Nick Cannon revealed that his decision to father 12 children was actually rooted in a trauma response.
During his appearance on The Breakfast Club, the TV host explained that it wasn’t until he began therapy that he recognized he hadn’t properly healed from certain painful experiences — including his divorce from Mariah Carey.
“It wasn’t like I was acting out,” Cannon said around the 38:40 mark. “It was more of being careless, being frivolous with my process, because I could do it, because I had the money, because I had the access to whoever and however I wanted to move.”
“[As] opposed to doing a mature thing and saying, ‘Hey, well, it probably makes more sense to do this.’ And then, obviously, life happens as well. So it wasn’t like, ‘Well, I’m gonna go have 12 kids.’ It was more about, like, ‘Yo, I’mma just live life and have fun and whatever happens, happens, I can handle it.’”
Cannon went on to reflect on the realizations he’s gained through therapy.
“Being almost 45 now, I can sit back and be like, if I would have thought the process through a little bit more and took time to actually do the inner work, things might have been a little different in certain scenarios.”
When Loren Lorosa asked if that meant he wouldn’t have had 12 kids, Cannon responded, “I don’t know, and I’ve always said this, every child that I have was made out of love.
“And it was strong relationships,” he continued. “It’s just if I would have done the work and the healing after getting divorced, I probably would have took my time in a lot of other scenarios. I thought that was the answer a lot of times. It was like, ‘Oh, I’mma figure it out over here. I’mma figure it out over here,’ [as] opposed to leaving trauma every step of the way, instead fixing it from its origin.”
The comedian, actor, and host shares his 12 children with six different women, including twins with Mariah Carey. For years, his growing family kept him in the headlines — especially after comments like, “Only God can tell me if I’m done,” which he made on The Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman podcast in 2023.
His youngest child, Halo, was born in 2022 with Alyssa Scott — their second together. The couple had previously welcomed a son, Zen, who tragically passed away in 2021 at just five months old due to brain cancer.
