Jennifer Garner on co-parenting with Ben Affleck: ‘We are definitely a modern family’
Jennifer Garner attends the premiere of "Nine Lives" at TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood on Aug. 1, 2016. She says she can relate to the movie's message of finding time to spend with your kids. Credit: Getty Images / Frazer Harrison
Actress Jennifer Garner says she and her estranged husband, Oscar-winner Ben Affleck, remain on friendly terms and work together to raise their three children.
“We are definitely a modern family,” Garner, 44, said on the “Today” show on Thursday. “We’re doing really well. . . . The kids are great. They got a great summer and it’s all going OK.”
Garner — starring in the comedy “Nine Lives,” opening Friday — and Affleck announced last year that they were ending their 10-year marriage. But Garner took daughters Violet, 10, and Seraphina, 7, and son Samuel, 4, to visit Affleck in London, where he is shooting the DC Comics superhero movie “Justice League.”
“I felt like, ‘Well, the kids should have that experience,’” she said. “And he and I are great friends, and we just all went en masse and the kids and I had an amazing time and he worked hard and got to join us for a time. . . . I want them to see everything’s OK.”
Parenting, she stressed, involves working as a team. “It has to be,” she said. “You don’t have a choice. I mean, it has to be.”
The theme of her new film, about a workaholic dad who must learn to appreciate his family, resonated with her. “I just loved the idea of celebrating that parenting is about time. You can’t buy parenting. No matter what, you have to actually get down on the floor and spend some time together” with your children, she said, adding, “It doesn’t have to be that you have to give everything up and just live on the floor, but you do have to, have to find the time.”
The circumstances of her life, she said, make her “really glad that I’m playing moms, because there’s no more rich time in women’s lives than when you have your babies, and when you’re trying to figure out how to parent them and balance everything, and the emotional weight of seeing your children struggle, or whatever it is. There’s so much there to draw from, that it feels like I’ve aged into where I should be as far as acting goes. . . . You know what I mean? As far as my career, I feel like I finally fit.”
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