Co-parenting is a complicated, personal business whether you are ordinary people who live a 10-minute drive away from each other or A-listers with schedules that mean they are rarely in the same country. Supermodel Gigi Hadid and former One Direction singer Zayn Malik, who have a five-year-old daughter together called Khai, fell into the latter category.

They were in a relationship between November 2015 and October 2021 and have had to navigate joint custody of their daughter since she was a year old. ‘Zayn and I do our custody schedules months in advance,’ Hadid told Vogue in her recent cover interview. ‘That doesn’t mean it doesn’t change here and there, but we help each other out and have each other’s backs.’

Considering they are both individuals with incredibly high profiles, particularly during the period of their relationship, they have done well to keep aspects of family life – both shared and individual – out of the public eye. There are no images of Khai’s face online and both Malik and Hadid usually avoid sharing pictures or details about her during press interviews. Now Hadid says she and Malik have entered a new phase of co-parenting together, one that is marked by ‘love and a feeling of camaraderie’.

‘There is the hard part of the world knowing this much, and thinking they know everything,’ she told the magazine. ‘And at the end of the day, we’re not interested in giving everyone our whole story.’ The model explained that their only interest is in raising their daughter ‘with so much respect’ for one another.

Hadid moved from New York to Pennsylvania a few years ago, where Malik also lives, which must make things logistically easier. Despite Zayn’s career as a musician and Hadid’s taking her to fashion shows around the world meaning they are unlikely to both be at home as much as your average family, they seem determined to give their daughter as normal a life as possible. Not that living between two Architectural Digest-approved houses with parents who have a combined Instagram following of 131 million could ever really be ‘normal’.

This is part of the reason why Hadid left New York in the first place. ‘It just kind of got to a point in my career where there started to be cameras outside every day. And there was a darkness to that for me,’ she explained.

There’s also the reality of meeting someone new, which is something most single parents find challenging let alone parents in the public eye. Hadid has been seeing Bradley Cooper since October 2023 after meeting at a ‘backyard birthday party’ of a mutual friend’s child. Cooper also has a seven-year-old daughter called Lea, who he shares with his ex-partner Irina Shayk.

‘You want to give yourself a normal experience of dating, and even for my friends who aren’t public figures, that’s hard,’ the model posited. ‘Where do you go? And, what? You just start talking to people? And then there’s another added layer of privacy and security. You want to believe that people are going to have your back and not call TMZ or go on DeuxMoi or whatever, but you just don’t know.’ Hadid confirmed that she and Cooper are ‘very romantic and happy together’, but whatever people don’t see of their relationship, which is most of it, is intentional.

According to the internet, Malik is currently happily single. Last May he made the somewhat controversial comment that he had never been in love, despite being in two serious relationships in the public eye one of which was an engagement. On The Zach Sang Show, the singer said, ‘I don’t know if I’ve actually truly been in love at this point.’ He later spoke about how confused he felt after both break ups while working on his album but spoke positively about Hadid in relation to their daughter. He said Khai is already showing signs of musical promise – which he thinks she gets from her mother.

‘She’s not like expert level, but she’s got a bit of rhythm when she’s hitting the drums. I can tell that she definitely can develop that into something,’ he said.

‘Her mum was actually really good at Guitar Hero on the drums. I was like, “Maybe she got that from her mum.” I was diabolical at it, and G used to beat me all the time. I used to be like: “What the f***. I’m the musician, and she beats me at this game.” But Khai’s got that too.’

Prior to his relationship with Hadid, Malik was engaged to Little Mix singer Perrie Edwards. The pair dated for four years and got engaged in 2013, but split a few months before Malik and Hadid got together in 2015. They ended on famously bad terms, with Edwards claiming she was dumped via text message. ‘It was horrible, the worst time in my life,’ she wrote in Little Mix’s 2016 book, Our World. ‘A four-year relationship, two-year engagement ended by a simple text message. Just like that. Even though things in my career were going really well, it was incredibly difficult for me.’

It’s worth remembering that Malik was only 22 at the time and he later admitted, ‘I didn’t know anything about anything at that point.’ Edwards now has a child too with her fiancé Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain – a son called Axel who was born in August 2021.

Having experienced fame at such a young age – Malik was 17 when One Direction was formed – it seems the singer has had enough of his mistakes and relationships play out in the media to know the value of keeping things to himself. This is clearly something he and Hadid, who has been a household name since she was 20, have in common. No wonder they’ve been able to build such camaraderie – something their daughter will no doubt thank them for down the line.