'Sister Wives' Star Kody Brown Has a Strained Relationship With His Daughter Maddie

The Gist:

• Sister Wives' Kody Brown reveals in Season 18 that he and his daughter Maddie have not spoken in months.
• He claims that it was because of his split with Christine, but Janelle thinks it was because of him.
• While Maddie and Kody are not speaking, Maddie still has a great bond with her mother Janelle.

In total, Kody Brown from the hit TLC series Sister Wives has 18 children. But, with his former wife Janelle Brown alone, the two have six kids together.

One of those kids is their oldest daughter Maddie Brown. Because Kody and Janelle are both her parents, one might assume that she has a great relationship with them. But, according to Kody, that is no longer the case.

Kody has never been afraid to publicly expose what is really going on within the family, especially when it comes to his relationship with his children — and Maddie is no exception.

In Season 18 Episode 11, Kody reveals that he and Maddie experienced a falling out. He also speculates what event might have caused the separation between the two.

“I do not know what happened. But during the breakup with Christine, Maddie stopped reaching out to me. Might have been COVID, or, I have no idea what was going on but she quit reaching out to me," he explains in the episode.

Kody and Christine officially ended their marriage in November of 2021, which means that he and Maddie have not been in touch for the past few years.

But what does Maddie's mom have to say about their relationship?

According to Janelle, it wasn't the split between Kody and Christine — or the pandemic — that caused the father and daughter to drift apart. In fact, from her perspective, it's all Kody's fault.

“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.’ So 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 says in Episode 11.

Despite having a fallout with Kody, Maddie still seems to have a great bond with her mother and constantly shares pictures of her and Janelle together on her Instagram page.

Maddie has also shared photos of herself and her siblings on her mom's side together. But, there are zero pictures of her and Kody together on her social media at time of writing.

As of now, Maddie hasn't publicly shared her side of the story in regards to her estrangement from her father, leaving it up to fan and family speculation. Outside of the show, which she rarely appears on, she is a wife and proud mother of three children.

Watch Sister Wives on TLC.