Jennifer Lopez says Jennifer Garner is an ‘amazing co-parent’ and we love to see it

Not that anyone could possibly look at Jennifer Garner and question whether she’s an “amazing” anything (because of course she is) but sometimes there’s truly nothing better than hearing happy Hollywood co-parenting stories. In a new interview with Vogue, Jennifer Lopez is opening up about married life with Ben Affleck, and the relationship they have with their ex-spouses as they navigate blended family life.

Affleck has three children with ex-wife Garner: Violet, 16, Seraphina, 13, and Samuel, 10. Lopez shares twins Max and Emme with her ex-husband, singer Marc Anthony. The process of combining two established families with five kids total can’t be easy, but Lopez says they make it work.

Of Garner, Lopez says she’s “an amazing co-parent,” and that she and Ben “work really well together.” Unfortunately, Anthony lives on the East Coast (Lopez, Garner, and Affleck all live on the West Coast), so things are a little trickier in terms of co-parenting just based on geography alone.

Related: Jennifer Lopez is teaching her kids about “healthy relationships” after reuniting with Ben Affleck

“The transition is a process that needs to be handled with so much care,” she says. “They have so many feelings. They’re teens. But it’s going really well so far. What I hope to cultivate with our family is that his kids have a new ally in me and my kids have a new ally in him, someone who really loves and cares about them but can have a different perspective and help me see things that I can’t see with my kids because I’m so emotionally tied up.”

As for parenting her own teens, Lopez says she, like most of us, hopes to avoid repeating past family dynamics and tries to keep herself in check whenever her kids are upset.

“I really wanted to find a better way than having to put the fear in them,” she explains. “It’s like, I can hold a boundary with you but also be your ally. That’s the balance, where they respect you enough because you act in a way that they can look up to. It’s what I feel like I want to do because when I was young that wasn’t what it was.”

(Excuse me as I write down “I can hold a boundary with you but also be your ally” on a Post-It and look at it every day for the rest of my parenting life. What a genius little nugget of wisdom, huh?)

She also has an incredibly healthy perspective on her relationship with Affleck, which initially began and ended in the early 2000s. The two reunited in early 2021 not long after Alex Rodriguez ended his engagement with Lopez.

Related: Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck show off their blended family at iHeartRadio Music Awards

“The two of us, we lost each other and found each other,” she says. “Not to discredit anything in between that happened, because all those things were real too. All we’ve ever wanted was to kind of come to a place of peace in our lives where we really felt that type of love that you feel when you’re very young and wonder if you can have that again.”

As for the kids, well, they’re embarrassed by their parents like any teenagers would be. (Hear that? It doesn’t matter if you’re as glamorous as Jennifer Lopez, your kids still won’t want to be seen with you sometimes. Maybe for different reasons, but it all stings the same!).

“The other day, one of my kids said, ‘I want to go to the flea market,'” she recalled. “I was like, ‘Oh, you want me and Ben to come?’ They said, ‘You know, it’s such a thing when you go, Mom.’ It hurt my feelings.”

But she gets it. I mean, sometimes a kid just wants to go look at old furniture and and not have the entire world grind to a halt because the Jennifer Lopez is there.

“I get it. They want time with their friends when they aren’t being watched and followed and photographed,” she added. “It’s a thing. Nobody’s complaining, but it’s a thing.”