Jason Bateman and his wife, Amanda Anka, have two daughters: Francesca and Maple. In interviews spanning 2013 to 2025, Bateman has talked about how much he wanted to be a father, the patience parenting demanded, and watching his daughters grow more independent.
Who are Jason Bateman’s children?
Bateman and Anka have two daughters, Francesca and Maple. ABC News reported in September 2025 that their full names are Francesca Nora Bateman and Maple Sylvie Bateman, and that they were born in 2006 and 2012, respectively. The family attended the Toronto International Film Festival premiere of Black Rabbit together that month.
Those birth years place Francesca and Maple at different stages of life, a difference reflected in Bateman’s later comments about one daughter starting college while the other remained at home.
What Bateman said when his daughters were young
In a January 2013 interview with Redbook, Bateman described fatherhood as something he had long wanted: “Being a father of two is everything I wanted.” He also said, “I’m a big fan of marriage and being a dad.”
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At the time, he described Maple as seven months old and Francesca, whom he called Franny, as six. Bateman acknowledged that work could leave Anka handling much of the day-to-day parenting: “I respect that she’s having to wrangle the two kids by herself.” He said Anka “makes those things easy,” and that he tried to make up for his absences on weekends and when he got home.
How fatherhood looked as his daughters grew up
In an Esquire interview conducted on October 7, 2025, and published on December 8, Bateman spoke about the transition to a new stage of family life. His older daughter had started college and, he said, “My older daughter is just eating up everything about the college experience.” The Esquire video transcript specifies that she was attending college locally and that the family saw her every once in a while.
Bateman described his younger daughter as 13 at the time of that interview and still living at home: “My thirteen-year-old daughter is still at home. It’s going to be tough when she moves out.” These details reflect what he said in October 2025; they should not be read as a statement of the daughters’ ages or circumstances today.
He also said he enjoyed seeing his daughters’ confidence. As his older daughter encountered the practical demands of adult life, he hoped she would continue to turn to her parents for advice.
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What parenting has taught him
Bateman summed up one of the lessons this way: “Any parent learns a deeper level of patience, compromise, understanding, and empathy.” He recalled being stuck in traffic with an infant crying in the backseat as an experience that tested his patience. It was a personal memory, not a general claim about how every parent experiences those lessons.
Taken together, his comments trace a practical arc: the excitement of becoming a father, an acknowledgment of how work affected the family’s division of care, and the adjustment of watching his daughters move toward greater independence.
Quick Recap
Sources
- Redbook, Marisa Fox’s interview with Bateman, January 16, 2013.
- ABC News, report on the family’s TIFF appearance, September 8, 2025.
- Esquire, “What I’ve Learned: Jason Bateman,” published December 8, 2025.
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