Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner proved their co-parenting skills were firmly intact as they escorted daughter Violet to an urgent care clinic in Los Angeles on Tuesday. The 20-year-old Yale student was seen hobbling into the medical center while leaning heavily on both of her famous parents for support.
Affleck, 53, kept an arm wrapped protectively around Violet as she clung to him on the walk inside, while Garner, 54, hurried alongside them to help steady their eldest child. Violet, who has spoken about a post-viral condition in 2019 and still uses face masks as a precaution, appeared to be having trouble walking on her own during the outing.
Later, she emerged from the urgent care center on crutches, with Affleck and Garner staying firmly by her side every careful step of the way. The former couple - who split in 2018 but have remained famously close while raising their three children, Violet, Fin, 17, and Samuel, 14 - appeared united in concern as they helped their daughter through the apparent health scare.
The moment came just two weeks after Violet made a rare appearance without her face mask during a relaxed family outing while home from college. She was joined by her younger brother Samuel, as well as her mother, as the trio stopped for ice cream at Sweet Rose Creamery inside the Brentwood Country Mart, not far from the family's Los Angeles home.
Affleck and Garner first met in 2004 while promoting Pearl Harbor, before rekindling their connection on the set of Daredevil, where their off-screen chemistry quickly became as widely discussed as the film itself. They married in 2005 in a low-key Caribbean ceremony and went on to become one of Hollywood's most photographed couples, regularly spotted at school runs, sporting events and red-carpet outings with their children.
Despite announcing their separation in 2015 and finalising their divorce in 2018, the pair have remained closely aligned as co-parents, often reuniting for family occasions and milestones. The sighting also comes amid renewed reflection from Garner on the realities of raising three children across two households following her split from Affleck.
Speaking to host Charlotte Owen on Bustle's One Nightstand YouTube series, Garner discussed trying to strike a balance between instilling a 'conscientious upbringing' and a sense of 'appreciation'. 'And I think my kids' dad does too. Especially when your kids grow up in two separate households, I become mom and dad and he becomes dad and mom,' she said. 'You kind of can't help it, right? Because you don't have the benefit of both sides of the yin and yang being in the same house. There's a little bit of loss in that, but there's also something gained in that. You also just learn. It's made me let go and not focus so much on bringing up.'
In a separate interview with Marie Claire UK, Garner opened up about the breakdown of her marriage, describing it as 'hard.' 'You have to be smart about what you can and can't handle, and I could not handle what was out there,' she admitted. 'The fact of it is what was hard. The actual breaking up of a family was what was hard. Losing a true partnership and friendship was what was hard.' She added that prioritizing her children never felt like a sacrifice, despite her Hollywood career: 'It definitely shaped the jobs I chose, in a big way.'
Meanwhile, Garner's relationship with burger executive John Miller has continued quietly for seven years, while Affleck's subsequent marriage to Jennifer Lopez ended in 2024 after two years. Affleck has previously reflected on the difficulty of divorce and co-parenting, saying in a 2020 appearance on Good Morning America: 'I didn't want to get divorced, I didn't want to be a divorced person, I really didn't want to be a split family with my children. It upset me because it meant I wasn't who I thought I was and that was so painful and so disappointing. In myself. When you have children with somebody, you're connected to them forever. And I'm very lucky she [Garner] is the mother of my children. I'm very grateful and respectful of her. Our marriage didn't work, and that's difficult. Both of us really believe that it's important for kids to see their parents respect one another and get along, whether they're together or not.'
