- Nick Cannon opens up about having 12 kids with six different women in a new interview with The Breakfast Club.
- Nick says that unresolved “trauma” from his 2016 divorce with Mariah Carey led to “careless” behavior.
- Nick maintains he has no regrets when it comes to his kids.
To say Nick Cannon has a lot of kids is a little like saying Meryl Streep has a lot of Oscar nominations. It’s accurate, but it doesn’t quite convey just how unique a number it is—12 and 21, respectively. In a recent interview with The Breakfast Club, Nick opened up about being a dad of 12 and revealed “trauma” is what led to him having so many children.
“I was being careless. I was being frivolous with my process because I could do it, because I had the money [and] because I had access to whoever and however I wanted to move,” he explained. “It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna have 12 kids.’ It was more about like, ‘Yo, I’m gonna just live life and have fun and whatever happens happens. I can handle it.’”
![hollywood, california november 25: (l r) nick cannon and brittany bell with children attend the los angeles premiere of walt disney animation studios moana 2 at the el capitan theater in hollywood, california on november 25, 2024. (photo by alberto e. rodriguez/getty images for disney)](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/gettyimages-2186902887-68c9795f794aa.jpg?resize=980:* "Los Angeles Premiere Of Walt Disney Animation Studios' "Moana 2"")
Looking back, Nick said, he believes that he was also “acing out” following his 2016 divorce from Mariah Carey. “A lot of it, if we’re being completely honest, a lot of it is the trauma that I was experiencing of not knowing how to handle divorce. You know what I mean? And me acting out because I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m the man now,’” he said, adding that, instead of going to therapy, he used subsequent relationships as “distractions from the actual work that I probably should have done.”
For context, Nick shares Moroccan and Monroe with Mariah Carey; Golden Sagon, Rise Messiah Cannon, and Powerful Queen with Britney Bell; Zion Mixolydian, Zillion Heir, and Beautiful Zeppelin with Abby De La Rosa; Legendary Love with Bre Tiesi, Onyx Ice Cole with LaNisha Cole; and Zen—who died of cancer in 2021 at just five months old—and Halo Marie Cannon with Alyssa Scott. For those keeping score, that’s 12 kids with six different women in 11 years.
As for if he wishes he had done anything differently, Nick said, “I’m like, ‘Wow, I could have done things very differently.’ But I stand firm on all of my decisions, because I love all my kids. I love my family infrastructure.”
