Chelsea DeBoer says she regrets letting her children appear on Teen Mom 2 and wishes she had shared less of their lives on camera. The 34-year-old, who now hosts HGTV’s Down Home Fab with her husband, Cole DeBoer, said the family takes a far different approach today.
“Looking back, I don’t know if I would choose that again at this point,” Chelsea said.
That shift matters because the DeBoers built much of their public life in front of viewers. Chelsea, who rose to stardom on MTV’s 16 and Pregnant before appearing on Teen Mom 2 from 2011 to 2019, said she and Cole, 37, are now trying to keep their four children out of the kind of exposure that came with that earlier chapter. The couple married in 2016, and she said the lesson of having older children now is to be selective about what they share.
“I think the biggest thing that we learned as we've gotten older and the kids have gotten older, is we really want to be selective on how we show the kids, how much we show the kids, and just really trying to protect them,” she said.
Chelsea said she was nervous moving from Teen Mom into HGTV even though she had already spent years on television. She described the earlier reality-TV experience as chaotic and at times negative, and said she trusted HGTV completely because the network wanted the family to come across in a better light.
“I was kind of nervous going into it, and I don't even know why. I think I had been on TV for so long before that, and it was such a different dynamic,” she said. “Like, reality TV such as 'Teen Mom' was very chaotic, you know, a little negative from time to time.”
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She added, “I was like, they want us to look good. They want people to love us, and they want to show our true personality.”
Her route to that HGTV opportunity was a little awkward. Chelsea said she sent a direct message to get a hosting chance, then deleted it immediately because she was embarrassed. After she and Cole landed the show, she said HGTV saved the message.
“I feel like that's so out of character for me to like, shoot my shot on things like that, but I was feeling brave that night, I guess,” she said.
Today, Chelsea says she is grateful to HGTV for respecting her children’s privacy while she and Cole build Down Home Fab. The regret she voiced about Teen Mom 2 is not about the attention itself but about what it cost her family, and she says that cost is something she will not repeat.
The couple’s three-step rule now is simple: show less, protect more, and let the children decide later how much of their lives they want the public to see.
