Inside J.Lo's Relationship With Her Son Maximilian

You ever meet folks who just seem naturally good at everything they do? Jennifer Lopez is one of those people. The superstar, who got her start as a dancer, has gone on to worldwide musical success, appeared in dozens of motion pictures, and even landed one of the most eligible single dads on the market when she began dating Alex Rodriguez in 2017. And if all that weren't enough, it turns out she's a pretty fantastic mom too.

J.Lo shares twins Emme Maribel and Maximilian David Muñiz with ex-husband Marc Anthony. And while we saw Lopez onstage with her daughter at the Super Bowl in 2020, a little less is known about her relationship with Max. But in scouring J.Lo's social media and watching her daily interactions with her son, you'll immediately learn she's as loving and supportive a mother as any in the world. And even with a schedule that's more demanding than most of us can imagine, Lopez still makes being Max's (and Emme's) mom her top priority, and here is the evidence why.

Much like the childless never forget to post pictures of their happy hour choices on February 22 (National Margarita Day, duh), so too do moms always make sure to celebrate their male children on September 28, AKA National Sons Day. Jennifer Lopez certainly didn't forget, as she posted a loving Instagram tribute to Maximilian Muñiz with a caption saying, "When I see your face there's not a thing that I would change...Cause boy you're amazing just the way you are."

The video, which has thus far avoided litigation from Bruno Mars, shows J.Lo sitting at what appears to be the dinner table with Max, as he runs through baseball signs he's managed to memorize. "This is more of a test of memory for me," Max says after nailing every sign his mom rattles off. An off-screen voice, which sounds like J.Lo's husband, Alex Rodriguez, offers him $100 for getting them all right. It's a touching family moment that makes us realize moms are moms, no matter how many albums they've sold.

Having a new man hanging around your mom all the time is tough on any son, even if that man happens to be a 14-time all-star and three-time American League MVP. But Jennifer Lopez is a caring, considerate mom above all else, and talks regularly with Maximilian Muñiz about his relationship with the other man in her life. She told Oprah Winfrey during her 2020 Vision: Your Life in Focus motivational speaking tour that she'd had a conversation with Max about his feelings on Alex Rodriguez, and they were overwhelmingly positive. "He said something like, 'Alex is the only one who ever doesn't get mad at me,'" Lopez said during the interview, later recounted on Entertainment Tonight. 

J.Lo went on to divulge some of her everyday family life, admitting Max is the one most frequently in trouble because he constantly knocks things over around the house. "Alex had this amazing patience with him," she continued, saying both Max and his sister "really like him."

Imagine you're going to see your kid play Flying Monkey #4 in their school's production of The Wizard of Oz. Then right before the show, this couple walks in and sits down right in front of you. And the dude's head is big. Like "Did you play baseball in the mid-2000s" big, so now you have crane your neck around him. Then just as your neck is getting used to the pain — around the time the house lands on the Wicked Witch of the East — the woman holds up her phone to record the little munchkin singing, "She's really most sincerely dead!" and now you can't see anything. You spend the rest of the performance in silent resentment, muttering, "Who do these people think they are, Jay-Z and Beyoncé?" 

The next morning, neck still sore, you turn on Today and see a video that looks a lot like last night's Wizard of Oz show, and you realize the cell phone that was blocking your view was recording something now on national TV. And you were pretty close in your assessment of who these people thought they were. 

Yep, in February 2020, Jennifer Lopez shared a clip of her son performing in his school's production of The Wizard of Oz, and it was pretty adorable. "The littlest munchkin," she wrote on Instagram. "#proudmama."

If you sat looking at your save the dates for May 23, 2020 with a tear running from your eye, know you're not alone. Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez were set to tie the knot that day too, according to Glamour, after he proposed to her on vacation in March of 2019. But as Lopez revealed on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, "We'll see what happens now.... I really don't know what's gonna happen now as far as dates or anything like that."

One thing J.Lo does know: who the person walking her down the aisle will be. Before the pandemic, the former In Living Color fly girl told Entertainment Tonight that Maximilian Muñiz would be the one giving her away. At the time, she added she didn't have any "firm plans" as to where or when the wedding would be. And nothing has been said publicly to improve the status of that statement.

As all of us who've felt guilty for skipping a day on the elliptical and eating pasta were made painfully aware during the 2020 Super Bowl, Jennifer Lopez celebrated her 50th birthday in 2019. But when you look like that with half a century and two kids behind you, who's counting? 

J.Lo commemorated the occasion at Gloria Estefan's Miami mansion, where according to TooFab, the Monster-in-Law star was serenaded by Ashanti, Fat Joe, and DJ Khaled. Although, if it was anything like literally every other DJ Khaled performance, it probably wasn't so much serenading as a lot of yelling, "You da BEST!"

The talk of the night, however, was Lopez's children, who both contributed musical numbers to the revue. Emme Muñiz was seen on designer Michael Costello's Instagram stories singing Diana Ross' "Do You Know Where You're Going To," before doing her own take on "Hard Knock Life" with a couple of friends. Maximilian Muñiz also got into the musical spirit, doing a cut from Hamilton's "My Shot," which garnered him a standing ovation from the star-studded crowd.

Like so many families who were forced to spend "quality time" together during the height of quarantine in the spring of 2020, Jennifer Lopez learned a lot about her pre-teens, thanks to her newfound spare time. In a cover story for WSJ Magazine, the Selena star said she enjoyed being home with Maximilian and Emme Muñiz, and that it gave her a chance to discover the parts of their lives they enjoyed and the parts they did not. "It was just a real eye-opener and a reassessment, to really take a look at what was working and what wasn't working," she revealed. "You thought you were doing OK, but you're rushing around and you're working and they're going to school and we're all on our devices." 

Lopez went on to say she felt like the kids had aged three years during lockdown, and they'd become little adults by learning that the lavish life they had could be taken away from them in an instant. "They've been given a dose of the real world," she Continued. "They had to grow up...so did we."

The Lopez-Rodriguez household is a blended family, with twins Emme and Max Muñiz joined by A-Rod's daughters Natasha and Ella Rodriguez. And the kids have gotten along swimmingly. People spoke with the couple for a cover story in 2018, where J-Rod gushed about how great their children get along. "I was so loving to his kids and he was so loving and accepting of mine, and they embraced each other right away," Lopez explained. Her baseball-playing beau added that the kids had become "best friends," and that is what kept the family grounded.

Like a lot of families, the Lopez/Rodriguez clan took the extended togetherness time that quarantine afforded to make dance routines for social media. This video, posted in March of 2020 to A-Rod's Insta, originally appeared on J. Lo's TikTok, and showed the family doing identical moves to the song "Something New." The former Seattle Mariners No. 1 pick leads off the parade, followed by his kids, the Muñiz twins, and J. Lo. Appropriately, he captioned it, "Worst to Best."