Tom Cruise Outclassed by Brooke Shields in Family Faceoff

HOLLYWOOD – Tom Cruise and Brooke Shields have buried the olive branch and extended the hatchet, putting paid to their feud about the value of psychiatry and antidepressants. Yet if looking well is the best revenge, Mr. Cruise has clearly taken one in the shorts from Ms. Shields, whom he went out of his way to mock last year for using antidepressants to combat postpartum depression.

Recent photos of Ms. Shields, looking fit and radiant after the birth of her second child, provide a jaw-dropping contrast to photos of Katie Holmes looking like something the TomKat dragged in—hair dirty, eyes vacant, and nursing bra on display.

In case you’re keeping score, Ms. Shields and Ms. Holmes gave birth to daughters on the same floor of the same hospital on the same day this year, April 18. The Shields pregnancy went mostly unflogged in the press, while the Holmes pregnancy—with its do-it-yourself sonograms, silent-birth directives, and placenta-cooking recipes—was a Barnum & Bailey world from start to finish.

Meanwhile, as Mr. Cruise shops the rights to the first photographs of his daughter Suri to the highest bidder—and cynics ask if there really is a daughter—Ms. Shields and her husband Chris Henchy are featured in a family portrait with daughters, Rowan, 2, and Grier, 1 month.

Which parents are most likely to raise their child in a compound with a spaceship port on the grounds?