25 Hilarious Quotes About Parenting From Louis C.K.

The comedian has made a name for himself with his parenting-themed humor.
Louis C.K.'s parenting jokes are some of his most iconic.
Mario Anzuoni / Reuters
Louis C.K.'s parenting jokes are some of his most iconic.

Louis C.K. has made a name for himself with his parenting-themed humor.

The comedian rose to international fame with his stand-up comedy specials, which often feature material about being a dad to two daughters.

In honor of his birthday on Tuesday, we’ve compiled some of his funniest personal anecdotes, jokes and one-liners about parenthood.

1. On kid germs:

“Kids are like buckets of disease that live in your house. And you get sick from them all the time. Last week I had a flu that I caught because my daughter coughed ... into my mouth.”

2. On how children affect your marriage:

“When you first get married, you have a relationship that’s so important to you, and you’re working on it together. But then you have a kid. And you look at your kid, and you go, ‘Holy shit, this is my child. She has my DNA. She has my name. I would die for her.’ And you look at your spouse and go, ‘Who the fuck are you? You’re a stranger.’”

“If you’re with a group of people who are trying to go somewhere and you can’t go because a member of your party just refuses to put their shoes on, that person is a fucking asshole.”

“Roles have all changed. There’s a lot of fathers who take care of their kids, there’s a lot of mothers who have careers. But in culture, those roles are still the same. When I take my kids out for dinner or lunch, people smile at us. A waitress said to my kids the other day, ‘Isn’t that nice that you’re getting to have a little lunch with your daddy?’ And I was insulted by it, because I’m like, I’m fucking taking them to lunch, and then I’m taking them home, and then I’m feeding them and doing their homework with them and putting them to bed. She’s like, ‘Oh, this is special time with daddy.’ Well, no, this is boring time with daddy, the same as everything.”

5. On the hard part of parenting:

“It’s hard having kids because it’s boring... It’s just being with them on the floor while they be children. They read Clifford the Big Red Dog to you at a rate of 50 minutes a page, and you have to sit there and be horribly proud and bored at the same time.”

“I never judge other parents. You know when you see a mother in McDonald’s or someplace or a toy store and she’s just melting down on her kid? She’s like, ‘Shut up, I hate you, you’re ugly!’ And people are standing around going “oh my goodness, she’s a horrible mother’ Well guess what, those people aren’t fucking parents ... Because any parents who are in that store are thinking, ’What did that shitty kid do to that poor woman? That poor woman. I wish I could help.’”

“I have two daughters and both of them at one time were babies and I held them and they cried on planes. It’s happened to me, I’ve had a baby on a plane. If you’re ever ― This is how selfish people are. When you’re on a plane and you hear a baby crying, you think that’s happening to you. You’re like, ‘Ugh, this is gonna ruin my flight! It’s gonna ruin it!’ Well, look at the parent, ’cause that person is holding a crying baby on a plane, which means they’ve been traveling with a baby all day, which means they have a baby, OK? So their life isn’t even good. They don’t like anything. Their whole life is, ugh, Jesus! If there’s any joy for them, it’s that this is now bothering other people. ‘Yeah, you listen to this shit now!’ Waah!”

8. On being a divorced father:

“I’m an attentive, focused and responsible father. Do you know why? Because I get to say, ‘Goodbye’ to these kids every week! Are you shitting me? It’s like every parent’s fantasy. Who can’t be a good father for half of every week? No matter how bad it gets, every Wednesday, I get to go, ‘good-bye, girls. Daddy’s gonna go upstairs and pour whiskey all over his naked body right now. I’m gonna lay in my own filth until two seconds before you come back here.’ That’s why I’m such a good dad.”

9. On play dates:

“I used to like people more, but now I have children and that changes your life in a lot of ways. Like you spend time with people you never would have chosen to spend time with, not in a million years. I spend whole days with people, I’m like, ‘I never would have hung out with you. I didn’t choose you. Our children chose each other based on no criteria by the way. They’re the same size. They don’t care who they make me hang out with.’”

10. On trying not to curse in front of your kids:

“I try to be a better person around my kids. I try to change my behavior around them. Like, I have rules in my house, they all apply to me. Like, I have a rule that I don’t curse around my kids. That’s a rule. It does happen. You have a stressful moment, and you’re with your kids, so, you say something by mistake. One time I was making dinner for my kids, and I gave my daughter a bowl of soup. And I said, ‘Here’s your fucking soup.’ But, uh… You can see how that was a tough… situation.”

11. On the hard truth about kids:

“Some kids suck. Some kids are just shitty … and I think that some parents just want to [flip off] their kids all the time. As much as you love your kid, there has to be those times, when your kid is being a shit, and he’s going ‘Why can’t I have a candy, I wanted a candy,’ and you just wanna go, ‘You know what? Fuck you kid, alright? Fuck you. How do you like that? Fuck you, buddy.’”

12. On parents who oppose gay marriage:

“It doesn’t have ANY effect on your life. What do you care?! Like when you see someone stand up on a talk show and say, ‘How am I supposed to explain to my child that two men are getting married?’ I don’t know, it’s your shitty kid, you fuckin’ tell ’em. Why is that anyone else’s problem? Two guys are in love but they can’t get married because you don’t want to talk to your ugly child for fucking five minutes?”

13. On supporting youth theater:

“There’s no more joyful feeling in the human experience than when a child’s play is over.... Nothing feels that good, when you can say, ‘I’m not watching that any longer.’ Every second my daughter is on stage, I can’t breathe because I’m so proud of her, but this is a bad show.”

14. On changing diapers:

“This kid does not poop. This kid craps. I was changing her diaper the other day, and it was like a 48-year-old alcoholic man’s shit in her diaper... And I had no idea that my relationship to the vagina was gonna be cleaning shit out of a tiny one several times a day.”

15. On feeding stubborn kids:

“When your kid won’t eat, you just go crazy because you have a physical need to feed them, it’s an instinct. and when they’re just sitting there looking at their food, you’re like, ‘Just fucking eat it! You’ll die you idiot, eat the food!’ ‘I don’t like it.’ ‘It doesn’t matter, put it in your face. They have your footprint at the hospital, they know that I have you, I’m not allowed letting you die you piece of shit, eat it! You have a social security number, you’re on the grid motherfucker, EAT! If you’re skinny, I go to jail, do you understand?’”

“A kid asks a question like, ‘Why is the sky blue?’ And her mom is like, ‘Just shut up and eat your french fries.’ And you think, ‘What a terrible mother. Why doesn’t she answer her child? When I have a child I will answer all of their questions. And open their minds to the wonders of the world.’ Well, guess what. You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. You can’t answer a kid’s question. They don’t accept any answer. They’re never like, ‘Oh. Thanks. Now I get it.’ They just keep coming, ‘Why, why, why, why?’ until you don’t even know who the fuck you are anymore at the end of the conversation.”

“Parent live for the tiny vacations from their kids, like when you put your kids in the car and you close their door and that little walk around to your own door. It’s like a Carnival cruise, it’s just the greatest. [relief] and you just stand at your door like, ‘Okay fuck that was bad, what’d I say? That shit was bad. Okay [exhales] oh hey everybody.’”

18. On saying ‘no’ to cell phones:

“Some parents really struggle with, ‘All the other kids have the terrible thing so my kid has to.’ No. Let your kid go and be a better example to the shitty kids. Just because the other stupid kids have phones doesn’t mean, ‘Okay, well my kid has to be stupid otherwise she’ll feel weird.’”

19. On chatty kids:

“I enjoy the things [my daughter] says. They’re beautiful and poetic, I love hearing them—but I don’t have to fucking hear any of it. And that’s an important distinction [to make]. If you’re a parent you just start making it, because you can’t listen to them all the time that they’re talking, because they’re talking all the time. And they just talk whenever. They don’t give a shitt what you’re doing or if it’s a good time. I’m in a shootout with the cops and she’s telling me all kinds of shit. She doesn’t care because she’s 5. They’re self-absorbed people. They have no ability. No 5-year-old ever goes like, ‘No go ahead and finish, I’ll tell you after it’s fine.’ They just can’t.”

20. On taking responsibility as a dad:

“Be a dad. Don’t be ‘Mom’s Assistant.’ Fathers have skills that they never use at home. You run a landscaping business and you can’t dress and feed a 4-year-old? Take it on. Spend time with your kids and have your own ideas about what they need. Get into it. It won’t take away your manhood ― it’ll give it to you. I did that. I spent more time with my kids. I took it on. I found out that I’m a pretty bad father. I make a lot of mistakes. I don’t know what I’m doing. But my kids love me, go figure.”

21. On the glue that holds families together:

“Fuck it... That’s really the attitude that keeps a family together, it’s not ‘we love each other,’ it’s just ‘fuck it, man.’”

“You can’t even enjoy being a parent because there’s no pride in it because we suck at it. Everybody sucks. We make huge mistakes and then you just go, ‘whoops, permanent damage there, move on I guess.’ My 5-year-old has all these twitches and weird fears and I’m like, ‘Good luck with that shit honey, that’s all my handiwork. Sorry.’”

23. On how kids change your life:

“You’re just alone in a room. There’s nothing cool about it — you know, some people try to make it cool by naming their kids Dylan or something like that, or naming their kid, like, 15 or something. Because that’s their way of saying ... I don’t have a kid. I’m still being a poet. I’m still cool. I have a rock ‘n’ roll version of this. But your kid is just somebody who you have to feed and care for and hug and burp and change their diaper — that’s all it is, and so it takes you to an abyss in your life. I don’t want to be needed that way right now. I want to sleep for a long time!”

24. On a parent’s real job:

“I’m not raising children. I’m raising the grown-ups they’re going to be. I have to raise them with the tools to get through a terrible life. That’s the way I look at it.”

25. On the reality of being a parent:

“Being a parent means you have your back up against the wall all the time, Because it’s the only job you can’t quit. It’s the only job where you can’t just go- Just put your wrench down and go, ‘Fuck it, guys. I’m leaving. I don’t even want my last check. I’m going home.’”

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