There so many families on a reality show that we can’t tell which ones are which. Reality TV is all the rage, and it seems that every unique family out there has managed to land themselves a lucrative entertainment contract.
Ten years ago, however, the universe wasn’t over saturated with droves of diverse families showcasing their everyday life. TLC held a monopoly on the family-based reality television show cash cow Jon and Kate Plus Eight, and the Gosselin family was their go-to gang.
The Gosselins let viewers into their home to show them what life was like with eight small children running around. Kate and Jon were the proud, and frazzled parents of twin daughters Maddy and Cara as well as sextuplets. The world was fascinated at how they functioned in their day-to-day activities. They were captivated at how their lives were perhaps busier than many of ours, but not all that different.
The hit show Jon and Kate Plus Eight took the world by storm, and then suddenly it all came tumbling down when the parents announced that they were separating. Kate tried to do it alone with the kids, but the reality television buzz just wasn’t the same. Years have passed, kids have grown, and a new reality show is now in the works for Kate and her older daughters.
Here are 20 things that we are now learning about the Gosselin twins, Mady and Cara.
20. NOT THE TYPICAL ‘DADDY’S GIRLS’
According to the cheatsheet.com, Cara and Mady Gosselin aren’t their father’s biggest fans. After mom Kate and dad Jon went their separate ways, it became clear that the twins were wholly on their mom’s side. Kate retained custody of the twins after the divorce, and even though they are now adults and can make their own choices, they still choose to keep their distance from their father. When the girls spoke to People magazine in 2016, they revealed that if they were face-to-face with their father, they would not even know what to say to him. Very few of the Gosselin eight have continual contact with Jon these days.
19. THEY HAVEN’T STAYED WITH HIM IN YEARS!
When Kate and Jon divorced, things got pretty ugly fairly quickly. Although Jon and Kate shared custody of their kids, Jon’s visits with his children have dwindled down in recent history.
Over time Jon has become a practical stranger to several of his own children. He shared with E! Online that some of his kids have “just stopped coming” over to his house and that he hasn’t had all eight of the kids with him in years! The twins clearly consider Kate’s house to be their family home, not Jon’s.
Mady and Cara aren’t the only ones who do their best to avoid Jon’s abode. Of the sextuplets, only Hannah and Collin have constant contact with their dad.
18. THEY’RE OLD ENOUGH TO MOCK THEIR FATHER’S DATING HABITS
After Jon and Kate split, Kate immediately focused on the kids and her income, which at the time of the separation was her family’s reality show. Jon, on the other hand, hit the dating scene and tried his hand at deejaying in local clubs. Neither of those new hobbies went over well with his twin daughters.
Of her father’s post-divorce antics, daughter Mady had this to say, “Actually, the stuff I remember now is stuff that I didn’t really see anything wrong with at the time … but now that I look back, I can see, ‘Oh, that wasn’t a really good thing.” She also said that her father tended to have a new girlfriend every other week it seemed.
17. NOT SO FAST – THEY FIND THEIR MOTHER ANNOYING TOO!
Cara and Mady Gosselin love their mother Kate, but they find her highly annoying. This isn’t all that surprising considering number one: they are at an age where despising parents is pretty typical and two, the whole world finds Kate Gosselin bothersome. Mady told People magazine that their mother uses words like “spensive” to get their goats. She also swears that Kate annoys them on purpose only to get a rise out of the pair.
Ahhh, mother-daughter relationships, they indeed are something to behold. What mom doesn’t get a chuckle out of embarrassing their teenage daughter?
16. THEIR MOTHER TRIED TO MAKE THEM THE OLSEN TWINS
Kate Gosselin envisioned a lot of things for her newborn twin daughters, and one of them was fame and income revenue. She knew they were cute as buttons, and she also knew that the world loves themselves some multiples, so Kate tried her hand at creating the next pair of Olsen twins. The early days of creating little superstars didn’t exactly pan out, and it took years for Kate’s fantasy to come to fruition. Looking back at some of the professional photos that Cara and Mady’s mother had done of them, we can see that Kate wasn’t messing around. She knew her children would become the household breadwinners someway and somehow.
15. THEIR SWEET 16 WASN’T SO SWEET
The girls’ attempt at a sweet 16 party ended up being anything but sweet. Of course, Mady had to have all the planning control when it came to the party details, and Cara would have skipped the whole thing had she had her way. Their mom about lost her marbles trying to do everything herself while raising eight busybodies and managed to embarrass her teenage daughters with a lengthy home video screening montage of her firstborns for their friends’ viewing pleasure. We can feel the eye-rolling from here. In the end, the girls seemed pretty content with the bash their mom pulled off, but the event indeed wasn’t without some drama and hysterics.
14. ONE TWIN ENJOYS SCHOOL MORE THAN THE OTHER
The Gosselin twins are as different as night and day. While Mady would instead perform and sing and dance, Cara enjoys being more studious. She is an overachiever when it comes to academics and generally likes being at school. Her sister Mady still pulls good grades too, but her heart lies with more with performing than reading, math, and social studies.
It seems that while the Gosselin twins have had their share of darker moments while living life in the shadow of their parents’ very public divorce, they have managed to keep a good head on their shoulders and continue to be very well rounded individuals.
13. THEY WERE THE FIRST TO HEAR ABOUT THEIR PARENTS’ DIVORCE
Before the world found out that their favorite reality TV family was crumbling, twins Mady and Cara were let in on the secret. The twins didn’t take the news in the same way. According to Nicki Swift, Mady wasn’t surprised in the least when her parents told her that they would not be living together any longer. She told them that she saw the divorce coming. Cara, on the other hand, was horribly upset. She sobbed and crumpled into her mom’s arms like a baby. That must have done a number on Kate and Jon’s hearts to see their firstborn daughter like that.
12. BUT THE DIVORCE PAIN DIDN’T LAST LONG
Once the news of the divorce sank in, and the dust somewhat settled, Cara and Mady bounced back like champs. While their parents thought the shift in family structure might rock their worlds forever, the girls weren’t all that affected by the split. Mady explained to fans and viewers that her parents’ separation wasn’t that difficult. On The View, she revealed that after the divorce, they still saw both of their parents, and they didn’t hear or see all of the public mess that was going on between Jon and Kate. At the time of the separation, Mady and Cara were young enough to not be clued into what was going on in the media.
11. THEY WILL MAKE APPEARANCES ON KATE’S NEW REALITY SHOW
By now everybody knows that Kate Gosselin is getting yet another crack at reality television fame very soon. This new reality show of hers will primarily focus on landing the solo 43-year-old mother of eight a man, and the word on the street is Cara and Mady will make appearances on their mother’s project. So what role will Mady and Cara play when it comes to this new Gosselin adventure? They will sound off on their mom’s prospective partners, giving their opinion on all matters. After years of interviews with TLC producers, they should be very good at this!
10. THEY COMPLETELY SUPPORT KATE’S REALITY TV RETURN
So what do the 18-year-old former reality stars think of their mother’s new show and any possible future boyfriends? They are completely supportive of all of it. According to cheatsheet.com, Mady and Cara Gosselin are behind their mother finding true love 100 percent. They have been urging their mom to get back out there for years. Mady claims that all of Kate’s children think that this show will be an excellent opportunity for her.
In the end, Kate’s children want their mother to be happy, and they believe that a loving, supporting partner will be just what she needs.
9. CARA IS THE OLDEST
It seems like just yesterday we were watching little Cara and Mady throw a good old fashioned tantrum on the family’s living room floor. Ahhh, the old days, right? Cara and her twin Mady are far more likely to slam a door or throw some shifty eyes at their mother now because they are pretty darn grown. The girls recently turned 18 years old, making them legal adults in the eyes of the law. We can’t believe it! So, while they are both 18, which twin gets to claim that she is truly the oldest of eight? It’s Cara. She is six minutes older than her fraternal twin sister Mady.
8. SOMETIMES STAGE JITTERS SET IN
You would think that Cara and Mady would be prone to occasional stage jitters after all these years of having cameras in their faces, but that is not true. The girls do still get tongue-tied when they are put on the spot. We saw this in their Today Show interview where they appeared alongside their mother. When given a chance to speak out for themselves, they both looked like a couple of deer caught in the headlights. This moment gave fans and viewers a bit of a reminder that Cara and Mady aren’t actresses. They are kids whose parents put their lives on the television screen. There is a big difference between the two.
7. WHAT ABOUT A REALITY SHOW FOR THE TWINS?
It looks like Cara and Mady will become very busy soon. The two are finishing up high school and are supposedly heading off to college in the fall. On top of their academic plans, they will be helping their mother Kate out with her new reality television venture. As if this isn’t enough to heap onto the 18-year-olds’ plates, they might also be landing themselves their own television show!
The girls have toyed around with the idea of cameras following them around as they navigate higher education and life as young adults. Only time will tell if this concept is just murmurings or if it will someday take flight.
6. COLLEGE BOUND
We almost can’t believe that Mady and Cara Gosselin are about to leave the nest! They were just little kiddos when viewers were first introduced to their families, and now they are about to embark on all sorts of new adult-adventures. As of both Mady and Cara plan on furthering their education and have set their sights on college come next fall. There is little doubt that whatever the gals choose to do with their future, they will be successful at it. According to their proud mama’s birthday shoutout on social media, the twins are full of all the qualities that will help them rise to the top of their class at university.
5. BOTH GIRLS ARE SELF-DRIVEN
The twins have grown up with fame all around them, and something like that can warp young kids, often causing them to have a skewed vision of the world. Mady and Cara have remained pretty grounded and incredibly driven, despite living most of their lives under a microscope. Their mother Kate can’t help but gush about how self-driven and goal oriented her eldest daughters have become. She boasts that at this point, she doesn’t have to get after her kids too much because they are generally great children who make excellent choices. That’s nice considering most of us parents assume the worst of the teenage years.
4. MS. CARA IS QUITE THE ATHLETE
Cara, the oldest Gosselin sibling, is said to be more like her father and not her mom. She tends to be reserved and quiet, compared to some of her siblings, works methodically, is organized, and is quite the athlete! She has tried her hand at lacrosse during her younger years, and according to the TLC Kate Plus 8information site, she is also an avid skier. One thing that Cara isn’t a huge fan of, though, are mornings. So long as she takes afternoon classes next year and gets involved with her beloved sports, she should excel during her first year away at college.
3. MADY IS KATE’S MINI-ME
Cara is her dad’s twin, and Mady is undoubtedly her mother’s mini-me. While Mady used to resemble her father more physically, she is looking more and more like her mom as she grows older. They have similar smiles for sure, and also identical personalities. This is likely one of the reasons that fans of the show have seen the two clash so often. Kate can get worked up and lose her cool, and so can Mady. They both are passionate people who fight and love with total intensity, and Kate says that daughter Mady has many of the same attributes as she does, like a tendency to be bossy and authoritative.
2. WHILE CARA PLAYS SPORTS, MADY STICKS TO THE ARTS
Mady is the animated twin, and if any of the Gosselin children were to transition from reality television to movies, our money is on Mady. Through her years of appearing on her family’s reality shows, she is the one child that consistently brings the drama and explosive personality. While Cara is the mild-mannered, sporty twin, Mady enjoys singing and performing and anything related to the arts. This Gosselin has no problem being in the spotlight. Mady and her sister Cara might be former womb-mates, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t total individuals when it comes to personal interests and likes.
1. ONE PROUD MAMA
Moms all think their kids are the very best, and Kate Gosselin is no different in this respect. As her twins enter their adult years, Kate can’t help but sing their praises from the rooftops. Of her sound decision makers, Kate has said she doesn’t know what she did to deserve such amazing children and that her spawn “blow her away every day.” Mama Kate has been known to flood her social media channels with shoutouts to her precious seniors as well as her ambitious and overachieving sextuplets. It has to be a great feeling to know that all that hard parenting work finally paid off big time.