I do try. I try to be a good dad.
My wife and I, we try to be good parents.
We try so hard.
Not that you'd be able to tell.
Like, if you met one of my sons, you might think,
oh, wow, Jim decided not to parent this one.
What, did he feed him in a cage?
We try to get our sons to sit at a dinner table like humans.
It's not in their nature.
Eventually, all parents ask themselves, like,
am I having any impact at all?
Is it nature or nurture?
You know, the parents of NBA players are probably pretty confident
it was mostly us.
But, you know, the Dahmers were like,
we had nothing to do with this.
Now, if you have young children, you might think I'm being negative,
but if you have teenagers, you're like, Jim's being nice.
Because it's a different experience.
Like, by round of applause, who only has children under the age of five?
Just under the age of five.
Okay.
You know nothing.
You live in a fantasy.
You're probably not even fat or an alcoholic yet.
I know your life is hard, but it's going to get so much worse.
Enjoy this brief period when your children still like you.
Parenting is hard the entire time.
The task changes, though.
When you have a baby, you're like,
this is the hardest thing I've ever done,
but I would do anything for this baby.
And when you have a teenager, you're like,
this is the hardest thing I've ever done,
but I don't want to go to jail for murder.
Your experience may differ.
Our real issue, the issue we face, is we have too many kids.
We have too many kids.
But if I did anything about it now, people would get so upset.
How old is the fetus?
17 years.
If I did anything about it, people would get so upset.
Five kids is a lot.
It's a lot.
And my wife works so hard.
She works so hard, and I try to travel as much as I can.
There's always help.
We always have a babysitter or a helper.
And these people have incredible backstories.
Often they've escaped from countries with oppressive regimes.
They're always sending money back to help a relative.
And after they've worked for us for a month,
they always come up and say the same thing.
I quit.
They're like, do you need more money?
And they're like, I'm going back to North Korea.
That place is like a vacation compared to being around your family.
Five kids is a lot.
My parents had six kids, but it was easier back then because they didn't care.
Six wasn't even that big.
We lived across from a family that had 13 kids.
13.
You never even saw the mother.
Mother.
Occasionally there'd be a shadow in a window.
She was like Boo Radley.
We weren't sure she even existed.
Eventually I met the mother of 13, and she was a sweet woman who obviously hadn't slept in 40 years.
But she looked like a mom.
Because moms used to look like moms.
Now moms look like yoga teachers.
Moms look like yoga teachers, and dads look like yoga teacher stalkers.
When a dad can't find a mom, he definitely sounds like a stalker.
He's like, where the hell is she?
I'm going to kill that woman.
Can I help you, sir?
It's my wife.
I'm going to kill her.
But no matter what a parent looks like, there's an unseen mental tax that's been paid.
They did a study.
All those people that stormed the Capitol on January 6th, you know what they all had in common?
A teenager at home.
Jim, that's cheap.
But I'll take it.