What Jess Hilarious Gets Right About Co-Parenting
What Jess Hilarious Gets Right About Co-Parenting (And What Happens in the Therapy Room After)
By now you have probably seen Jess Hilarious everywhere. The Breakfast Club co-host just released her debut book, 'Til Death Do We Parent: Raising My Kid with His Dad, and the conversation it is generating is exactly the one I sit with clients inside every week.
I have not finished the book yet. But I have read enough, watched the interviews, and recognized enough in what she is saying that I could not stay quiet.
Because Jess is putting language to something that most co-parents feel, but rarely say out loud. And as a co-parenting therapist, I want to add what comes after the book — what happens when you are still in the thick of it and do not yet have the healed version of the story to tell.
The Title Alone Is Worth Talking About
'Til Death Do We Parent.
Jess has said in interviews that one of the stigmas she wants to challenge is the idea that your job ends when your child turns 18. That the countdown to freedom is somehow the finish line.
I hear this in session too. Parents who are white-knuckling their way through co-parenting conflict, telling themselves that they are doing it for the benefit of the kids, and that it will all be over as soon as they turn 18 years old. And what I have learned (and what the research backs up) is that the emotional pattern does not just end when the logistics do. The way you and your co-parent communicate right now is shaping how your child understands relationships, conflict, and love for the rest of their life. That does not have an expiration date.
The title is the whole point. This is a lifetime commitment. And that means the work you do now matters more than you think it does.
"You Should Never Force a Relationship Just for the Kids"
Jess said this in a recent interview, and I want to sit with it for a moment because it is true. It is also the thing that trips people up in my office.
She is right that forcing a romantic or personal relationship between co-parents for the sake of the children does not work. You end up resentful. Miserable. And the kids absorb every bit of that tension even when you think you are hiding it.
But here is where the therapy room adds something: not forcing the relationship does not mean walking away from the communication. It means getting very clear about what kind of relationship you actually need with this person.
You do not have to be friends. You do not have to like each other. You do have to be able to talk about pickup times, medical decisions, school events, and the emotional needs of a child who is watching both of you every single day.
What I help co-parents figure out is not how to get along in the way couples do. It is how to build a working relationship around the child. One that protects them from absorbing what is actually a conflict between two adults who are still, in some ways, still processing their own hurt.
That is different work. And it is possible even when the personal relationship is completely over.
Including Both Sides Is Rare And Clinically Smart
One of the most talked-about decisions Jess made was including her son's father Rome's perspective in the book. She said in her Essence interview that she did not want to be selfish, that the book would not be honest or useful if it only told one side.
I want to underline that, because in my experience, co-parenting conflict almost always looks different depending on which chair you are sitting in.
In session, the person across from me is usually convinced they are the only one trying. The one who communicates. The one who is putting the kids first. And then the other person comes in and says the exact same thing.
That is not because one of them is lying. It is because the pattern between them is bigger than either of their individual perspectives. Until you can see the pattern, what triggers it, what each person is protecting, what each person is actually afraid of — the same argument keeps happening in different clothes.
Including Rome's voice was not just a creative choice. It was the honest choice. And it is the thing that actually makes co-parenting better: the willingness to look at your role in the cycle, not just the other person's.
What the Book Cannot Do And What Therapy Can
Jess's book is memoir. It is her story, told with honesty and humor, and it is valuable for exactly that reason. People need to see that someone else made it through the hard parts. That the early chaos and the resentment and the figuring it out in public does not have to be the whole story.
But memoir has a shape to it. It shows you where someone ended up. What it cannot do is sit with you in the moment before you get there.
That is what therapy does.
When a co-parent comes to see me, they are usually not at the healed part of the story yet. They are at the part where every contact feels like a landmine. Where holidays start being negotiated months in advance. Where they can feel themselves getting activated the second they see the other person's name on their phone.
The work we do together is not about getting them to Jess's version of the story. It is about understanding what is happening underneath the conflict, what each person is actually afraid of, what they actually need, and what it would take to respond from that place instead of from the defensive, protected version of themselves that shows up when they feel threatened.
That is slower work than reading a book. But it is the work that actually interrupts the pattern before it reaches your kids.
If This Book Is On Your Radar, This Is For You
If you picked up 'Til Death Do We Parent, or if someone sent you the Breakfast Club interview, or if the title just hit you somewhere, that recognition means something.
It means you are already asking the right questions. You want this to be different. You are tired of the same argument, the same tension, the same feeling that you are managing logistics with someone who still has the ability to completely destabilize you.
That is exactly where co-parenting therapy starts. Not when everything is already broken, but when you can feel that something needs to shift and you do not quite know how to make it happen on your own.
Ra'Shunda Adams is a licensed marriage and family therapist associate in Katy, TX specializing in co-parenting therapy, parenting across generations, and family dynamics. She serves clients in Katy, Houston, and all of Texas via telehealth.
