Gwen Stefani’s Ex Gavin Rossdale Feels ‘Bad’ for Their Kids Amid Co-Parenting Struggles

Co-parenting can be challenging (Kim Kardashian knows!), and new comments from Gwen Stefani’s ex-husband Gavin Rossdale prove they are having a difficult time with it. The Bush frontman opened up about his co-parenting woes with Stefani, and it’s a lot to process.

“I never thought I’d ever get divorced. So there’s a simple shame in my life,” Rossdale told Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes in Wednesday’s episode of the Amy & T.J. Podcast, per Page Six. The two were married in 2002 and split in 2015 after rumors swirled that he had an affair with the family nanny, Mindy Mann. Rossdale and Stefani share kids Kingston, 17, Zuma, 15, and Apollo, 10.

“I wish I could have found a way to not have that in their lives,” he continued. “It wasn’t fun for me to come from a broken home. It can be quite debilitating for kids … the overriding thing is you don’t want to let your kids down.”

He hinted that his present relationship with the “No Doubt” singer is … not great. “The biggest thing would be when you see the kids that sometimes there’s a loss. It’d be nice if there was more of a connection with the person who made them with me,” he said.

The British singer also praised his own “consistency as a father,” but continued to complain about his and Stefani’s “debilitating” divorce, which he described as a “very contentious, hugely emotional, flared-up situation,” according to Page Six. Rossdale added, “Less said, soonest mended and I said nothing. I’m handcuffed because I would never want to overly say anything negative about [my sons’] mom. That’s just not right.”

I understand feeling upset about getting a divorce, but bringing up how wrong you’re feeling — 9 years later! — feels a little odd to me. Especially as Rossdale didn’t give any specifics onto what Stefani is actually doing wrong, other than divorcing him and him not feeling as connected to her. You don’t have to be connected to put your kids first!

This isn’t the first time Rossdale has shared his thoughts on co-parenting. In June 2023, he said on the Not So Hollywood podcast, “I think you can go one of two ways — you can either do everything together and really co-parent, and see how that goes — or you can just parent. And I think we just parent.”

“We’re really different people,” he said about himself and Stefani, who married Blake Shelton in 2021. Rossdale added, “I don’t think there’s much similarity in the way we bring them up, but I think that gives them an incredible perspective to then choose which pieces of those two lives they’d like to inherit and move on with and which part of themselves come out of the whole process.”

Despite their differences, it does seem like Rossdale is trying to look at the positives in the situation. He went on, “What’s important is to give them a wide view of things, and we definitely have some particularly opposing views so I think it’d be really helpful for them to make their own minds as individuals.”

These celebrity exes are getting co-parenting right.

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