Seth Rogen’s Comments About Being Happily Child-Free Resurfaced Online, And Parents Are Mad

Last year, the Hollywood actor spoke extensively about how fulfilled he and his wife are without kids, as he admitted that this is probably a big factor in his career success.

During an appearance on the Diary of a CEO podcast, Seth told host Steven Bartlett: “There’s a whole huge thing I’m not doing, which is raising children.”

And when Steven asked Seth if he believed that he and Lauren could be “happier” if they were parents, Seth was quick to explain why that wasn’t the case.

“I’ve been around obviously a lot of children, I'm not ignorant to what it’s like. … Everyone I know has kids. I'm 40, you know? I know,” he said. “Some of my friends have had kids for decades. Some people want kids, some people don't want kid.”

“A lot of people have kids before they even think about it, from what I've seen honestly,” Seth said. “You just are told, you go through life, you get married, you have kids — it’s what happens.”

“Me and my wife, neither of us were like that,” he continued at the time. “Honestly, the older we get the more happy and reaffirmed we are with our choice to not have kids. It was something we kind of talked about more, and we were like, ‘Have we made the right choice? Are we sure?’”

“Now, more than anything, the conversation is like, ‘Honestly, thank god we don’t have children,’” Seth confirmed. “We get to do whatever we want.”

Sharing even more insight into his and Lauren’s happily child-free lifestyle, Seth concluded: “We are in the prime of our lives. We are smarter than we've ever been. We understand ourselves more than we ever have." 

"We have the capacity to achieve a level of work and a level of communication and care for one another, and a lifestyle we can live with one another that we've never been able to live before, and we can just do that and we don't have to raise a child — which the world does not need right now," he added.

And all of this echoed what Seth had previously said on The Howard Stern Show in 2021. 

Host Howard then pointed out that when you do have children, they become the priority, to which Seth admitted: “I don’t want that. That does not sound fun to me.”

“And why?” Seth asked. “There’s enough kids out there. We need more people? Who looks at the planet right now and thinks 'You know what we need right now? More fucking people.' That's truly a confounding thing to me."

And while Seth has been highly praised for his “refreshing” take on parenthood as somebody who is in the public eye in the past, his comments recently landed on a different corner of the internet, and have sparked a whole load of discourse.

The tweet has since been seen 35 million times and racked up tens of thousands of comments and retweets from people debating the situation.

Many sided with the X user, echoing a similar sentiment about not being able to imagine a life without their children while criticizing Seth. 

One popular response read: “That's the kind of thing you say publicly, because you think it sounds cool, while privately, when you get older, it eats away at your soul.”

“A simple, ‘we are selfish narcissists,’ would've sufficed,” another wrote. One more said of Seth: “Imagine bragging about being a loser.”

Somebody else wildly claimed: “Sad, they will wake up at 50 and realize their life has no meaning.”

“I love that people want to spend their mornings with the kids they love and chose to have,” one person wrote. “I also love that people who don’t want kids get to have the mornings they chose to have. Because that man smoking and enjoying his love ain’t about you and your kids. Go be happy. He is!”

"No one is asking you to trade Saturday mornings with your kids. Seth Rogen stated what he and his wife enjoy about their childless life. With zero comparative value judgment to the lives of parents. This is such a reactionary and (funnily enough) childish knee-jerk response,” another wrote. 

“Why can’t we just be happy everyone has the freedom to do what they want?” one more asked.

One person tweeted: “Its mad how offended people with kids get when people without kids are happy about it.”



“Why do people with kids always seem personally attacked when other people don’t want kids,” another asked, before joking: “like misery really loves company huh.”

And one parent wrote: “BIG RESPECT for Seth Rogen owning the shit out of this choice! having kids was right for me, but I suspect parents who shame & judge child-free adults are prob just DEEPLY jealous & maybe shouldn’t have had kids??? Bc I have no regrets but damn this sounds AMAZING.”

Seth has not publicly acknowledged his past comments resurfacing.