Jennifer Garner Reveals How She and Ben Affleck Handled Raising a Family in the Spotlight
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It's common for celebrities to talk about raising their kids in a way that's "normal" and "out of the spotlight," but for Jennifer Garner, that really wasn't an option. Since she and Ben Affleck were both huge stars, raising their three children together was about as far from normal as it could be. In a new interview with the Wall Street Journal, Garner explains exactly how she managed to do it, paparazzi and all.
Garner and Affleck have three children together: Violet, 13; Seraphina, 10; and Samuel, 6. She explained that she took a multi-pronged approach. First, she did her best to make her career work around them, acknowledging that being an actor is one of the most selfish choices she could make. Through it all, she said that the biggest thing was adaptation. She adapted her career by choosing jobs that would work around her family.
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"How do you adapt to your career? That's a big question. Being someone who is well known requires an enormous adaption. Who am I now? How do I go through the world? Then there’s having children and, in my case, a career that’s a very selfish one," Garner wrote. "The combination of those things is the largest adaption of all. When I had kids, I started considering how jobs worked for my family. How much am I going to ask of my partner and kids? What’s worth it and what isn't?"
And even then, it didn't seem like enough. Garner continued, saying that she would physically shield her kids from the photographers that hounded her and Affleck. Though they did their best, she says that it was another case of adaptation. The paparazzi's unpredictable behavior didn't help the cause, however, but she adds that she loved her family so much that she always did her best.
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"Something Ben and I used to say to each other all the time is, 'We have to adapt.' We were surrounded by paparazzi," Garner added. "There were so many things you wouldn't expect. We'd be left alone at Disneyland and then we would be at a park in Santa Monica. But if you love something, you'll do whatever you need to do."
Affleck and Garner continue to share their kids as both seemed to have moved on from their marriage. Garner's currently connected to businessman John Miller and reports say that they could get married this year.
