12 Celebs Who Have Co-Parenting Down To A Science

Although it's often cited that half of marriages will end in divorce, the actual percentage is closer to about 40%, according to 2025 research by the Institute for Family Studies. While divorce is rarely easy, and it's paramount to work through the grieving process of a divorce, if there are kids involved, then their emotional and mental health should be a priority. Because of this, more couples are turning to co-parenting for the sake of their kids.

While it's safe to say that co-parenting has always existed in one form or another, it's celebrities who have put it on the map. When Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin announced their "conscious uncoupling" in 2014, the term "co-parenting" started to become a trend during the 2010s. Also called a "good divorce," co-parenting results in fewer behavioral problems in the children concerned and promotes healthy relationships with both parents, per the Interdisciplinary Journal of Applied Family Science. It also keeps families together, despite the parents being separated.

As much as co-parenting looks different from family to family, celebrities like Paltrow and Martin, have proven that things don't have to get toxic and messy. Just because the romance between two people is no longer, it doesn't mean the love, friendship, and mutual respect that's there has to die too. If you ever needed inspiration on how to co-parent like a pro, there's a handful of celebrities who have mastered it, and we love that for them and their kids. 

After 10 years of marriage, Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck announced their divorce in 2015. As many couples do, they released a joint statement to People, regarding their decision and their commitment to co-parenting their three children, Violet, Seraphina, and Samuel. While it's one thing for a couple to say they're going to co-parent, Garner and Affleck actually did and continue to do so, having been spotted together at a Red Sox game in April 2026 and many other outings over the years.

Although the couple doesn't talk about their co-parenting as often as some celebrities, in October 2025, while on the carpet for Jennifer Lopez's movie "Kiss of the Spider-Woman," Affleck told Access Hollywood how proud he is of his kids and how lucky he is to have Garner as a co-parent. "[Violet] takes after her mom. She's amazing," Affleck said. "And I'm very lucky that I've got a great partner and that we got great kids. It's the joy of my life ... And it makes me happy every day."

As much as Jennifer Lopez adores outfits that flaunt her killer legs, she just might love being in love even more. With four marriages under her belt, Lopez is no stranger to walking down the aisle, but it was only with Marc Anthony, to whom she was married from 2004 to 2014, that she had kids. So when the marriage came to an end, she and Anthony had to figure out how to co-parent their twins Max and Emme.

"When my marriage ended, it was not easy to find forgiveness," Lopez told W in April 2016, adding that it would have been easier to go the route of anger and resentment. "But Marc is the father of my children, and that's never going away. So, I have to work to make things right. And that is, by far, the hardest work I do."

In 2022, Lopez married Ben Affleck, creating a blended family of kids who were all being co-parented. "[Garner] is an amazing co-parent, and they work really well together," Lopez told Vogue in November 2022, before explaining her hopes for her blended family. "What I hope to cultivate with our family is that his kids have a new ally in me and my kids have a new ally in him," Lopez said. Although Affleck and Lopez finalized their divorce in January 2025, a source told People in September of that year that everyone was still close and on good terms. 

Although Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber never married, they were together for 11 years and had two children together. When they split in 2016, the two decided to put their kids' needs first. "I'm pretty proud of us, corny as that may sound," Watts said of her relationship with Schreiber in an August 2019 interview with Net-a-Porter. "We've made it our absolute priority to be good and kind to each other and we're absolutely committed to that." Watts also cited Gwyneth Paltrow as having a hand in the co-parenting movement. "Now that's what everyone wants to aim for — she was super ahead of the curve," Watts told the website.

In the 10 years since Schreiber and Watts ended their relationship, they've both remarried and they've often posted photos on Instagram of their blended family together at events. When their son, Sasha, went off to the University of Southern California in August 2025, Watts shared photos of her and Schreiber helping him get settled in his dorm room, and both parents proudly shared their daughter Kai's cover of Harper's Bazaar France. Watts and Schreiber stayed true to their promise to their kids and because of that, both Sasha and Kai are flourishing on their own journeys.

While the celebrities on this list may have co-parenting down to a science, it doesn't mean it's an easy thing to pull off by any stretch of the imagination. In March 2025, on an episode of "The Drew Barrymore Show," host Drew Barrymore shared how hard it's been not having the family dynamic she'd hoped for her daughters Olive and Frankie. "Everything to me was very devastating and took me a long time to recover from if it wasn't in the traditional family dynamic that I swore I would do for my family because I did not grow up that way," Barrymore said (via People).

Barrymore, who's aging like fine wine, married Will Kopelman in 2012, but by 2016 the couple filed for divorce when their daughters were just 2 and 3 years old. "Although we might not be married anymore, and he's even married with his beautiful new wife Allie [Michler], our wonderful step-mother, we're in a daily engagement and our relationship has never been better," Barrymore said on an episode of her show in January 2023, adding that you don't need to be best friends with your ex to make co-parenting work. "We should champion our exes ... especially if they have a new person in their life," explained Barrymore.

While it may be debatable as to how much of an impact Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin had on co-parenting, they were definitely the first to use "conscious uncoupling," when announcing their divorce in 2014. Originally coined by psychotherapist Katherine Woodward Thomas, conscious uncoupling means ending a relationship on good terms, with mutual respect and the desire to do as little damage to the family unit as possible. At the time, when Paltrow and Martin used the term, it was met with eye-rolling and mockery. But many years later, Paltrow, a celebrity who has proudly showed off her gray hair, and Martin have become the poster of children of how to end a marriage with class and dignity, and raise your children together, despite being apart.

In September 2020, Paltrow was on "The Drew Barrymore Show" where Drew Barrymore applauded Paltrow's ability to co-parent children Apple and Moses with Martin so well, calling Paltrow "a major beacon in how it can be done." As Paltrow explained to Barrymore, she's lucky a doctor gave she and Martin a guide on how to successfully co-parent. "You have to have radical accountability," Paltrow said, adding that you need to realize that every relationship is 50/50. "We are all part good and part bad ... We all are trying our best. I really wanted my kids to not be traumatized, if it were possible." It's safe to say that Paltrow and Martin succeeded in that .

Long before conscious uncoupling or co-parenting became trending terms, Demi Moore and Bruce Willis were embracing these techniques. Having married in 1987, the couple announced their split in 1998. Without making a big deal about how they'd be raising their daughters, Rumer, Scout, and Tallulah after their separation, the couple seemed to seamlessly move into co-parenting.

"I still love Demi ... We have three children whom we will continue to raise together, and we're probably as close now as we ever were," Willis told Rolling Stone in December 2000. In fact, when Moore married Ashton Kutcher in 2005, Willis and their three daughters, who are absolutely gorgeous, were in attendance, then when Willis married Emma Hemming in 2009, Moore and the girls were there too. "It's generated a lot of interest because everyone can understand resentment and envy ... but they don't understand how I can get along with my ex like that," Willis told W in June 2009, adding it was always about putting their daughters first. 

To further prove just how amicable everyone in this big blended family is, they all quarantined together in 2020. "It was really a blessing," Moore told Naomi Campbell on her series, "No Filter with Naomi," in February 2021 about the group isolation. "It's everything that's come forward has allowed us to reevaluate what's important and what needs attention that has been overlooked and neglected. It was amazing." In other words, Moore and Willis are co-parenting goals amplified.