Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Emily Richardson | Celebrity | July 26, 2023
Kristen Bell is many things: actress, singer, game show host, controversial children’s book author, sloth-lover, and chronic oversharer re: her family. That last one probably garners Kristen the most headlines. Kristen and husband Dax Shepard have two daughters; Lincoln, 9, and Delta, 8. And, in my opinion, we know way too much about them. For example, their bathing rituals (Kristen’s a “big fan” of “waiting for the stink”), the fact that one of the girls still wore diapers at age 5, and their love of the non-alcohol beer brand O’Doul’s.
Kristen first outed her daughters as O’Douls drinkers back in 2020. She explained that Dax, a recovering alcoholic, drank a lot of it when their daughters were babies, so their girls see it as a “sentimental” beverage. “It makes them feel closer to their dad.” Kristen admitted that she’d probably “get a lot of flack” for this reveal, and, sure enough, she did. Critics pointed out that drinking O’Douls could get the girls used to the taste of beer, and that there’s still 0.4% of alcohol per can. Not that it’s possible to get drunk on O’Douls or any non-alcoholic beer. You’d have to shotgun like twenty of them in a row to even get a mild buzz (MATH).
Last fall, Kristen went on The Kelly Clarkson Show, and once again brought up her daughters’ love of O’Douls. Nobody clocked it. But, on Monday, the episode re-aired (summer re-runs), and, this time, her admission made headlines. Hey, it’s a slow news week!
Kristen tells Kelly that her kids have tried ordering non-alcoholic beers at restaurants before. She says she had to tell them that “maybe we just keep that for home time.” She also repeats the explanation that her kids associate O’Douls with their dad:
“He’s a recovering addict, but he likes non-alcoholic beer, so he’d pop one open, he’d have our oldest daughter on his chest, and we’d walk and look at the sunset. So, as a baby, she was pawing at it, and sometimes she’d suck the rim of it. So I think it feels to her like something special, something daddy, something family.”
Kristen’s explanation gets a big applause from The Kelly Clarkson Show audience, and Kelly laughs, adding that it’s “so amazing” when certain habits seem normal for families at home but don’t translate to public life. Kristen replies, “But then I’m also sort of like … you can judge me if you want. I’m not doing anything wrong. That’s your problem!”
Here’s the clip:
The ironic part about Kristen’s TMI approach to family life is that she and Dax were the celebrity parents who led the #NoKidsPolicy movement against the #pedorazzi taking pics of their kids. They also make a point to not share photos of their daughters’ faces on social media. Their reasoning is that Lincoln and Delta didn’t choose a life in the spotlight, so why should they be put on display? I respect that. But maaaybe we pick and choose which mom-anecdotes we share on talk shows, so our daughters don’t get made fun of at school for drinking beer, wearing diapers, and not taking regular baths?
