Jennifer Lopez said she had “very little help” raising her 18-year-old twins, Emme and Max, as they finished high school and prepared to head to college. On the June 15 episode of SmartLess, she said both of her children got into all their colleges and received scholarships, adding that they are going where they want to go.
The comment lands now because it came during a milestone moment for the twins and from Lopez herself, not from a carefully polished family statement. She and Marc Anthony share Emme and Max, and the two finalized their divorce in 2014 after agreeing to joint legal and physical custody. That makes Lopez’s remark about raising the children with “very little help” stand out as a blunt account of what parenting looked like behind the public arrangement.
Lopez did not spell out exactly what she meant by the help she felt she lacked, but the line carries weight because it came after years in which the custody setup suggested both parents would remain involved. She and Anthony married in 2004, split in 2011 and later settled the divorce with shared custody. Her description leaves open a simple question: how much day-to-day support did Anthony actually provide while the twins were growing up?
For Lopez, the immediate answer is that Emme and Max appear to be moving on successfully. The scholarships matter because they suggest the twins have options, and Lopez made clear that they have chosen the schools they want to attend, even if she did not name them. The family picture around Anthony is wider too, with his other children and his later family life adding another layer to a co-parenting story that has never been tidy. Lopez’s point was not that she raised the twins alone in law, but that in practice she felt the burden very much on her own.
That is the part that will linger. The custody papers promised balance; Lopez described something closer to isolation. For a mother watching her twins step into college, the milestone is joyful enough. Her line about having very little help is what makes it sound earned.
