like 100% solid,” their relationship became even more strained after Kody split from Christine in 2021. “And then in a divorce with a polygamist family, even more so, nobody knows what to do.”
