Jim Gaffigan Jokes Raising 5 Kids Involved 'Enormous Amounts of Humiliation': ‘Children Are Evil'
The actor and comedian said that parenting is the "most important thing I'll fail at"
The father of five shares his children with his wife Jeannie GaffiganJim Gaffigan is getting real about what it's like to raise five children.
During a panel session at Tribeca on Thursday, June 5, the comedian, 58, spoke with Michael Ian Black about what it's like being a father to five children and how his perception of his kids changed over time.
"I would say 20 years ago, I mean, I have a 21-year-old, but I was much more of the view of I'm kind of befuddled by parenting, or I'm not equipped for it. And my viewpoint now is that children are evil," he teased. "I joke around and say, parenting is the most important thing I'll fail at, and there is something to that. But, I think that if human beings remembered how difficult and complicated and impossible, teenagers are the species which cease to exist."
"I think that we forget that parenting is similar to the entertainment industry, filled with enormous amounts of humiliation, and you're biting your tongue a lot," he added. "When kids are younger, there's a cuteness to it, but when your kids are teenagers, they're not conscious of it, but there's a cruelty that you're exposed to."
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The dad of five went on to say that there is a cycle of embarrassment that exists between parents and their children.
"The great irony is that they embarrass you when they're younger and then at some point for no reason at all, you are the largest source of embarrassment that's ever occurred to them," he said. "Everyone who's had a parent understands that feeling."
The actor shares children Patrick, 12, Michael, 13, Katie, 16, Jack, 19, and Marre, 21, with his wife, Jeannie Gaffigan. He joked on X (formerly Twitter) in April 2013 that the 'hardest part of parenting is when I'm with my kids.'
'I have five because I'm secretly starting my own nationality,' he joked with PEOPLE in 2016. He added that each of his kids 'has made me a more decent person and a better person, and based on that, all I would need is 34 more to be a decent guy.'
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Gaffigan told Today that being a father to five kids can be "terrifying."
"It's wonderful and really, really hard," he shared. "What no one tells you is that when they get older, it gets so much harder. It's just a different type of hard."
The Linoleum star noted that one of the most "frustrating" things as a parent is "being able to communicate some of the things that I might have learned in a way where they might hear it."
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