Megan Fox has opened up about her co-parenting relationship with ex-husband Brian Austin Green. Speaking on The Drew Barrymore Show, the actor was promoting her new poetry book, Pretty Boys Are Poisonous, when Barrymore complimented her on how positively she and Austin Green speak about their now blended family post-divorce.

Fox shares three sons with Austin Green, whom she met aged 18 on the set of Hope & Faith, when he was 30. The couple were married for nearly 10 years, and as well as caring for Austin Green’s first son from a previous relationship, they share children Noah (10), Bodhi (9) and Journey (6). Fox and Austin Green filed for divorce in 2020, quickly going on to date other people. While Fox is currently engaged to singer Machine Gun Kelly, Austin Green is engaged to professional dance Sharna Burgess with whom he has another son, Zane, now 18 months old.

Austin Green recently spoke to Entertainment Tonight about his engagement to Burgess and how they’ve handled co-parenting with Fox. ‘She’s really been amazing,’ Green said of Megan Fox. ‘I mean, we’ve been so lucky. We’ve run up against zero friction and zero issues with anything with the kids, with just being together, and her. And co-parenting has been great with her. We’re so blessed to be able to talk about these things.’

On Barrymore’s show, Fox echoed the statement. ‘I think it’s really important when people separate to never ever disparage the other parent or even in a pᴀssive aggressive way make remarks,’ she said. ‘I don’t let anything in my energy like that when I’m around my kids because if I don’t accept and love their father, I’m rejecting a part of them. He’s a part of who they are always, he’s in their blood and psyche, they exist because of him. I’ve always made a point to be very loving with him and about him [and] I love Sharna, their baby is so cute. It gives your children freedom because they don’t have to carry the burden of a way between parents.’

Of course, it all sounds lovely now – but lest we forget, Austin Green’s statement of ‘zero friction’ is a stark departure from what went down when Fox initially went public with Machine Gun Kelly. Back in 2020, he was accused of weaponizing their children to imply Fox was a bad mother after making petty remarks on Instagram.

At a time when Fox’s romance with MGK was all over the tabloids, and Sєxist backlash had begun around whether she was spending too much time with him compared to her children, Austin Green was accused of feeding into the frenzy by posting a picture of his children with the same caption Fox used to post a picture of her and MGK, ‘Achingly beautiful boy… my heart is yours’.

Months later, Fox called Austin Green out for feeding the misogynistic tabloid narrative that she’d become an absent mother since meeting MGK. After Austin Green posted a picture of him with their youngest son, Journey, on Halloween, she commented that he was using them to score dad points on social media. Fox has been vocal about not posting pictures of her children online for their own privacy.

‘It’s not hard to crop them out,’ Fox wrote, according to a screensH๏τ shared by Commentsbycelebs. ‘Or choose pH๏τos that they aren’t in. I had a great Halloween with them yesterday, and yet notice how absent they are from my social media. I know you love your kids. But I don’t know why you can’t stop using them to posture via social media. You’re so intoxicated with feeding the pervasive narrative that I’m an absent mother, and you are the perennial, eternally dedicated dad of the year. You have them half of the time. Congratulations you truly are a remarkable human! Why do you need the internet to echo back to you what should be inexhaustibly evident in the way your children love you?’

The image was later deleted, and re-uploaded without showing Journey.

It’s telling then that Austin Green’s memory of their co-parenting relationship appears very different to what was shared online. Seemingly, the couple have had to work toward creating a healthier relationship that does not involve online feuding or petty digs online. Knowing that, Fox’s words on the importance of not disparaging your partner in front of your children feels even more telling.

But one must ask, why does the burden of pacifying an angry ex-husband always fall on women? It’s seems as though at one time, Austin Green did take issue with their split and her new relationship, hence the online digs. Fox on the other hand, has never once publicly slammed Austin Green or made sly digs online – even her comment replying to his pH๏τograph acknowledged that he loves his kids, she just wanted an end to the toxic narrative that she’s no longer a good mother now that she’s found a new partner.

We can’t possibly know what went on behind the scenes to improve their relationship, but we can call on our own lived experience to know how often the burden of appeasing an angry ex falls on women. ‘The father of my children all but abandoned them after our divorce,’ Hailey*, a mother of two, tells Grazia. ‘It was years of me turning up on his doorstep with them, essentially forcing him to be a father, before our relationship improved, and he began to co-parent with me without any arguing or pressure on my end.

‘He hated me for having a new partner so quickly, and he couldn’t see past his anger to prioritise our children,’ Hailey continues. ‘A decade on, they now have a great relationship with their dad, but it took a lot of me swallowing my pride, or biting my tongue when he was insulting, to get there.’

Laura, a mother of one, had a similar experience. ‘My ex-husband went down a dark path after our marriage broke down and for that I felt partially responsible having initiated the divorce,’ she tells Grazia. ‘So, I did everything I could to make him feel better, but he didn’t make it easy at all. He was often pᴀssive aggressive in front of our kids, and I’d just have to smile through it. Once he met someone new, things got better for us. I’m just grateful now my kids have a good relationship with their father, but I don’t think I’ve ever been properly appreciated for how much I did to make it work. It would’ve been very easy for me to be as cruel as him, or ask for sole custody, but I didn’t for the kids.’

Of course, Fox and Austin Green have seemingly reaped the benefit of repairing their relationship – but should she have had to deal with publicly brutal takedowns of her mothering in the process? Not at all.