When you're dealing with diaper blowouts, baby vomit and utter exhaustion, any reluctance to talk about the messy parts of parenting tends to fly out the window.
Even famous parents know this to be true. In honor of Father's Day, here are 21 spot-on quotes from celebrity dads who are more than happy to discuss the down and dirty of fatherhood.
1. On newborn bodily fluids:
"I've never had more poop on my person." -- Justin Timberlake
2. On kid germs:
"Kids are like buckets of disease. Last week I got a flu that I caught because my daughter coughed into my mouth." -- Louis C.K.
3. On dad style:
"Every dad should own cargo pants because they have a lot of pockets. Pacifiers and bottles and diapers and wet wipes and crackers and little toy dinosaurs and candy for treats for any child that has behaved or when you’re trying to bribe them. Yeah, cargo pants." -- Taye Diggs
4. On frightening bodily fluids:
"They vomit a lot. For a second, I thought I needed to rename my first ‘Linda Blair’ and hire a priest." -- Jimmy Fallon
5. On being a first-time parent:
"I just wake up hoping that I don't screw up today." -- John Krasinski
6. On shamers:
"Funny there's no dad-shaming. When both of us go out to dinner, shame both of us so Chrissy doesn't have to take it all. We'll split it." -- John Legend
7. On getting down and dirty:
"Not knowing what the f**k I'm doing as a dad is huge. I don't know what I'm doing, and that's a very liberating thing. You just go, 'Oh look, there's sh*t on the floor.' There's actually sh*t on the floor -- I have a picture of it on my phone. So what do you do? You clean it up, put a diaper on his ass, and that's that." -- Colin Farrell
8. On baby mind-control:
"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. It's crazy." -- Ryan Reynolds
9. On déjà vu:
"Having children is like living in a frat house -- nobody sleeps, everything’s broken, and there’s a lot of throwing up." -- Ray Romano
10. On parenting PTSD:
"I haven't been great as far as being an assistant to my wife, in that the baby will wake up a couple times in the middle of the night and then I've been adding a third wake-up because I have night terrors about where the baby is. So I've been waking up, grabbing my wife's face, saying, 'I don't know where the baby is.' Then I just go back to sleep." -- Seth Meyers
11. On diaper-changing gymnastics:
"[O]ur daughter hates getting her diaper changed, so it's almost like a break-dancing battle to get it on her. As soon as you lay her down, she's bridging out of it and doing some jujitsu windmill. It's pretty intense." -- Channing Tatum
12. On different parenting approaches:
"There’s the ‘I’m gonna talk to you like father stuff. Like 'When I was a kid, I walked to school,' and 'What’s all this music that you’re listening to?' and 'You’re throwing your life away.'" -- Jamie Foxx
13. On embracing the mess:
"I love every minute of fatherhood, staying up all night, changing nappies, kids crying. I find it really funny and inspiring. It connects you to the world in a new way." -- Elton John
14. On the truth about children:
"[Kids] are just like annoying short people" -- Hank Azaria
15. On inconsistency:
"You have to be adaptable because they constantly keep changing. They’ll do something that blows your mind and then they’ll spit all their food out on the carpet." -- Neil Patrick Harris
16. On "free time" for parents:
"There are no time-outs, really. Weekends, you think you can catch up on rest, and it's the opposite. It gets even busier. It's a different kind of busy." -- Mario Lopez
17. On paranoia:
"I want my son to wear a helmet 24 hours a day." -- Will Arnett
18. On being a chauffeur:
"I’ve become a taxi driver overnight with the kids. I’m literally an Uber driver now. I literally take them from 7 in the morning to the schools -- I have four drop-offs at four different schools -- so I get that done in an hour and 15 minutes. And then I pick my little girl up at 12, and then the boys at 4, and then the boys train in a soccer academy every single night of the week. So I’m busy every night until 9:30, and then I’m at home." -- David Beckham
19. On hopeless endeavors:
"Try getting Leni and Henry to brush their teeth. I have a better chance of becoming the next President of the United States than achieving that on a regular basis!" -- Seal
20. On making kids laugh:
"If I can walk around in my underwear and pull it up super high so it’s just gross looking and then try and be very serious with them. I like to do that ... pretend to be very mad and have my underwear hiked up ... really high." -- Paul Rudd
21. On the things you tolerate from your own kids:
"I probably worried more about changing diapers and bodily fluids and all that before I became a father. The reality is that once it’s your kid it’s not a big deal at all ... I probably wouldn’t want to change YOUR kid." -- Matt Damon
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