The co-parenting relationship with Kopelman has been described in positive terms by both parties. They have said, in various interviews, that they consider themselves a family, even though they are no longer a couple — that their shared commitment to their daughters is the organizing principle of their relationship now that the marriage has ended. This kind of functional co-parenting is not the default outcome of divorce. It requires ongoing choice and ongoing effort, and the fact that Drew and Will Kopelman appear to have managed it suggests something about the intentionality both have brought to parenthood.
It is worth noting, in this context, that Drew Barrymore’s choice to divorce and co-parent rather than to remain in a marriage that was not working represents the kind of decision that is only available to people with legal and financial independence — people who are not dependent on a marriage partner for basic security. The emancipation that she sought at fourteen, and the decades of professional work that followed it, had given her precisely that independence. The choices available to her as an adult were meaningfully different from what would have been available to her had she remained, legally and financially, in the structure she had grown up in.
This is not an argument for emancipation as a solution to troubled family situations. It is an observation about the relationship between legal and financial independence and the ability to make choices about one’s own life. Drew Barrymore built that independence. It enabled her to be the parent she wanted to be, and to make the decisions that being that parent required.