Ryan Reynolds, who shares kids James, Inez, Betty and Olin with Blake Lively, explained how his and his wife’s upbringings in working class families have influenced the way they parent their children.
Ryan Reynolds is getting dead serious about his and Blake Lively’s parenting styles.
The Deadpool star—who shares daughters James, 9, Inez, 7, Betty, 5, and son Olin, born in 2023, with the It Ends With Us actress—recently detailed how he and his wife are using their own childhood experiences as a reference to help them parent their kids.
“We try to give them as normal a life as possible,” Ryan told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview published Dec. 13. “I try not to impose upon them the difference in their childhood to my childhood or my wife’s childhood.”
He added, “We both grew up very working class, and I remember when they were very young, I used to say or think, like, ‘Oh God, I would never have had a gift like this when I was a kid,’ or, ‘I never would’ve had this luxury of getting takeout,’ or whatever.”
Despite her relatively normal childhood, Blake, 37, grew up around the entertainment industry with her late dad Ernie Lively working as an actor and director, even giving Blake her first acting job, and her mom Elaine Lively as a talent agent in the entertainment industry. But as Ryan stressed, his kids comparing their childhoods to those of his and Blake’s is not their responsibility.
“I realized that that’s not really their bag of rocks to carry,” he continued. “They’re already very much in touch with gratitude and understanding the world enough to have a strong sense of empathy. Those are the things that I would think [would indicate] we’re doing an OK job—if our kids can empathize with other people and other kids.”
Ryan—whose parents Tammy Reynolds and the late Jim Reynolds were a retail saleswoman and a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Vancouver, respectively—did, however, continue to emphasize how different his children’s lives are from his own.
“Yes, it’s different,” he said. “When I was a kid, you would just suck it up, get out of the house and be back by sundown, which I just can’t even imagine now.”
But the 48-year-old has certainly made sure to take a different approach to parenting than his own dad, with whom Ryan had a “slightly complicated relationship.”
“Even though I may have an instinct when my kid is acting out or telling me I’m the worst,” he told People in August, “my father’s instinct would be to shut that kid off. My dad would retreat into the power of silence, and that is not the way to acknowledge your kid.”
Instead, Ryan makes sure to “get down on their level” and tell them “I believe them and that I’m here for them.
“I’m willing to sit here and hear them out,” he shared, “and feel whatever they’re going through.”
Read on to see more of what Ryan and Blake have said about parenting their kids.
This Will Make Your Head Spin
“I have seen Frozen with my daughters so, so many times and people don’t know this, but if you play Frozen backwards, it’s actually a shot for shot remake of The Exorcist,” Reynolds joked on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in 2018.
Fun Uncle
On Dec. 15, 2016, Reynolds and Lively debuted their daughters James and Inez for the first time, at the actor’s Hollywood Walk of Fame Ceremony (a common setting for notoriously private celebrities to introduce the world to their kids). During his speech, Reynolds said to his wife, “You make everything better—absolutely everything in my life better. You’ve given us two of the most incredible children that I could ever hope to have. You’ve made me the father of my dreams when I thought I only had fun uncle potential.”
Best Thing Ever
In August 2016, before the birth of the couple’s second daughter, Reynolds told E! News, “There’s nothing on earth more grounding than having a 𝚋𝚊𝚋𝚢. It’s the best thing that could ever happen to someone.”
