Dividing parenting responsibilities is no joke. For Busy Phillips and Marc Silverstein, the challenge almost led to the end of their marriage. In a joint interview for Harper’s Bazaar, the long-time celebrity couple opened up about their marriage and what it’s like raising their daughters, 11-year old Birdie and 6-year old Cricket. Busy and Marc have been married for a total of 12 years, but the parents weren’t afraid to admit it’s taken a lot of work and dedication to keep their marriage solid.
Busy got especially candid when she began to discuss the division of their parenting responsibilities. At one point in their marriage, the actress wasn’t happy with how they were splitting things up. So much so, she admits that divorce was on the table at one point.
“Marc was like, ‘I’ll do anything.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, then do everything. Because I have done it all, all by myself, and I’m done, dude,’” Busy explains of her husband’s reaction when she threatened to leave him.
In the end, however, it worked out. “I was fully out the door,” She continued. “I wasn’t expecting anything from him, but what we ended up doing was creating our own system.” This critical point in their marriage pushed Marc to take a more active role in child-rearing, Busy claims.
“He made the call: He should be the one to stay home with the kids,” the mother-of-two revealed, adding her husband became in charge of meal prep and bedtime. “He now loves his mornings with the girls. He’ll make my Bulletproof coffee and bring it into the bedroom while I’m still sleeping, and then leave to take the kids to school.”
However, Busy says her husband’s more active role has taken some getting used to. In fact, she admits that sometimes she wonders if she’s missing out on special moments with their girls. “He has conversations with them that I’m jealous of. The closeness he now has with these girls, it’s really special,” the Cougar Town actress revealed.
“Marc literally spends so much time with the girls that they accidentally call me ‘Dad’ sometimes. Like when did that ever happen?” she said.
Marc then took a turn to interject, explaining how this inevitably made their marriage and family unit stronger. It sounds like the Phillips-Silverstein family is happier than ever! “I realized that deep happiness comes from my family,” he explained. “And once I figured out what I could bring to the table, things changed. I wanted to do more.” The famous father continued, “Once Busy said, ‘I need you to put Birdie to bed every night,’ I owned it. And I was good at that. I started with one thing and it grew from there.”