Feeling embarrassed by your parents is a universal childhood experience. Who among us hasn’t been left red-faced by a dorky parent, or, for that matter, been one yourself? Making your kids blush — or roll their eyes dramatically — is practically a rite of passage for parents, and celebrities are no exception.
And although it might be hard for us to imagine being ashamed of A-listers such as David Beckham, Kelly Ripa, Reese Witherspoon, and Gwyneth Paltrow, they have all shared stories about making their children cringe.
It’s reassuring to know that embarrassing your kids is totally normal and oftentimes unavoidable. According to Psychology Today, during adolescence, as opposed to the earlier years of childhood, a child is forming an identity outside of the home and “feels his or her growing independent status is diminished by being seen in the parental presence out in the world.” However, all parents should avoid trivializing their children’s reactionary feelings, as being embarrassed can be uncomfortable and sometimes lead to humiliation and shame.
Fortunately, the celebrity kids in question are accustomed to their so-called embarrassing parents and don’t seem to take these brief moments all too seriously.
Some of these celebrity parenting anecdotes will surprise you (or, at least give you a new appreciation for their children) whether they involve blasting Christmas music, smothering their kids with affection at school drop-off, trying to be hip on TikTok, or showing too much PDA with their partners. Whether intentional or not, these parents have gone from being cool to cringe in a moment’s notice. Read on, then feel better about your own parenting moves.
Jenna Bush Hager
On an episode of TODAY, Jenna Bush Hager told co-host Hoda Kotb she loves embarrassing her kids Mila, Poppy, and Hal. One of her signature moves is to pull up into the carpool lane blasting Cardi B, much to her daughter Mila’s mortification. Hager will dance along while Mila begs her to turn it down.
“I don’t mean it in a mean way, I mean it in a ‘haha’ way,” she said. “It’s one of the best joys of parenting.”
Hoda Kotb
In the same segment, Hoda Kotb admitted that she pulls the classic strategy of embarrassing her kids by dancing in public. Beyond the fun of it, she thinks she’s ultimately teaching her daughters Haley and Hope “something cool” by letting them see her not feel embarrassed while doing something embarrassing.
“But I think what I’m learning is, by saying you’re teaching them a lesson, you’re not teaching them anything,” Hoda said. “You have to stop and just start dancing and not saying anything to them on the street without making a to-do about it.”
Courteney Cox
Courteney Cox is every embarrassing mom on social media! In a Spring 2022 cover story with InStyle, the Friends alum admitted that her Instagram posts embarrass her daughter Coco, who she shares with ex David Arquette.
“Coco gets really embarrassed by a lot of the things I put on Instagram,” she said. “Sometimes, I’ll find something on TikTok and put it on Instagram and she’ll say, ‘Mom, that is so over.’ Once, I did this dance, and she was mortified [laughs]. And actually, when I look back, I’m kind of mortified.”
And in Jan. 2022, Cox told Extra, “[Coco] is tortured by me saying, ‘Can we do something for Instagram…?’ I have to negotiate. I use her for Instagram and she knows it and she really rebels.”
Madonna
Having Madonna as a mom sounds awesome, but it can also be a little embarrassing. In March 2015, the “Material Girl” singer talked about embarrassing her daughter Lourdes Leon in the recording studio.
“Every time my kids would visit me in the studio, it would just so happen that I’d be working on a song like ‘Holy Water’ or ‘S.E.X.,’” she told TODAY. “And I’d be like, ‘OK, just could — I’ll be — stay outside. I’ll be right out.’”
“At this point, Rocco doesn’t care,” she added. “It just goes over his head. He’s like, ‘Oh, mom. Mom’s being mom.’ The other little kids don’t really — they’re not tuned into that frequency yet. And Lo is horrified by all of it. She just wants me to be her mom.”
Madonna is mom to Lourdes, Rocco, David, Mercy, Stella, and Estere,.
Lenny Kravitz
Singer Lenny Kravitz used to embarrass his daughter Zoë Kravitz, who he shares with Cosby Show alum Lisa Bonet. She grew up in LA with her mom, and went to live with her dad for a while when she was 11.
“I think it was really hard for my mom,” Zoë told Rolling Stone in Oct. 2018 about that time. “But it was also important to her that I knew him, because she and her father aren’t close at all.” She moved to Miami, which she calls “a massive change.” “Going from this really quiet house in Topanga, just me and my mom, to my dad’s life, which was very busy — lots of people, lots of assistants.”
And this change came with some embarrassing moments.
“He’d pick me up, and the entire school would flock to the parking lot,” Kravitz went on. “And he wasn’t being subtle: He’d show up in a sports car and leather pants and a netted shirt. Like, ‘Dude, can you just be low-key a little bit?’ ‘Just a shirt that I can’t see your nipples through would be so dope.’” Can you imagine?
Lionel Richie
Lionel Richie and Nicole Richie seem to have a close bond, but there’s one thing her dad does that embarrasses her: dance! After performing a piano duet with Lionel on CBS, Nicole told Entertainment Tonight, “I can’t really watch my dad dance. It’s just very uncomfortable for me. I’m just not really feeling it.”
She added, “So, I was more into the ballads ’cause watching my dad dance–I just get so embarrassed.”
Lionel opened up about embarrassing his kids on Jimmy Kimmel Live in March 2018. “My job is to embarrass them as much as I can,” he said. “I seem to be embarrassing them more because what’s happening now is I get dressed, I think I’m looking really great, and I go out of the house, and it just takes them going, ‘You’re not going out there looking like that are you?’ It just messes up my whole sexy.”
In an interview with PEOPLE in 2019, Lionel said, “With my kids, I know their job is to completely scare me to death. And they’re doing a great job, by the way. I told this to Nicole the other day, my job is to embarrass them as much as I could, as long as I’m here. They’re trying to do the same to me, so I think it’s an equal swap right now.”
Richie shares daughter Nicole Richie with his first wife Brenda Harvey. He shares Miles Brockman Richie, and Sofia Richie with ex-wife Diane Alexander.
David Beckham & Victoria Beckham
David Beckham has four kids with wife Victoria Beckham — Brooklyn, Romeo, Cruz, and Harper — whom the former footballer loves to embarrass. In a 2015 interview with Jimmy Kimmel Live, Beckham revealed that Brooklyn, then 15, requested that he drop him off at school several blocks away to avoid attention. “My eldest Brooklyn says, ‘Dad, park around the corner,’” he said. “And then he gets out and walks around the corner. He did it to me the other day after doing it five times on the trot, so I’m driving round and he’s just walking into school, and I open the window and go, ‘Brooklyn I love you.’ Obviously it didn’t go down so well.”
In the same interview, David added that he smothered Romeo with kisses in front of his friends: “He’s 12 and he’s just started. As soon as I take him into school, I go to kiss him and he turns his cheek, so I will then pick him up and give him a bear hug and kiss him in front of his friends.”
David recently admitted that he’s still embarrassing his kids. Alongside an October 2021 Instagram photo depicting Victoria kissing him on the cheek, David wrote, “Date night in wine country with kids getting slightly embarrassed when asked to take a picture of mum & dad…”
Victoria embarrasses her kids too. In an interview with Vogue Australia in July 2022, the fashion designer said about Harper, “She’s not one of these kids who are going out with a full face of makeup and a crop top. She actually said to me recently, ‘Mummy, I’ve seen some pictures of you when you were in the Spice Girls, and your skirts were just unacceptable. They were just too short.’”
She went on, “Then David piped up and said, ‘Absolutely, Harper! They really, really were. And she was actually quite disgusted at how short my skirts were. I said, ‘Are you never going to wear skirts like that?’ She said, ‘Absolutely not.’ We’ll see.”
Barack Obama
Former president Barack Obama is known for his corny dad jokes, and he once admitted that his humor mortifies daughters Malia and Sasha whom he shares with wife Michelle Obama. In a 2014 TODAY interview, Barack noted, “I think they would say that I am good, fun dad who teeters on the edge of being embarrassing sometimes. As Malia put it, I’m right on the edge but I usually stay on the right side of the edge of being funny rather than totally humiliating to them.”
In her 2018 memoir Becoming, Michelle wrote that she and Barack once embarrassed Malia when her date showed up to take her to prom three years prior. To greet the young man, Michelle was barefoot and Barack wore flip-flops. “By my reckoning, we did manage to play it cool, though Malia still laughs, remembering it all as a bit excruciating,” she wrote.
Reese Witherspoon
Reese Witherspoon loves dancing on TikTok, but she took her enthusiasm too far in July 2020 during a video with her then 19-year-old son Deacon Phillippe, whom she shares with actor Ryan Phillippe (along with daughter Ava Phillippe).
In the video, Witherspoon rocks out to Deacon’s first music single, “Long Run,” featuring Nina Nesbitt, saying, “Deacon, I should make up a TikTok dance to this song!” He responded, “Oh god, no mom. No, no,” while covering his face, blushing, and laughing as Witherspoon danced.
Witherspoon also shares son Tennessee Toth, 10, with husband Jim Toth.
In August 2020, Witherspoon told Kerry Washington on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, “I just say if you’re not embarrassing your children, you’re not spending enough time with them.” Later, she added, “That’s basically my role. It’s our job, as parents, to really ramp up the embarrassment.”
Roman Reigns
Actor Roman Reigns recently shared how he embarrasses his daughter with holiday music.
In a November 2021 episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Reigns said of his daughter Joelle (whom he shares with wife Galina Becker), “She’s about to turn 14, she’s the handful right now. She was explaining to me that right now the whole Christmas music before Thanksgiving is a big thing, they’re trying to cancel this whole situation and Mariah Carey, and that’s just crazy to me.”
He added, “So we’re pulling up and I’m dropping her off at school, it’s like a little circle you have to drop them off at, and as soon as we pull up to the circle I just crank ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You.’ And I turn it down to tell her I love her and goodbye and as soon as she opens the door, I just crank it up. She melts.”
Reigns and Becker are also parents to two sets of twins, born in 2016 and 2020. Who knows what kind of embarrassing moments their dad will come up with over time!
Kelly Ripa & Mark Consuelos
It doesn’t take much for Kelly Ripa to embarrass her daughter Lola. The co-host of Live with Kelly and Ryan admitted that Lola is downright “mortified” by what she and husband Mark Consuelos wear in public. In 2019, Consuelos told People of Lola, “She’s cool. She’s really cool. She’s always been cool” while Ripa said, “We have nothing to do with it literally because she’s mortified by everything we put on.”
Ripa said that Lola doesn’t approve of her mom’s style. “She doesn’t even bother with me. She just feels that what I wear is embarrassing and awful. But then I think that means I’ve gotten something right. I don’t think your teenage daughters should like what you’re wearing.”
But Lola suffered the worst possible form of embarrassment when she walked in on her parents having sex — on her 18th birthday. According to Ripa, Lola reacted by saying, “You just ruined my birthday and my life, and I used to see in color and now everything is gray.”
Pink
Her rocker-chic aesthetic may be cool on stage, but Pink’s daughter Willow, whom she shares with husband Carey Hart (along with son Jameson), doesn’t always agree. “Headed to my kids kindergarten class to bring rice crispy treats for her sixth birthday,” Pink wrote on Instagram in 2017. “It’s weird that she’s embarrassed by me. Not like I wear a lot of bizarre colorful fun make up or anything like I’m pretending to be a popstar. Kids these days.”
Then, in June 2019, Pink admitted to more cringe behavior. “When mom embarrasses you at your own birthday party,” she captioned an Instagram video of herself performing an acrobatic stunt.
Gwyneth Paltrow & Chris Martin
In a February 2020 interview on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Paltrow said of Apple, whom she shares with ex-husband Chris Martin, “My daughter finds me mortifying. Because, like, if I do anything in public passed, like, not talking and standing still, she’s like, ‘Oh, my god. Stop. Stop.’ She’s almost 16. She’ll be 16 in May. So, if like, if I dance, she like turns red.”
Apple also gets embarrassed by her rocker father, who is the lead singer of Coldplay. In January 2020, Martin told DeGeneres, “My daughter works in a clothing store. And I didn’t tell her, but I went to surprise her…And I thought, ‘I better buy something. So I took a t-shirt from the rack and I lined up in the queue. And she was at the checkout…and she saw me.”
According to Martin, Apple tried to get him to leave, but instead, he just moved to the other line. “I was holding my T-shirt and really scared of my daughter,” Martin said. “And I paid for the T-shirt and I’d brought her some fudge…she loves this candy fudge. So, I said to the lady, could you give this to my daughter?’ And as I was leaving, she shouted, ‘I love you dad.’” The former couple also share son Moses.
Goldie Hawn
Over the years, actress Goldie Hawn has been known to embarrass her kids, son Oliver Hudson and daughter Kate Hudson (with ex Bill Hudson) and son Wyatt Russell whom she shares with partner Kurt Russell.
In a 2019 interview with Ellen DeGeneres, Oliver and Kate recalled how they yearned to be anonymous as children. But that was wishful thinking. “We were at sleep-away camp and it was my duty in life to have nobody know who my parents were, I didn’t want anyone to know my mom was Goldie Hawn,” explained Oliver. “I did the best that I could and nobody knew at camp. And we had this big hill that descended down into this dock, and the director of the camp was doing his morning announcement. And suddenly to the back of us this sea plane comes roaring down and lands. And everyone gets quiet, all 700 campers, and it pulls up to the dock. And out comes my mother. And she came out and said: ‘I want to see my kids!'”
Kate added, “Nobody comes to see their kids at sleep-away camp,” making Hawn, who also participated in the interview, laugh.
Sarah Michelle Gellar
Sarah Michelle Gellar pink hair dye didn’t pass the cool test, she revealed in a May 2020 Instagram video. “Well, because we’re still in quarantine, I had to think of a new and creative way to embarrass my children…” she explained.
This wasn’t the first time Gellar has embarrassed daughter Charlotte and son Rocky, whom she shares with husband Freddie Prinze, Jr. In 2018, the actress posted an Instagram selfie that depicted her wearing a “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” shirt (the television series that launched Gellar to fame) and the caption, “Casual Friday (aka…if you really want to embarrass your children, wear this for pick-up).”
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