‘Sister Wives’ Stars Janelle and Christine Brown Say Their Kids Would Reject Polygamous Relationships

Sister Wives stars Christine Brown and Janelle Brown opened up about how plural marriages wouldn't really work for their children, and it might not run in the family. Paedon, Christine's son, made a strong assertion on the August 27 episode of the TLC series when he said that polygamy "no longer works in my family."

"None of our children have chosen to live polygamy. We don't even have any kids really that are in the Mormon church, the mainstream [Latter-Day Saints] church," Janelle, 54, tells PEOPLE. "When they were growing up, we always just encouraged them to have a relationship with God, and I think many of them do in their own way. ... I think polygamy is hard, and I think you really do have to have a religious conviction, and they just don't," she added.

Christine, 51, who split from Paedon's father Kody Brown in November 2021, tells PEOPLE how the split has been hard on her children. "Some of our kids have seen how hard it is, and some of our kids have seen the separation,” she expressed. “They see how hard it is and they're like, 'No, no, no, no, no. No, that's not for me.'"

In addition to Paedon, Christine shared kids Aspyn, Mykelti, Gwendlyn, Ysabel, and Truely with the Sister Wives patriarch, Kody, who has a total of 18 children from his marriages to Christine, Janelle, Robyn Brown, and Meri Brown, with ages ranging from 7 to 29.

Janelle, the mother of sons Logan, Hunter, Garrison, and Gabriel as well as daughters Madison and Savanah, said that she and her now-separated husband Kody, 54, made the decision to raise all of their kids together years ago. “We had this vision that the children would be raised together as siblings, and we tried living in one house as long as we could until we didn't fit anymore,” she recalls. “We were really about that dream. That big picture was our dream.”

All of their children from the other wives have remained close, according to Janelle, even though only Robyn, 44, is still married to Kody. “The kids are all the same,” Janelle says.

“The kids still are the kids. They all interact, and I interact with the kids the same as I always did. The kids all really feel like their siblings. With Christine and I, we're very close, there's a lot of camaraderie." She continued, "With Meri and Robin and Kody, to some degree, it's still very polite, superficial, not antagonistic — it's not mean,” Janelle added.

And despite the fact that Janelle and Kody announced their separation in December of last year, following over 30 years of spiritual marriage, she claims the kids have remained "the priority" for them. “Even with the personality differences, we really made it work," she says. "And I think we had something really amazing.”