Anarchy at home
LONDON: Long before his wife filed for divorce – and informed the world he was a bad dad – Brad Pitt boasted about his unique take on fatherhood.
“I beat my kids regularly. It seems to do the trick,” he said in 2011. “And I deprive them of meals.”
He was, of course, joking. Indeed, as Pitt ruefully admitted on a talk show, an early attempt to impose boundaries on adopted son Pax, then aged five, by putting him into a “time out” chair had ended with the child deliberately wetting himself in retaliation.
With six children – three adopted, Maddox, 15, Pax, 12, Zahara, 11, and three biological, Shiloh, 10, and twins Knox and Vivienne, 8 – and a globe-trotting lifestyle, there has never been anything remotely conventional about the Brangie Bunch.
Aside from regular visits to war zones and refugee camps, which Angelina thinks is good for their development, daily domestic life has been chaotic.
There has long been a retinue of six nannies – one per child – chosen to reflect the unique heritage of each.
Then there is a chef (Angelina does not cook, saying the only food she can prepare is a bowl of Cheerios cereal) and tutor, taking the core childcare team to eight.
Earlier this year, Angelina put her brother, James Haven, in charge of the children – she trusts James and has always paid him 10 percent of her earnings – and the number of nannies is said to have dropped to a more modest two, plus tutors.
There has never been anything approaching formal school for any of them.
Sources indicate that Maddox, whom Angelina boasts has a very high IQ, attended one of the Lycée Français
schools in LA about five years ago, but it didn’t last.
Now it seems Angelina is keen to get them all into school for the first time – particularly now the older ones are teenagers. She feels they could do with a bit of “socialisation”.
By Pitt’s own account, this is a good idea. He compared the atmosphere in the family home with One Flew Over The
Cuckoo’s Nest, which is set in a mental institution.
“Numerous former nannies have given hair-raising accounts of their time looking after the children. An unnamed former nanny told In Touch celebrity magazine the brood were constantly swearing and fighting, with Maddox and Pax, having “bad tempers”. She added that Maddox, then nine, drank wine and drove a car on their property.
It was said the children listened more to Pitt for discipline. The nanny added: “They have no control over the kids. In the middle of the night they run down the hallway waking their parents up and trying to get into their beds.”
Other sources said raising the children had been a huge challenge and Pitt had been known to yell and try to impose rules, while Angelina never did.
People who have spent time with the family say that chaos reigns wherever they are.
Indeed the decade of Bradand-Angie family life has certainly included more movement than stability. Aside from their house in LA, they have settled in New Orleans and in France, rented houses in London and called a myriad hotels a temporary home.
And perhaps most peculiar of all – from time to time Mum and Dad would leave just to get away from it all.
Brad said that when he and Angelina wanted time alone, their only option was to check into a hotel.