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."
The Messy Side
"It's tough when you get pooped on and barfed on, but having a baby is wonderful," the proud mama told NW Magazine in 2016. "Even when it's tough and I'm exhausted, I think, 'I am so fortunate.'"
A Bullet for Baby
During a visit to the Late Show with David Letterman in 2015, Reynolds gushed about his marriage and his daughter, but made sure viewers knew who was more important. "'I would take a bullet for you. I could never love anything as much as I love you.' I would say that to my wife. And the second I looked in that baby's eyes, I knew in that exact moment that if we were ever under attack, I would use my wife as a human shield to protect that baby."
The Joys of Fatherhood
In tradition with his dark sense of humor, Reynolds shared this little parenting joke with his Twitter followers in 2016: "Being a father is the single greatest feeling on earth. Not including those wonderful years I spent without a child, of course."
Daddy's Dirty Work
"I always do the dirty work," Reynolds said on NBC's Today show in 2016. "I'm happy to do the dirty work. So does she, but I'm always, I love getting up in the middle of the night, I'm fine with that, you know, all that stuff."
Fatherhood, he said, has been "amazing."
Morning Duties
"I had one of those mornings, rare mornings, where my daughter just didn't want me to leave—and it was only because my wife was asleep," Reynolds said in 2016. "But it was like, you didn't want to go. You just like, it kills you."
There's Dad!
"You know, what was really weird was, we were watching the Super Bowl and my daughter saw it and she totally recognized me. There was like 12 of me, which is just like, to her, was like 24 useless boobs," Reynolds said in 2016. "She was so not impressed. She was like, 'Eh, whatever.'"
Becoming A Big Kid
"Damn it's hard letting your infant daughter go somewhere alone for the first time, I was a total mess dropping her off at Burning Man," Ryan joked to his Twitter followers in 2016.
Look Who's Talking
"She's great, man. She's great," the proud papa gushed in 2015 before revealing whether the couple's then-only child James has started speaking. "We're getting a lot of sounds, nothing that sounds like discernible English at this point," he quipped, adding, "I'm mocking her a lot."
Silly Love
"@vancityreynolds Since the day our baby was born, I've felt so strongly in my heart that you were most likely the father," Lively wrote on Instagram in 2015. "#ILoveYouSoMuchItsSilly."
It's a Constant Surprise
"Having a baby is just living in the constant unexpected," Lively said in 2016. "You never know when you're gonna get crapped on or when you're gonna get a big smile or when that smile immediately turns into hysterics. It might be like living with a drug addict. But you have a baby and you think, 'I can't imagine ever not having a baby,' because they grow up so quickly. I'd be an 80-year-old woman with a baby if I could."
Family Is Everything
"It's the best," Lively said in 2015. "It's the thing that binds us all—family. We have very unique jobs for a living, but we all are a part of someone's family. It's a nice thing."
Father's Day Gift
"On Father's Day, my daughter smiled at me," Reynolds tweeted in 2015. "It was all the gift I needed as I packed a bag and left for 6 years to write a book on parenting."
Everything's Worth It
"There have been times where I woke up, literally had no idea I had been walking for five minutes," he told E! News while promoting his movie Woman in Gold in 2015.
"But you love it. You wake up in the middle of the night, you got a big stupid smile on your face. I was telling someone else that. Anything else that woke you up every 45 minutes, you'd kill it. But when it's a baby, it's the best thing that ever happened to you."
Proud Papa
"One of the most common things in the world is making out, having a couple of drinks, and then doing it, and then having a baby. I was perfectly sober for this one though. I gotta say," Reynolds joked in 2016.
"It's amazing. I just always marvel how common it is and yet how profound it is. And I always laugh because you know celebrities you always cringe when they talk about their kids. Like 'my child is the only one that has ever exited a womb out, ever.'"
Daddy's Little Girl
"Well, a lot of people have done this, so you always want to temper it with a little of self-effacement. But I love it," Reynolds said in 2015 about then-only child James. "I truly worship that kid. It's terrible. She has me so far wrapped around her finger it's dumb. She says 'Dada' and I will walk through a cement wall to get to her."