Jennifer Lopez Opens Up About Her 'Non-Traditional Family'

By ABC News May 29, 2013

Actress, dancer, producer and singer Jennifer Lopez is a traditional superstar in every sense of the word.

But when it comes to raising her 5-year-old twins, Emme and Max, with ex-husband Marc Anthony, Lopez admits she is anything but traditional.

"I am a non-traditional family," Lopez, 43, told ABC News' Nick Watt. "Me being a single mom, their dad doesn't live at home with them. They have three stepbrothers from two moms…that's not traditional."

Lopez split from Anthony, her third husband, in July 2011, when Max and Emme were three. She is now dating her backup dancer and choreographer, Casper Smart, who, at 25, is 18 years her junior. The couple is often sighted together with Max and Emme, but when it comes to tying the knot, Lopez told Watt that won't happen "anytime soon."

The chance to put another non-traditional family in the spotlight - and to give her twins and other kids a family that looked like theirs a place on TV - is what motivated the already busy star to add another project to her resume: She is executive producing "The Fosters," a new drama on ABC Family about a multi-ethnic family of foster and biological kids being raised by two moms.

"Do I want my children to feel weird about that? No I don't," Lopez said of raising her kids in a single-parent household. "So putting a show like this one to me is, look, there is no perfect [of] what family is supposed to be."

"It's about love and hat's what I constantly remind myself of because I kind of let society get inside my head, 'Oh, it shouldn't be like this. I did this, I did that. I failed,'" she said. "And it's like, no. They're happy, they're healthy, they're loved more than anything in the world and they're going to be fine. I want them to know that."

The show, starring Teri Polo and Sherri Saum as the moms, features one biological child, an adopted set of twins and a teenager the couple takes in as a foster child. It's a far cry from "The Cosby Show" and "The Brady Bunch"-type sitcoms that Lopez herself watched as a kid.

"Definitely the shows I grew up with were not like this," she said. "This really has base themes that are important, which is family equals love, a place where you are accepted, completely, loved unconditionally, protected."

Though Lopez said she played a hand in developing the show, with a new album out and twins to raise, don't expect to see her on the small screen anytime soon.

"I feel the show stands on its own," she said of a possible cameo role. "Of course, I'll do whatever I can to make sure people know it's out there and they watch it, but is a cameo the perfect way to do that? Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. Whatever happens, I'm up for."

"The Fosters" premieres on ABC Family, which is owned by The Walt Disney Co., the parent company of ABC News, Monday, June 3, at 8 p.m. EST/9 p.m. CST.