Family first. Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds don’t want their celebrity status to affect their three daughters as they grow up.
“Blake and Ryan have done a really great job at raising them away from the public eye and having as normal as a life they can,” a source tells Us Weekly exclusively about the couple’s “protective” parenting style. “They’ve always wanted to make sure their children’s lives were kept private.”
The insider continued: “They are loving watching the girls grow up and have different personalities. … They’re really content with three kids for now. They’ve been really busy as a family of five, plus Blake and Ryan have a lot of projects in the works.”
Three years after they tied the knot, the Gossip Girl alum, 34, and Reynolds, 45, welcomed daughter James in 2014. Their second daughter, Inez, joined the family in September 2016 and Lively gave birth to Betty in August 2019.
The couple have previously spoken about their desire to raise their children out of the spotlight, telling Marie Claire in 2016 that they didn’t want to “rob them” of a normal childhood just because they chose to work in show business. “My husband and I chose a profession and a side effect of that is your personal life is public,” Lively told the outlet at the time. “Our child hasn’t had the opportunity to choose whether or not she wants her personal life to be public or not. So in order to give her as much normality as possible, we want her to have a childhood like we had. … We don’t ever want to rob them of what we had, because we’d feel really selfish.”
The duo’s dedication to prioritizing their children also means that they’ve become picky about the projects they choose to work on. “I guess I really have to really, really, really, really love [the role] because I’m just obsessed with my kids,” the Rhythm Section actress told E! News in February 2020. “So, yeah, I think it’s gotta really be worth it to take me away.”
Reynolds echoed his wife’s sentiments in October 2021, when he announced plans to take a step back from acting. “I’m just trying to create a little bit more space for my family,” the Deadpool star told The Hollywood Reporter one month later. “You know, you really don’t get that time back.”
Later that month, he explained that his sabbatical was “in part” designed to allow Lively the chance to take on some more involved projects, while “another part is purely selfish,” Reynolds told Fatherly in November 2021. “It’s just that I don’t want to miss this time. You don’t get this time back.”
Adding that raising three children is “a circus,” the Detective Pikachu star continued: “There’s always something going on. There’s always some extracurricular thing that the kids are doing, that sort of thing. So, yeah, I’ll be there doing all that stuff. I’m going to experiment with my cooking abilities again. It’s going to be nice.”
