Joel Madden has praised his wife Nicole Richie for helping him recover from a broken home.

Joel - who has daughter Harlow, eight, and son Sparrow, six, with Nicole - said: "When you grow up in a broken home, there's something about finally finding love and security in your family.

"We're grateful for our families and the love we have in our lives.

"I give my wife a lot of credit. She's an incredible partner and really supportive."

Joel admits he and Benji - who married US actress Cameron Diaz last year - feel "blessed and lucky" to have forged a successful career with Good Charlotte and also have great personal lives.

He added to PEOPLE: "There are moments where you feel like life is perfect, and you want to stay in that moment forever, and that's how we feel: really blessed and lucky.

"We landed on our feet. There was a whole bunch of different ways it could have gone wrong, and the thing I'm most proud of is we ended up okay as a band as people.

"We all feel like, in our own way, we got to have the American Dream - the thing we as kids dreamed of, the thing we left home for. The American Dream is alive and well, and we're living proof of it."

Nicole's childhood was very different to Joel's with her father, singing legend Lionel Richie, often going on tour before returning to spend time with her.

She recently said: "My dad's touring is really all I know. For me, that's how I was raised. My dad would go off and work, come back and have home time.

"Oddly enough, that's how my own family works now. Joel's on tour all the time. We have our own calendar. We don't take summer vacations when everyone else does, and we do it whenever it works out for us."