From having a sibling speak out, to having to go on TikTok Live to defend their mothering, it’s been a busy week for the stars/former stars of the Teen Mom franchise! In an effort to bring you up-to-date on the latest Teen Mom: The Next Chapter, Teen Mom OG and Teen Mom 2 news, The Ashley brings you the Teen Mom News Pile.
Here are some of the major (and minor but interesting) ‘Teen Mom’-related things that happened over the last week or so…
Jenelle Evans’ Sister Ashleigh Says She’s “Distancing” Herself From Jenelle’s Drama But Says She Would “Take” Jenelle’s Son Jace In If Asked
Jenelle’s estranged sister Ashleigh is speaking out about the recent drama surrounding the former ‘Teen Mom 2’ star and her son Jace. As The Ashley told you last week, Jace is no longer living in Florida with his father, Andrew Lewis, despite Jenelle doing a string of interviews last week stating that the 15-year-old was thriving in his new living situation. After bouncing around North Carolina for a few days, Jace is now back in Las Vegas, living with Jenelle, although Ashleigh said she’d be willing to let the boy stay with her, if he wanted to.
In a TikTok video posted earlier this week, Ashleigh— who has not gotten along with Jenelle for years— gave her thoughts on the Jace/Jenelle situation.
“No comment on my family or Jenelle,” she wrote. “I will say more lies and drama. All I can do is laugh and remember that you can’t choose your family. Sometimes it’s best to just distance yourself and get away. Find your own happiness away from [their] lies, deception and drama. I need to keep [quiet] for now until I get the greenlight to go back on social media.”
(Ashley did not specify who exactly she was waiting on to give her this “greenlight.”)
As The Ashley told you, Ashleigh and Jenelle’s mom Barbara told cops on May 20 that she was in the middle of a “family crisis” when she was pulled over right by Jenelle’s North Carolina home The Land. In her TikTok video, Ashleigh also mentioned that it’s “been a stressful few weeks.”
In the comment section of the video, several fans mentioned Jace, and one even asked Ashleigh if she would be willing to let her nephew live with her.
“Ashley, if asked, would you be willing to take Jace? It seems he keeps getting passed around and needs a stable home. I feel so sorry for that kid,” the person wrote.
“I can’t comment on my family or certain situations to protect Jace. I would take him in,” Ashleigh said. “I’m just hoping he can use his voice someday to speak his truth now that he’s 16 now.”
(Technically, Jace is 15. He turns 16 in August.)
In the past, Ashleigh has been critical of her sisters’ parenting, particularly of how Jenelle has handled situations involving Jace. After Jace was temporarily removed from Jenelle’s home in October (after he got into a nasty fight with the former Teen Mom star), Ashleigh slammed Jenelle.
“I feel like the system has failed all these children,” Ashleigh said in a video posted to TikTok in October. “And nothing is ever done about it. Unfortunately, it’s just very sad. It’s just like a repeated cycle… It really, really bothers me because it really hurts my heart for all of these children, especially Jace,” she said. “I was very close to him. I used to babysit him when he was a baby.
Jenelle has yet to respond to Ashleigh’s latest comments.
Amber Portwood Disputes Claims She’s a “Deadbeat” Mom; Says She “Changed Her Voice” So She Would Sound Classier on ‘Teen Mom’
Amber recently fought back against fans’ claims that she’s a deadbeat mom.
During one of her many (many) recent TikTok Lives, Amber got angry after she was accused of not financially taking care of her kids. (As ‘Teen Mom’ fans know, Amber shares daughter Leah with Gary Shirley and son James with Andrew Glennon. Neither of Amber’s kids live with her.)
“How about this: I spend $3500 on my son every motherf**kin’ month!” Amber yelled. “I paid for his Jujitsu; I paid for him to go to nature. I paid for him to go rock climbing. And you know what? He’s excelling in every single thing. Seven years old…he lives in California [and is] so damn happy! He’s so happy with his mama!”
Although Amber is estranged from her daughter Leah, she is still responsible for paying Gary child support, as Leah is only 16. According to their custody agreement from 2016, Amber is responsible for paying Gary $1200 a month in child support. Last year, Gary caused a ruckus with Amber when he claimed that she owed him years’ worth of child support payments. Amber, however, has disputed Gary’s claims, stating she has “receipts” for payments made to Gary for child support.
The conversation then turned to Amber’s rocky relationship with Leah.
“I have nothing to say except what I have already said to my child, which I have done multiple times, off-camera, because of a certain person always wants to get paid,” she said of Gary. “And I don’t give a damn, which is why I left [the show]. You guys, stop. I left because there were so many lies. You guys have no clue.”
Amber proceeded to explain to her friend why she is so hated online.
“MTV decided to sit there and only show the most-negative s**t ever!” Amber eloquently stated, before admitting that fans should have used the early episodes of ‘Teen Mom’ as a cautionary tale of what not to do.
“People should have watched that, used their brains, and said, ‘I’m never gonna do what that chick did,’ and that’s all you should have taken from that,” she said.
During the same Live, Amber also revealed that she changed aspects of herself to appear “more classier” (IYKYK) while appearing on ‘Teen Mom.’
“I don’t know if you know this but I changed my voice for the show,” Amber told a random person she was Live with on TikTok.
Amber— who, in a 2019 episode of ‘Teen Mom OG’ randomly expressed on-camera her desire for people to “think of me as being dainty”— made the change in her speech so she would sound more educated and less hateful.
“I started to change how I talked,” Amber said. “To talk more properly.”
Ummm….
Amber then told her TikTok pal that she cleaned up her speech for the cameras because she knew it was making her look bad.
“I just knew I was goin’ somewhere evil with them words!” Amber said. “Them words were really fallin’ to everybody…I had to learn to just…”
Amber’s pal stated that she didn’t think she’d be able to have cameras in her face all the time, capturing her every [possibly uneducated] word, to which Amber admitted she didn’t handle well.
“Apparently I didn’t handle it!” the couched one cackled. “I ended up getting in trouble because of crazy stuff I said!”
After that, Amber randomly started babbling almost incoherently, as you can see in the video posted below.
Javi Marroquin Says He & Wife Lauren Are “Stronger Than Ever” After Seeking Individual & Couples Therapy
Days before Javi Marroquin took his recent baby mama drama with ex-wife Kail Lowry to the interwebs, the former ‘Teen Mom 2’ dad opened up on social media about the steps he and his new wife Lauren Comeau took before giving their relationship another shot.
As fans know, Javi and Lauren tied the knot in April, nearly a year after welcoming daughter Maizee. The couple are also parents to son Eli, while Javi shares 11-year-old son Lincoln with Kail.
While Javi and Lauren seem to be thriving as a couple today, that wasn’t always the case. The two share a long history full of break-ups, make-ups, a broken engagement and a public cheating scandal. ‘Teen Mom 2’ fans likely remember Kail even throwing Javi under the bus years ago for inviting her to partake in some pumping at the WaWa gas station that didn’t involve gas. Javi and Lauren were also involved in a domestic dispute that ended with Javi calling the cops on Lauren in July 2021.
When asked during a recent Instagram Q&A if he and Lauren had turned to therapy to work through their past issues, Javi revealed that they both sought individual therapy for more than a year after calling it quits. Javi also said that once he and Lauren decided to rekindle their relationship, they dated for a year before moving back in together.
“We wanted to make sure it was right,” he explained, before sharing that he and Lauren also did couples therapy together. “[We’re] the strongest we’ve ever been and a lot of that is because of the individual work.”
As The Ashley previously told you, Javi sold his home and moved back in with Lauren in June 2023. Four months later, the pair got engaged for the second time and while they kept that news a secret from the public for a year, they announced in late 2023 that Lauren was pregnant with their second child.
Back in March, Javi (shockingly) reunited with his first wife to record an episode of her Barely Famous podcast, during which the exes discussed their coparenting relationship and revealed to listeners that Javi– who’s a recruiter in the United States Air Force Reserve– had been stationed in Virginia and would be moving out of Delaware this summer.
While most of the podcast episode focused on the coparenting of Lincoln, Javi also addressed his issue with Kail making jokes about their, um, “interactions” at the WaWa– interactions that allegedly went down while Lauren was pregnant with Eli– revealing that, while it’s funny for Kail, it causes “a lot of pain” between he and Lauren. As a result, Kail vowed to cease her petty petrol posting; however, she resumed making WaWa wisecracks a day or so after Javi’s Instagram Live rant.
Taylor Selfridge Hints at Split From Cory Wharton on Social Media
As rumors of Cory Wharton and Taylor Selfridge’s split continue to circulate on social media, Taylor took a moment to (kind of) address the situation on Snapchat recently, telling fans she appreciates those who are letting her “breathe” and not pressuring her to speak on what’s going on with her and Cory.
As The Ashley told you earlier this month, Taylor and the ‘Teen Mom: The Next Chapter’ dad have seeming split after eight years of dating and welcoming two children together– daughters Mila and Maya. (Cory is also a dad to daughter Ryder, whom he shares with Cheyenne Floyd.)
After suspicions of the MTV stars’ breakup began to ramp up on social media, Cory took to X to rant— and insist that he and Taylor had not parted ways because he cheated– as some fans had suspected– and later claimed that he and his long-term girlfriend had been having issues “WAY before” his recent trip to Bali.
While Taylor has yet to directly comment on the rumors, she took to Snapchat to explain why she hasn’t shared more details about her personal life with the public, before reminding fans that very little of her life is actually seen on TV.
“I really do appreciate the people that are just, like, letting me breathe, like, not breathing down my neck [and] trying to get answers from me,” she said, before going on to add that, because “we”– presumably her and Cory– are on TV, some people think she owes them certain access to her life.
“ … but, like, I don’t feel like my life is really on TV,” she continued in the video, which was reposted to Reddit. “Like, nobody really knows what goes down. You guys see the most on Snapchat … nobody actually knows basically anything. I mean, the show doesn’t even show even a freaking percentage of my life, like me specifically … .”
Taylor went on to claim that if she weren’t an influencer, she’d probably live an even more private life.
“I make money on social media, I’m an influencer, that’s what I have done for a living since I was 23 [after appearing on Are You The One],” she explained. “So yeah, I do have to be on social media, so I think that’s where people are like, ‘We want to know [what’s going on],’ but if this wasn’t how I made money and stuff, I would choose to be very private. That would be my life.”
While Cory has opted to stay (mostly) quiet on what’s really going on between him and Taylor, he posted a carousel of photos to Instagram this week that included a snapshot of family handprints in cement in which Taylor’s handprint was featured along with Cory’s and their children. It’s unclear, however, when the family handprint photo was taken.
Watch Taylor’s Snapchat video below.
