Ben Affleck Once Said He Shouldn’t Be Offering Parenting Advice Based on How Jennifer Garner Viewed His Skills
Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner share three children together. By all accounts, they seem to be very dedicated to the well-being of their kids as they co-parent. When their first daughter was born, though, Affleck joked that he shouldn’t be offering anyone parenting advice. He explained that Garner didn’t seem to trust him to do even the simplest of tasks.
Ben Affleck said Jennifer Garner didn’t seem to trust him with their baby
In a press conference for Affleck’s 2006 film Hollywoodland, one reporter asked the actor if he had any advice to offer new parents. He had recently become a father for the first time.
“I am not the person to come to for advice. … I’ll tell you a quick anecdote. Two days ago my wife had to go to work,” ” he told IGN, adding “I was there. I was taking care of the baby. I was trying to make sure everything was going to be okay.”
As Garner prepared to walk out the door, she asked Affleck if he could handle feeding their daughter.
“She said, ‘Okay, I’m running out,’ she gave me the baby,” he recalled. “She said, ‘Okay, you know how to feed her with the solid food?’ I said, ‘Yes, I know how to feed her.’ She said, ‘You take the peaches, you stir that up and you put that in with a little oatmeal and then put that in with a little bit of the crushed pears, and you mix that up,’ and then she looked at me and said, in all seriousness, ‘Is this too complicated?’”
Affleck joked that this anecdote should make anyone think twice about asking him for parenting advice.
“This is [what] my wife thinks of my parenting abilities,” he said. “Clearly, I should not be offering advice to anyone else.”
Ben Affleck said he admired Jennifer Garner’s parenting skills
While Affleck said that people shouldn’t ask him for advice, he did love to be a father. He said it completely changed his life.
“I love being a father, it’s wonderful,” he said. “It’s changed my life. It all sounds like platitudes and clichés because they’re true. It fast became the most important thing in my life and I reorganized my priorities instantly in a way that feels really good. I love that.”
He said it helped that Garner was such a good parent.
“My wife is spectacular, a spectacular mother, spectacular everything, so that’s really nice,” he said.
He also said he could tell Jennifer Lopez would be a good mother
Before Affleck married Garner, he was in a relationship with Jennifer Lopez. While they never had children together, Affleck once said he could tell Lopez would be a good mother.
“Jen and I want to get married for the reason everyone else does: we fell in love,” he told Vanity Fair in 2003. “I’m in love; I want to have a family; and she’s the only person I’ve ever met who made me entertain the thought of doing that. You know within 10 minutes of meeting Jen that she’ll be a good mother.”
When they married in 2022, they brought their families together.
