Violet Affleck details emotional argument with ‘shell-shocked’ mum Jennifer Garner: ‘Astonished’

Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner’s daughter has spoken publicly about a fight she had earlier this year with her famous mum: “Astonished”.

Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner’s eldest daughter, Violet, has detailed a fiery argument she had with her mum in a hotel room over the catastrophic LA wildfires in a candid essay for Yale University.

The 19-year-old, who is a freshman at the prestigious Ivy League college, wrote about an emotional clash she had with the Suddenly 30 star, 53, in an academic research paper in the school’s Global Health Review.

Violet revealed that she and her famous mother — who also shares Seraphina, 16, and Samuel, 13, with the Good Will Hunting star — argued over climate change after being forced out of their plush home while the devastating Los Angeles wildfires ravaged through California in January, reports Page Six.

“I spent the January fires in Los Angeles arguing with my mother in a hotel room,” Violet wrote in her paper, titled, “A Chronically Ill Earth: Covid Organizing as a Model Climate Response in Los Angeles.”

Violet and her famous mum at the White House in 2022 for an event. Picture: Roberto Schmidt/AFP

The teenager complained that the behaviour of the “wealthiest citizens” was one of the driving forces behind the “climate crisis.”

Garner, for her part, was “shell-shocked, astonished at the scale of destruction in the neighbourhood where she raised myself and my siblings” — leaving Violet “surprised at her surprise.”

“As a lifelong Angelena and climate-literate member of Generation Z, my question had not been whether the Palisades would burn but when,” added Violet.

“As I chatted with adults in the hotel where we’d gone to escape the smoke, though, I found my position to be an uncommon one: people spoke of how long rebuilding would take, how much it would cost, and how tragically odd the whole situation had been,” she continued.

“The crisis was acute, a burst of bad luck. It had come from a combination of high winds and low rains.”

Violet also recalled her younger brother, Samuel, being sceptical that the wildfires had anything to do with climate change, asking, “What did global warming have to do with the speed of the wind?

“Hopefully, most of us understand the climate crisis better than my little brother,” she wrote.

Elsewhere in her essay, Violet described climate change as “existential and accelerating.”

Garner was “shell-shocked”, according to her daughter. Picture: Vivien Killilea/Getty Images

“It’s anthropogenic,” she writes, “Driven by unsustainable consumption patterns concentrated among the wealthiest citizens of the wealthiest countries, all of which have already subjected most of this country and the world to deadly temperatures, fire-flood cycles, rising seas, and dying crops.”

The teen concluded her paper by comparing public health protocols used in climate disasters, while calling for recognition of the “methods and political commitments” of Covid-conscious and disabled communities.

Prior to enrolling at Yale, Violet made an appearance at a Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors meeting in July 2024, where she demanded mask mandates in LA hospitals.

Violet shared her experience with recovering from viruses in an emotional plea, saying, “the county must oppose mask bans for any reason.”

This article originally appeared in Page Six and was reproduced with permission.

Originally published as Violet Affleck details emotional argument with ‘shell-shocked’ mum Jennifer Garner: ‘Astonished’