Mikayla Matthews’ Parents: Everything “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” Star Has Said About Her ‘Traumatic’ Childhood

NEED TO KNOW

• Mikayla Matthews was born in California and has six siblings

• Her parents got divorced when she was in the fourth grade

• ‘The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’ star has been open about her traumatic childhood and how she was sexually abused for years

Mikayla Matthews is still grappling with the lingering effects of her childhood trauma.

The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star was born in California. She and her six siblings were raised Mormon, but her childhood was not a happy one.

“I actually blocked out a lot of my childhood. I remember a lot of the trauma from growing up and like a lot of the bad things that I took from it. But I don’t remember a lot of like happy memories,” Mikayla said on The Squeeze podcast in May 2025. “I remember just, like, a lot of yelling.”

The reality star’s parents, whose names she has kept private, divorced when she was in fourth grade, prompting her move to Utah with her mother and siblings. In addition to being subjected to a “toxic” home life, Mikayla also experienced sexual abuse at a young age, a topic she has discussed on the hit Hulu series, which is now in its third season.

“I was sexually abused for about four or five years. I was young, so I didn’t exactly know what was going on,” she said on season 2 of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. “Halloween of 2015, I ended up going to my mom, and I feel like she didn’t believe me. It just silenced me, in a way.”

Here’s everything to know about Mikayla Matthews’ parents and what she’s said about her childhood.

Mikayla is one of seven children

Hulu

Mikayla Matthews’ sisters in ‘The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.’

Mikayla’s parents had seven children during their marriage. The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star is the second youngest.

She was raised alongside her siblings in Granada Hills, Calif. However, the family often traveled to Utah to visit her mother’s parents.

“In California, seven is a lot. I grew up Mormon in California, and two [children] was like an average number,” Mikayla shared on The Squeeze podcast. “Then, when we moved to Utah. Seven was pretty average, or below average.”

She has described her parents as emotional dysregulated

Mikayla Matthews/Instagram

Mikayla Matthews in November 2024.

Growing up, Mikayla “never saw a healthy relationship” between her parents.

“My mom was emotionally angry, just very reactive emotionally, and my dad would emotionally shut off,” she shared on The Squeeze. “My mom would yell at my dad, she would yell at us, she would call us names. She wasn’t able to regulate her emotions, so that was taken out on whoever was around.”

Though Mikayla’s relationship with her mother remains strained, she still has compassion for the woman who raised her.

“I don’t think [my mom] was taught those tools growing up to regulate her emotions. I think I’m able to think back with a lot more empathy towards her than anger,” she added.

After her parents divorced, Mikayla’s mom moved her and her siblings to Utah

Mikayla Matthews/Instagram

Mikayla Matthews as a child.

Mikayla’s parents divorced when she was in the fourth grade.

“They were always fighting. We knew they weren’t happy,” she told Tay Lautner on The Squeeze, adding that the split prompted a move to Utah, where her mother’s parents resided.

Mikayla and her siblings went with their mother, while their father remained in California. In Utah, her mom focused mostly on work and began seeing someone.

“We did a lot of growing up on our own basically … I feel like she wasn’t around a lot growing up,” Mikayla shared.

Mikayla was sexually abused as a child

While appearing on The Squeeze, Mikayla opened up about the sexual abuse she endured at a young age. She claimed that there were “three different people” who abused her at different times between the ages of 6 and 15, including her mother’s second husband.

She noted that in a household where sex wasn’t a subject of conversation, it was difficult to understand. In 2015 — when she was 15 years old — Mikayla decided to tell her mom after an inappropriate incident with her husband allegedly occurred.

“Something happened on Halloween of 2015, and that was like my final straw where I was like, ‘I’m going to tell someone about this and what happened,’ ” she recalled, adding that she told one of her sisters. “I honestly can’t remember how [my mom] reacted [when I told her], but she was basically like, ‘You’re lying. That’s not true. That didn’t happen.’ “

She continued, “That was another traumatic moment. I finally had [the] courage to go to my mom … and instead of her doing her role as a mom and protecting me in that moment, it was, ‘Well, you’re lying. You can move out.’ “

Mikayla and one of her sisters moved out to a friend’s house shortly before she turned 16 years old. She and her mother never discussed the alleged abuse again.

“That’s not a conversation we’ve ever had. I don’t think I’m ever going to have that conversation, and I’m okay with that now,” the mom of four said. “If I were to bring it up, I think it would be met with the same deflection that I saw my whole life.”

Her dad has extensive health issues

Hulu

Mikayla Matthews in ‘The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.’

Mikayla has dealt with chronic health issues for years, and so has her dad.

“In the last five or six years, he was diagnosed with early-onset Parkinson’s and arthritis,” she shared on The Squeeze. “He’s living with my sisters [in California] right now.”

Mikayla has minimal contact with her mom

Mikayla told Lautner that she sees her mom “here and there” on holidays and birthdays. In a May 2025 interview with PEOPLE, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star added that, despite her trauma, she doesn’t want to completely close the door on the relationship.

“I definitely feel weary about my relationship with my mom, even though we’re not super close,” Mikayla said. “I still have a lot of empathy for her and what she’s been through. I don’t want to ruin that [relationship], especially getting older. My parents are only getting older, too.”

Read the original article on People