Nearly seven years after Gavin Rossdale and Gwen Stefani split, they have remained committed to amicably raising their three sons.
“I think you can go one of two ways — you either do everything together and really coparent, and see how that goes — or you can just parent. And I think we just parent,” the Bush frontman, 57, said during a Thursday, June 15, appearance on the “Not So Hollywood” podcast. “We’re really different people, so 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.”
Rossdale added: “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 they should, as individuals.”
The “Chemicals Between Us” singer and Stefani, 53, were married from 2002 to 2016. After they called it quits, the duo planned to coparent their three sons: Kingston, 17, Zuma, 14, and Apollo, 9. However, Rossdale — who also shares daughter Daisy, 34, with ex Pearl Lowe — further explained to podcast host Adrianna Costa that he “doesn’t really know” what coparenting means “because you have them on the time that you have.”
“We split the time 50/50,” the “Machinehead” crooner explained of his arrangement with Stefani, who married Blake Shelton in 2021. “So, when I have them, [I’m] doing my thing my way and then the other way [when the boys are with Gwen]. I think that they’re now of the age where they’re starting to appreciate which elements of either house they might take on into their adulthood [or] maybe none of it? Maybe they’ll sort of, like, become something different.”
Ultimately, Rossdale concluded, “It’s just about wherever they are, they’re loved and supported.”
Stefani, for her part, has seldom addressed coparenting with Rossdale, though the No Doubt artist has been open about the mom guilt she’s faced over the years when it is her time with her sons.
“I think it’s really hard to do it all, and impossible to do. And every single day, I feel guilty,” Stefani confessed during a March 2021 appearance on DJ Khaled’s “The First One” podcast. “Like yesterday I was so guilty because I had a day off with the kids and then I got on a Zoom about doing a video or something and it was going on and on, for like an hour and a half, and I was like: ‘What am I doing? I have to get off the Zoom, this is my day with my kids.’”
She added at the time: “You’re with your kids and you want to be doing your thing, and then when you’re doing your thing, you want to be with your kids. It’s hard,” she said.
The former Institute musician — who became a first-time grandfather in April when Daisy welcomed her daughter with partner Jordan Saul — and the “Hollaback Girl” songstress even recently shared a sweet moment at Zuma’s middle school graduation.
“It was really emotional actually,” Rossdale revealed on the podcast. “Seeing what these kids have been through and you see all the footage of them from when they first went to school and … getting to know each other [to] now.”
Zuma and his siblings were with Stefani the week of the service but Rossdale was still able to lend a helping hand before the ceremony. “[Zuma] spent the week with me on FaceTime just practicing how to tie his tie,” the England native quipped. “When you do it … naturally it’s in your DNA, I don’t really think about it so I was having to really break it down, but he [did] great!”
Rossdale and Stefani’s boys also have a special bond with stepfather Shelton, 42.
“I don’t know if it’s as hard or harder or not as hard as being an actual, biological parent,” the Voice alum said during KFROG’s The Ride With Kimo and Heather in February 2021. “I have a stepfather in my life who’s one of my heroes. I love my stepfather and I look up to him and he’s like a father to me, so I have a good inspiration in my life for how to do this and the kind of stepdad I want to be. And I take it very serious.”
