Nick Cannon told radio listeners that having a large family after his 2016 divorce from Mariah Carey was a “trauma response” and said he had been “careless” and “frivolous” in the years that followed.
Speaking Monday on The Breakfast Club, the 44-year-old entertainer said he did not undertake “work and healing” after the end of his marriage to Carey and that his decisions to father children with multiple partners were driven in part by the aftermath of the split. “If I would have did the work [and] the healing after getting divorced, I probably would have took my time in a lot other scenarios,” he said. “For whatever reason, I thought that was the answer a lot of times, like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna figure it out over here.’ Now, you’re leaving trauma every step of the way instead of fixing it from its origin.”
Cannon, who hosted Fox’s The Masked Singer and created the improv show Wild ’N Out, said he had the money and access that allowed him to move freely after the divorce. “It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna go have 12 kids,'” he told listeners. “It was more about, like, ‘Yo, I’m just gonna live life and have fun and whatever happens, happens. I can handle it.'” He added that greater introspection might have led to different choices: “I could have thought the process through a little bit more” and “taken time to actually do the inner work.”
Cannon and Carey, who were married from 2008 to 2016, are the parents of 14-year-old twins Moroccan and Monroe. After their divorce, Cannon became the father of 10 children with five women: with model and partner Brittany Bell he has son Golden, 8, daughter Powerful, 4, and son Rise, 2; with Abby De La Rosa he has twin sons Zion and Zillion, 4, and daughter Beautiful, 2; with former model LaNisha Cole he has daughter Onyx, 3; with model Bre Tiesi he has son Legendary, 3; and with late partner Alyssa Scott he had son Zen, who died in December 2021, and daughter Halo, 2.
Charlamagne Tha God, a co-host of The Breakfast Club, posted a clip of Cannon’s interview on Instagram and wrote, “Trauma response can show up in people’s lives in many ways!” The remarks drew mixed reaction on social media. Some users praised Cannon for acknowledging his mistakes and described the comments as mature and transparent. Others criticized the idea that it took fathering 12 children to recognize the need for healing; one social-comment noted the difficulty such explanations might pose for his children.
Cannon’s reflections follow earlier comments this year in which he said he was “not done” having children. In March on the We Playin’ Spades podcast, he said he did not know whether any future children would be with a new partner or a former partner and added, “I leave it to the Lord.”
He also addressed the toll of family tragedy. Cannon has spoken publicly about the death of his son Zen in December 2021, a loss he has said deeply affected him and his approach to fatherhood.
The discussion on The Breakfast Club joins a series of recent interviews in which Cannon has revisited his personal life and public choices. He described his post-divorce period as one of avoidance rather than recovery, and said reckoning with that period required acknowledging the ways his actions were shaped by unresolved trauma.
Cannon’s comments add to ongoing conversations in popular culture about accountability, mental health and parenting, particularly for high-profile figures whose private lives are subject to public scrutiny. He framed his admission as part of an ongoing process rather than a definitive conclusion, saying he recognized mistakes and that doing the inner work might have produced different outcomes.
