Collin Gosselin Speaks Out About Estrangement From Mom Kate Gosselin

Collin Gosselin has spoken out about what led to his strained relationship with mom Kate Gosselin. In an interview with Vice for the upcoming documentary Dark Side of the 2000s, the 19-year-old son of Jon and Kate Gosselin of TLC’s Jon & Kate Plus 8 opened up about being estranged from his mother in recent years. Collin, along with his 19-year-old sister Hannah, lives with his dad Jon while his other siblings live with their mom.

Collin is one of the sextuplets Jon and Kate Gosselin welcomed in 2004 along with Joel, Aaden, Hannah, Leah, and Alexis. The six babies came three years after the couple welcomed twin girls Madelyn and Cara, now 22, and the entire family became the subjects of a hugely popular reality series on TLC from 2007 to 2017. Jon and Kate Gosselin divorced in 2009, and the show then became Kate Plus 8.

The 19-year-old told Vice in a clip from the new documentary that he felt as though he was treated differently than his siblings by his mother after his parents’ divorce. “I’m not going to say I was a perfect child. But I’d say my misbehaving was no different from my siblings,” he told Vice.

“I know my mother was going through a lot of things. I mean, a divorce, and plenty of different things that can’t be easy to go through. And, you know, I want to think that she needed someone to take out her anger and frustration on, and it was just kind of me. I was in the way and I was there. So, she chose me.”

Collin’s sister Hannah backed up her brother’s assertion that he was treated differently, saying he was “separated” from his siblings on a regular basis. “He would not get to come outside and play with us. He would eat dinner at different times than us,” Hannah said in the documentary clip. “I don’t think effort was made in the home to help him learn what behavior is acceptable and what behavior is not acceptable.”

According to Collin, the divorce and being in the public eye had a negative impact on his relationship with his mom. “I want to believe it was because of TV and what being in the public eye does to a family. I think it tore us apart,” Collin told Entertainment Tonight in an interview last November. “It gave us less time to actually be together as a family [and] more time to be in the public eye.”

Things got worse after Kate sent Collin to the Fairmont Behavioral Health Institute to deal with his “special needs” when he was 12 years old. He stayed there for three years. “Institution — [it was a] scary place, but I learned a lot about myself,” he told Entertainment Tonight in 2022. “I was in a dark place mentally. I think being in a place like that does more damage than it helps you.”

Since then, Collin and his mother have been estranged. “After being there, I didn’t have a relationship with her. Even before that, I don’t think we had much of a relationship because of TV and what being in the public eye did to our family. I think it tore us apart,” Collin told Entertainment Tonight.

Kate Gosselin has not publicly commented on her children’s claims in the upcoming Vice documentary and Romper’s request for comment was not immediately returned.