Nick Cannon Says He Isn’t Into “Co-Parenting.” He Calls It Parenting
On his podcast Nick Cannon @ Night, the TV host rejects the “co-parenting” label, emphasizes respect and individuality across six households, and praises Bre Tiesi.
Los Angeles, August 13 EST: Nick Cannon has a new note on an old theme. On the latest episode of his podcast Nick Cannon @ Night, the TV host said he does not believe in the term “co-parenting.” He prefers to call it what it is, in his view, simply “parenting.”
He has, as he put it, “always kind of had an issue” with the label, arguing that the word itself can do more harm than good by loading situations with baggage before anyone even shows up for the kids. According to People, he framed the approach around respect, compassion, and handling each family dynamic as its own universe.
What He Actually Said
Cannon was answering a fan question about how he manages multiple parenting relationships while dating. He doubled down on a plainspoken philosophy. Labels, in his mind, create preconceived notions that muddy the actual work. He added that he tries to treat each situation with “respect and compassion and individuality,” and that he makes a point of not lumping the mothers of his children together under shorthand like “baby mamas,” aside from the occasional joke.
Then, asked on the pod if the six mothers of his twelve kids get along, he laughed and shot back, “No! Do you know six women anywhere that get along?” The bit was wry, but it also telegraphed a bigger message about not forcing a tidy narrative on real people with real schedules and competing needs.
Why Fans Care Right Now
This is not just celebrity semantics. It is a temperature check on how one of pop culture’s busiest dads wants his family story told. Cannon’s phrase-policing lands in a media moment where blended families are everywhere on TV, from prestige dramas to aspirational reality arcs. He knows his orbit gets extra oxygen because several of the women in his life have their own platforms and fan bases.
That is why the language matters. If he calls it “co-parenting,” the story invites scorecards and alliances. If he calls it “parenting,” he is trying to flatten the power dynamics and focus attention on the kids. It is part PR strategy, part sincere attempt to lower the temperature around his particular constellation.
Cannon also went out of his way to praise Bre Tiesi, who shares son Legendary Love with him and appears on Selling Sunset. He called her a “rockstar,” an “amazing mom,” and a “boss,” a string of compliments that doubles as a reminder that the women in his world are running careers while running households. In a culture that often reduces mothers in celebrity families to supporting roles, that shouts out the agency fans already see on screen.
This Has Been His Line For Years
If the stance sounds familiar, you are not hearing echoes by accident. Back in 2018, while talking about raising twins Monroe and Moroccan with Mariah Carey, Cannon told People he finds the phrase “co-parenting” “a little redundant.” His quote then was blunt enough to hang on a billboard.
“You can’t co-parent, you have to parent,” he said, adding that he and Carey stayed “selfless” and put the kids first. That earlier wording tracks cleanly with what he is saying now, which makes this latest episode feel less like a pivot and more like a reframing for 2025’s attention economy.
The Math, Sans Myth
Let’s pause on the headline numbers that always fuel the discourse. Cannon is father to 12 children with six women. He referenced that reality again while talking through his terminology. It is a lot of birthdays, school runs, and bedtimes. It is also the reason he resists sweeping all the mothers into one bucket. The point, as he tells it, is to meet each situation where it is, not where a label says it should be.
For fans, those numbers will always invite debate about time, attention, and presence, but Cannon’s language suggests he would rather be measured by consistency with each child than by a single term that flattens the variables. People’s write-up notes the scope and cadence of his family, and it serves as the backdrop for why this semantic distinction pops every time he returns to it.
The Culture Read
Cannon’s stance plays into a broader shift in how we talk about families in public. Co-parenting became a buzzword in the tabloid and Instagram era, shorthand for exes who find a groove after the breakup. It is a useful term in many cases. But buzzwords calcify fast. They can imply best practices that do not map to everyone’s reality. Cannon is arguing for flexibility.
He wants room for private rules inside each household, which is essentially what most family therapists advise, minus the jargon. That said, he also understands he is a lightning rod. When you are a famous dad with a dozen kids and a microphone, you do not just narrate the news. You become the news.
The pushback he invites is predictable. Some viewers will hear this as a way to sidestep accountability or to avoid the optic of inter-household friction. Others will hear it as a grown man naming the thing he can control, which is how he shows up and how he talks about it.
The truth likely lives in the gray. What lands with fans is his plain delivery and the refusal to assign anyone a supporting-cast slot. In a marketplace where everything is content, that choice reads as both protective and strategic.
The Entertainment Angle
Cannon’s platform matters here. Nick Cannon @ Night is built for this kind of conversation. It is not a late-night monologue, it is a running diary with crowd input, which means he can field a prickly question about his personal life and flip it into a larger conversation about language. When he jokes that six women rarely get along, he is not just chasing a laugh.
He is setting expectations for viewers who want a Marvel-style team-up of exes that is never going to happen. The wink is part reality check, part brand continuity. Fans of The Masked Singer know the cadence. He keeps it light, then he dives into something raw, then he returns to the bit.
And because he is media savvy, he leaves a few doors open. He says he has not “figured it all out.” He says he aims for respect and compassion and makes space for each mother’s individuality. That candor is its own statement. It signals that this is not a finished essay, it is an ongoing edit. For the entertainment press, that means there will always be another episode to parse, another clip to circulate, another caption to debate.
What To Watch Next
If history is a guide, Cannon will keep circling back to the language piece whenever the family conversation flares up. Expect more shout-outs to the mothers as their individual projects roll through. Expect savvy nods to the kids’ milestones. Expect the terminology question to pop any time a headline tries to corral his life into tidy boxes. Fans will keep caring because they are tracking a man calibrating a public family in real time, and because the stakes are both intimate and visible. For now, his line is simple. He is not here to co-parent. He is here to parent. One kid at a time, one household at a time, and yes, one very public conversation at a time.
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A bi-coastal pop culture critic and former indie screenwriter, Gia covers Hollywood, streaming wars, and subculture shifts with razor wit and Gen Z intuition. If it’s going viral, she already knew about it.
