When news first broke that Arnold Schwarzenegger had fathered a child with his family’s housekeeper, it led to the end of his marriage to Maria Shriver.
Despite the scandal surrounding his birth, Schwarzenegger said he never wanted his love child Joseph Baena to not feel welcome, and has been there to support his son during his milestones.
Read on to learn all about Schwarzenegger’s five children, including the four he shares with Shriver; Katherine, Christina, Patrick and Christopher.
Watch the video above.
Want the official inside scoop on MAFS, unfiltered and unseen? Watch After The Dinner Party here
Arnold Schwarzenegger was born in Austria on July 30, 1947. He started weight training as a teenager and won his first competition and won Mr Europe at 19.
By the time he met Shriver in 1977, he had been crowned Mr Olympia multiple times and competed in the Olympics as a powerlifter and weightlifter.
He was introduced to Shriver, a member of the famed Kennedy clan, at the Robert F Kennedy Tennis Tournament in New York. Shriver and her cousin, Caroline Kennedy, reportedly invited Schwarzenegger to a party at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, later that evening.
The married on April 26, 1986, in Hyannis, Massachusetts, after nearly nine years of dating, by which time Shriver was a respected news anchor who had worked for CBS and NBC, and he had started his acting career with roles in Conan the Barbarian, its sequel Conan the Destroyer and The Terminator.
READ MORE: All about Jude Law’s seven children to four mothers
READ MORE: How Jim Carrey’s big break ended his marriage
READ MORE: Timeline of Kyle and Jackie O bust-up
Katherine
Their first child, Katherine Eunice Schwarzenegger was born on December 13, 1989, in Los Angeles.
As a child, she reportedly suffered from body image problems, which led her to write her first book while still a student at University of Southern California.
Rock What You’ve Got: Secrets to Loving Your Inner and Outer Beauty from Someone Who’s Been There and Back described her battle with body image and encouraged young women to build confidence and positive self-image. It became a New York Times bestseller on its release in 2010.
After graduating, she wrote her second book, I Just Graduated… Now What?, which was described as a “survival guide” for college grads.
In 2017, she added a children’s book, Maverick and Me, based on the rescue and adoption of her own dog of the same name.
Her fourth book, The Gift of Forgiveness: Inspiring Stories from Those Who Have Overcome the Unforgivable, was released in 2020, and included the stories of 22 people, including the sister of Nicole Brown-Simpson.
Schwarzenegger met actor Chris Pratt at a church in Los Angeles in 2018. After a quick courtship, they married in June 2019 in Montecito, California.
They welcomed their first child, daughter Lyla, in 2020. Another daughter, Eloise, followed in 2022. Son Ford arrived in 2024.
She revealed on the Cat and Nat Unfiltered podcast in 2025 she is raising her children with the same parenting style as her father.
“My dad was very strict,” she said. “I was brought home from my semi-formal because I didn’t take my clothes out of the dryer and fold them and put them away.
“And I was always like, ‘This is terrible. How could you do this to us? Nobody has chores like this.’
“Now I’m like, we’re doing the same thing.”
For his part, Schwarzenegger said Katherine was a fantastic mother.
All the celebs you might not have realised are nepo babies
Christina
Christina Maria Aurelia Schwarzenegger was born in Los Angeles on July 23, 1991.
She was diagnosed with ADHD when she was five, and took medication throughout her high school and college years.
After school, she attended Georgetown University, earning a bachelor’s degree in English before studying interior architecture at New York’s famed Parsons School of Design.
After graduating, Schwarzenegger worked as an editor at Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle brand Goop for three years.
She is a founding member of the Special Olympics Founder’s Council, which honours the legacy of her grandmother Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who founded the Special Olympics and was an advocate for people with intellectual disabilities.
Schwarzenegger and her mother produced the 2018 documentary Take Your Pills, which explored the overuse of ADHD medication such as Adderall.
In 2020, Schwarzenegger took to Facebook to wish his daughter a happy birthday.
“Christina! I am proud of you every day, I love you with all of my heart, and spending time with you is one of my favourite things to do. I can’t wait to see what you accomplish this year.”
Christina sometimes accompanies her dad to premieres but has not posted or spoken publicly about him.
Patrick
Patrick Arnold Shriver Schwarzenegger was born on September 18, 1993, in Los Angeles.
He showed an interest in acting as a child, even earning a small role in the 2006 film The Benchwarmers.
He appeared in a number of films while earning a business degree at University of Southern California, including Stuck in Love and Grown Ups 2.
He won his first leading role opposite Bella Thorne in the 2018 romance Midnight Sun.
The following year he appeared in the horror flick Daniel Isn’t Real and in 2021 starred in the Netflix’s film Moxie.
More recently, he appeared in The Staircase opposite Colin Firth and Toni Collette, and played Saxon Ratliff in season three of The White Lotus.
In 2020 he told US Today that he recalled visiting his dad on movie sets as a child.
“He’s really proud of me,” he said. “Both my parents are proud of me, and they’re so supportive.”
However, he did admit he considered using a different last name when starting out as an actor.
Speaking at Variety’s Actors on Actors event alongside his dad, he said he used to worry people would think he only got acting jobs because of his parents, a view he said was shared by The White Lotus creator Mike White.
It led his dad to joke, “Well, I’m glad that you kept the name, because now I can take credit. My son – the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree!”
Schwarzenegger dated singer Miley Cyrus from 2014 to 2015, before moving on with model Abby Champion. After eight years together, they got engaged in 2023 and married at a ranch in Idaho on September 6, 2025.
Christopher
Christopher Sargent Shriver Schwarzenegger was born on September 27, 1997, in Los Angeles.
After school, he attended the University of Michigan and graduated in 2020.
His father marked his graduation on Instagram with a photoshopped image after the ceremony was cancelled due to COVID.
“Christopher, you are a champion and I love you,” he wrote. “I know your graduation from Michigan wasn’t the big celebration you dreamed about for years, but walking across a stage isn’t what makes me so proud of you: it’s your compassion, your hard work, your vision, your critical thinking, and your selflessness that make me burst with pride. I can’t wait to watch you keep climbing and succeeding.”
Schwarzenegger took to Instagram again the following year to wish his son a happy birthday.
“Between your boxing classes, your weightlifting classes, your stretching classes, your cycling classes, and on and on, I can’t even keep up with you!” he wrote. “I love you and I’m proud of you every day!”
In the years since, Christopher has stayed largely out of the spotlight. In 2025, he re-emerged having lost a large amount of weight.
At the time, Schwarzenegger told The Times how he had tried to help Christopher make healthy choices during his younger years.
“We just kept introducing healthy foods. We introduced him always to the gym and all of that kind of stuff,” he said.
“I could never go and say to him, ‘You’re overweight’.
“And then, out of nowhere, he decided that he wanted to be lean. And now he is. So that is, of course, fantastic, the self-discipline and the self-motivation. I always felt one day it will have to come from him – and it did.”
Joseph Baena
Joseph Baena was born on October 2, 1997 – just five days after the birth of his half-brother, Christopher.
But it would be 15 years before the world learned that Schwarzenegger had fathered another child with the family’s housekeeper of 20 years, Mildred Baena.
Schwarzenegger later admitted he slept with Baena in 1996, which resulted in her becoming pregnant, but claimed he did not realise Joseph was his son until many years later when he noticed a resemblance.
While he started supporting his son financially, not even his wife knew about his love child until a media report in 2011.
He and Shriver were having marriage counselling when she reportedly asked about the rumours.
Schwarzenegger spoke about the moment in the 2023 Netflix series Arnold.
“One day, the counsellor said, ‘Today, Maria wants to be very specific about something. She wants to know if you’re the father of Joseph’,” he recalled.
“I thought my heart stopped. And then I told the truth. ‘Yes, Maria. Joseph is my son’. She was obviously crushed by that.”
Schwarzenegger said while his infidelity was a “major failure” on his part, he would not renounce his son.
For a daily dose of 9honey, subscribe to our newsletter here.
“It was wrong what I did. But I don’t want to make Joseph feel that he is not welcomed in this world – because he is very much welcomed in this world,” he said.
“I love him, and he has turned out to be an extraordinary young man.”
The revelation marked the end of his marriage and also changed Joseph’s life.
He told Men’s Health he “very vividly” remembered the day the news broke when he was 13.
“I was in the eighth grade. Fifth or sixth period. And I get called out of class to leave,” he said. “My mum’s there, and she’s like, ‘We gotta go – everyone is finding out about you and who your father is’.”
Baena said it took time to build a relationship with his dad. After being bullied throughout school for being overweight, he later followed in his father’s footsteps and took up bodybuilding.
Schwarzenegger took to Instagram in 2019 to wish Joseph a happy birthday.
“Watching you graduate from college this year and seeing you follow your passions has been amazing. You are a fantastic son, and I can’t wait for our next training session. I love you.”
Then just this week, Joseph won his first bodybuilding competition.
He is also a business graduate and real estate agent, and has appeared on the US Dancing with the Stars.
Baena told Men’s Health in 2022, “I’m happy about my relationship with my dad, but I’m more happy that I am finding joy in what I’m doing and that I’m doing exactly what I’ve always dreamed about”.
Sadly, while Baena is close to his dad, the same cannot be said for his four half-siblings.
They have reportedly kept their distance from their half-brother, excluding him from family events.
He was reportedly not invited to the weddings of either Katherine or Patrick.
And while all five of Schwarzenegger’s kids supported him at the 2025 premiere of his Netflix series FUBAR, he posed with Baena separately on the red carpet.
FOLLOW US ON WHATSAPP HERE: Stay across all the latest in celebrity, lifestyle and opinion via our WhatsApp channel. No comments, no algorithm and nobody can see your private details.
