New parents Jon and Kate Gosselin invited the Discovery Health channel
Twenty years ago, in May 2006, new parents Jon and Kate Gosselin invited the Discovery Health channel into their home for an hour-long TV special titled Surviving Sextuplets and Twins. The following year, the channel produced a follow-up special featuring the parents, twins, and sextuplets, and three months later, a regular series started shooting.
By the time TLC picked up Jon & Kate Plus 8 in 2008, the family and the show had become a cultural phenomenon, not only appearing on TV weekly but also on talk shows, in tabloids, and online.
But like many fascinating reality-TV subjects of the early 2000s, the family eventually faced years of public estrangement, disagreements, and tension spilling off-screen.
Jon & Kate Plus 8 offered a glimpse into the Gosselins’ unique home life, in which heartwarming scenes of Jon and Kate making breakfast for their eight children at once and shepherding them into a minivan occurred daily.
The show was appealing in part because of the seemingly wholesome family representation, but it also shed light on some of the ugliest parts of co-parenting and marriage, including a power-dynamic struggle between Kate and Jon.
People could tell from the jump that Kate was the more domineering and assertive of the pair, whereas Jon presented with laid-back nonchalance. After ten years of marriage, the couple’s relationship took a bitter turn, and they decided to separate.
The show was rebranded Kate Plus 8 after the couple’s very public divorce in 2009, only to be cancelled two years later. Now whatever fondness for the show was lingering has been tainted by secrets revealed in the new memoir In the Shadow of Eight: Surviving the Reality of My Childhood from Collin Gosselin, one of the now-22-year-old sextuplets.
In his book, available now, Collin opens up about his experience growing up on television and the trauma he endured in childhood, including details of his mother’s alleged abuse.
The family has been out of the public eye, split up, and estranged for many years now.
But this new wave of drama has reignited interest — Netflix has even announced an upcoming documentary revisiting the show and its impact, featuring interviews with Jon, Collin, and his sister Hannah.
Here’s everything you need to know about the Gosselins, then and now.
When TV producers found the Gosselin family of ten in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, they had been struggling financially. The couple had gotten pregnant twice through fertility treatments, once with twins born in 2000 and four years later with sextuplets.
They made the perfect subjects. Five seasons and more than 100 episodes focused on the family’s day trips, home-renovation projects, and birthday celebrations — until 2009, when Jon and Kate’s divorce derailed the series.
Kate continued the show, rebranded as Kate Plus 8. However, the solo show didn’t generate the same level of interest or viewership, and behind the scenes, legal battles over custody and scrutiny related to child labour raised tensions. After 50 more episodes, the show was cancelled in 2011.
Throughout its run, millions of viewers regularly tuned in to Jon & Kate Plus 8’s Monday night episodes. In a 2009 retrospective in honour of Jon & Kate Plus 8’s final episode, Entertainment Weekly TV critic Ken Tucker wrote, “I started watching the show during its first season.
I was just a casual viewer; the series didn’t have a season pass on my DVR. But if I was home or in a hotel room and an episode came on, I’d find I always ended up watching the entire thing, because the series was (hard as it is to believe now) completely charming.
“I remember most of the episodes they showed this last night in a quick montage, whether it was family movie night or the clan’s once-annual walk to the local Fourth of July parade, the little ones waddling along behind Jon and Kate like ducklings,” Tucker continued.
The kids were adorable and entertaining, and the interactions between Jon and Kate seemed unguarded, fresh, often amusing, and sometimes provocative.”
In June 2009, Jon and Kate’s separation-announcement episode reached a record-breaking 10.6 million viewers. Tabloids widely covered their subsequent messy divorce and gruelling 14-year-long custody battle.
Jon and Kate’s split upended the family’s dynamic, ending the original show and requiring the children to choose sides. Despite the family’s lasting estrangement, for the most part, they all lead relatively normal lives today.
During and directly following the show, matriarch Kate published four books, landed a celebrity spot on Dancing With the Stars, and appeared on the cover of countless magazines. In 2019, she also got a TLC dating show, Kate Plus Date, which aired for a single season.
On the home front, Kate had primary custody of six of the children. In 2021, she sold the family’s home and 23-acre Pennsylvania estate and moved to North Carolina. Since then, she has returned to a career in nursing but maintains public appearances through Instagram and TikTok, where she posts regularly.
In 2025, she also revealed via Instagram that she’s been dating her former bodyguard, Steve Neild, with whom Jon accused her of having an affair. The two have a dog.
In the years after Jon made back-to-back headlines with cheating rumours, the divorce, and the custody battle, his love life and relationship with his children remained his main focus.
Following the Gosselins’ public split, Jon (32 at the time) briefly dated RHONY’s Hailey Glassman (then 22). Recently, Glassman said on an episode of RHONY that their relationship informed her dating practices and relationships moving forward (she’s proudly in a self-proclaimed lavender marriage).
After publicly splitting from long-time girlfriend Colleen Conrad in 2021, Jon married Stephanie Lebo in 2025. Only two of his kids attended the wedding.
Jon reportedly has not had contact with most of his children for many years, though he won custody of Collin and Hannah in 2018 and the two lived with him full time until they turned 18. Though he has reportedly considered making a reality-TV comeback, Jon currently makes a living as a celebrity DJ.
Twins Mady and Cara chose to live with their mother until they both left home for college. Mady graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in textual studies and film-and-screen studies, while Cara studied mathematics and economics at Fordham University.
Both girls have mostly maintained low profiles, though Mady confirmed in 2023 that she and Collin don’t speak.
Four of the sextuplets chose to live with their mother following the split and reportedly haven’t had contact with their father in years. In 2021, the four of them moved with Kate to North Carolina, where they all graduated from high school.
Now they largely lead private lives: Leah posts videos of herself on TikTok, but otherwise, glimpses of them are mainly seen through Kate’s social media pages.
Hannah is one of the two sextuplets who chose to live with their father, but she still talks to her siblings. While she has stood by her brother Collin against their mother in the past, Hannah is now actively attempting to mend her relationship with Kate. She’s in her senior year at York College of Pennsylvania.
While the show was filming, Collin often rebelled against the production by acting detached rather than performing for the cameras. According to Collin, his resistance made him a threat to his mother’s show and image, so she started to target him.
He claims he was treated differently than his siblings, was often physically separated from the others during meals and custodial visits, and was pulled from school to be homeschooled by Kate.
At age 11, Collin was medicated and institutionalised for mental health and behavioural issues, and he remained at the facility for nearly two years. Following his release, he went to live with his dad and Hannah.
He enlisted in the Marine Corps after graduating high school and started recruit training in 2023, but was discharged shortly after due to his history of institutionalisation.
He later received an independent neuropsychology evaluation that reportedly found he does not have autism, bipolar disorder, or obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Since 2023, he has vocally claimed he had a traumatic childhood and resents his mother as a result. Collin previously said he hadn’t seen or spoken to most of his siblings since 2016. However, he recently said he hopes he’ll get through to them with his memoir.
On October 13, Collin released a memoir alleging years of emotional and physical abuse from his mother.
Among the most concerning allegations are his claims that Kate for two years forced him to sleep and spend significant parts of the day alone in a dark, unfinished basement; yanked him by the ear until it became purple and swollen;
once zip-tied his hands and feet and medicated and institutionalised him for years without visitation.
On his book tour, Collin also discussed his estrangement from most of his siblings and the negative effects of child fame on his life. In an interview with ABC News, Collin said, “I was difficult because I was the only one out of my siblings who pushed back against filming and that whole façade that my mom spent years building.”
He continued, “The truth is that my siblings and I were being overworked; we were being exploited. There were just no adults to say, ‘Maybe this isn’t okay for children.’”
The memoir and the press surrounding it have led people to reevaluate the once-beloved show that allegedly overlooked these horrors and represented the family as picture perfect.
Since Collin first publicly accused his mother of abuse in 2023, Kate has been steadfast in her denial of the allegations, citing her son’s “multiple psychiatric diagnoses”, “distorted perception of reality”, and “history of unpredictable behaviour and violent tendencies”.
However, since the release of Collin’s memoir, Kate has yet to make any official statements. Thus far, her side of the story can only be pieced together from vague interactions in her TikTok comments section.
In response to one fan’s comment, Kate wrote, “I know rational, logical people, or anyone who has dealt with mental illness, understands what’s going on here :).”
She also liked a fan comment that said, “He will regret all of these actions someday, but as long as he is encouraged and enabled by other dysfunctional and mentally ill people, nothing will change.” She responded, “Exactly! I had nothing to do with it, except for consent because it was medically necessary.”
Jon has publicly expressed support for Collin and his allegations against Kate. “I am incredibly proud of my son’s heartbreaking memoir and his mission to help other victims of abuse,” Jon told Us Magazine.
“Also, let me be very clear: If you continue to falsely label my son Collin as ‘mentally ill’, you will be held accountable … Repeating false claims about his mental health is damaging to his reputation, his credibility, and his future …
The days of using mental health to discredit and silence my son are over.”
In a 2023 episode of Vice TV’s Dark Side of the 2000s, Hannah backed up parts of Collin’s claims, saying, “He would be separated from us. He would not be allowed to come outside and play with us. He would eat dinner at different times than us.”
Following the airing of that episode, Mady made a rare statement via her Instagram Story, taking a strong stance against her brother.
She wrote, “I do not owe my allegiance to any person(s) who has physically threatened me and every member of my immediate family (some incidents as recent as last year) … For me, there is no further conversation to be had about rebuilding relationships with anyone in my life after reaching the point of physical violence and hate speech. I cannot speak any further on why Collin has done these things, just that I have witnessed them.”
None of the Gosselin siblings have made public statements following the release of Collin’s memoir.
The father-son duo, along with Colin’s sister Hannah, will appear in a documentary on Netflix later this year. On October 21, the streamer announced plans to revisit the family drama in a documentary from producers Mike Gasparro and Julia Willoughby Nason, who worked on Death of the Pastor’s Wife and American Murder: Gabby Petito.
