Name: Louis C.K on His Daughters and Parenting
Uploaded: 2022-10-08T15:00:26.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Louis C.K on His Daughters and Parenting' from I'm Not Louis on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-10-08. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Louis C.K on His Daughters and Parenting' from I'm Not Louis on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-10-08. Transcript available.

Louis C.K on His Daughters and Parenting

This is something I learned from my first daughter, was how to have any
positive outlook on life at all.
I learned it from her.
I let her lead me out of the wilderness of that.
Because to me, it's like, as soon as she was born, my first thought was,
when is she going to realize that life is torture?
Like, when is it going to hit her?
When does it hit?
Because she looks so happy.
And she, you know, I thought, because I always, I used to think about birth as
this awful,
you know, you were in a womb, and it was warm.
You were just, your body was filled with fluid, warm fluid.
Like, there was no conflict.
Like being in the Matrix.
Yeah.
Taking a breath is an immediate, like it's an invasion.
Yeah.
You can feel your body attack, whatever came in that shouldn't have.
The air is a little cold.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah.
It's like, that's the way I look at life as a struggle, just even just being
alive.
Right from the get-go.
Yeah.
So I figured a kid is born, and then they're like, just irritated and angry.
But she was so positive.
She was so happy to be alive.
And so I realized, to her, somebody taking, you know, her reaching out to
somebody and them
walking away, she's like, well, somebody, you know, something else will happen.
I can do this by myself.
Your kid isn't stupid.
Your kid is just looking at life from a positive.
Your kid's not like, oh, fuck, that kid walked away from me.
Because that's what you see.
That's what you feel.
That's what I'm seeing, actually.
Yeah, but you let the kid, follow the kid's example.
A baby's a perfect person in a way.
They're like an animal.
They're like, you can learn what human beings really like from babies.
Because you're seeing a human instinct without any of the bullshit that's been
pumped in from other people.
It's like babies' diets are perfect.
Because they just eat what they need.
So all of a sudden, your baby will only eat carrots for like a month.
Well, it's beta carotene deficiency.
It just needs that.
Yeah, your baby's not like, oh, I can't stop fucking eating carrots.
Your baby just wants that thing for a while.
And they'll stay away from the grains you give them or whatever.
You know.
I'm fucking learning some stuff today.
This, to me, though, sounds like parenthood is a fucking nightmare.
No, it's great.
No, it sounds like it's just years of this emotional rollercoaster that a human
shouldn't have to go through.
It is great.
It's just, but the attachment you have, it's hard to explain.
It is great.
I'm with Louie.
I'm all in.
I love it.
But, you know, I'm trying to learn.
Well, yeah.
I'm trying to learn my way around it still.
Well, that's so, as long as you're doing that, you're fine.
As long as you're actually trying to learn and not take, trying to hold on to
what you were like before.
Oh, no.
That's it.
Just say goodbye, huh?
Oh, yeah.
But that's, oh, yeah.
A lot of that is positive.
You get rid of shit that you've, because your life becomes just a series of
cravings.
Disappointments.
Gray versions of shit that you thought you were going to get.
But if you give up on all the things you thought you used to want, you start
getting new shit from it.
A lot of that stuff has already left me.
Absolutely.
I got some things I got to figure out, like how to not curse at little kids and
things like that.
Right.
But in general, my life is drastically different.
The fact that you leave that situation introspective and asking questions from
people you know, means that you're doing fine.
Yeah.
If you're just such a fucking kid and I should fuck you and his mom looked at
me, I was like, fuck her.
And then if you just stayed that way, you know, people, you can just see that
guy's not thinking about what he's doing.
He's not even gaining from the guy.
This might be impossible for you guys to even consider because you're so
emotionally attached to your children.
This might be a hassle to you.
I understand.
But are there things that you absolutely can't do now that you would love to be
able to do, but you have kids?
Like I understand the part, the great part is having the kid and there's all
that love stuff and everything.
Yeah.
But like that aside, and I don't even know if you could put that aside, but if
you could, put that personal thing that you're in love with this little human
being.
Are there things that you're like, fuck, man, I really want to do that?
Well, yeah, but some of them die down after a while and you can do a lot.
I can't think of anything I really can't do that I want to do.
I mean, I wouldn't mind moving to another town.
Sometimes I think about that.
Yeah.
Like at this point in my life, what if I could move to San Francisco or
Philadelphia for, you know, or Canada or some shit?
I don't know.
Yeah.
I can't really do it because I got to maintain my kid's life.
So there's a stability that I got to maintain.
Yeah, it seems to me.
That I can't walk away from.
But still, I mean, to me the best thing in the world is to have kids and then
get divorced.
Because then you really can do anything you want.
Because it's more the wife that would hold you back than the kids.
That's exactly right.
I have my kids half the week.
And even if you get along with your wife, you still, you have to make bargains
and compromises with pretty much every moment of your life.
Especially once there's a kid, you start, you got to share that responsibility.
So you start, every moment it's like, where are you going?
If you start leaving the house, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
What are you doing?
Because I would like to get the fuck out of here.
Oh, okay.
So where are you going right now?
We better be, well, I'm just going to walk around.
No, not good enough.
You're sitting here.
Because I'd like to walk around.
So neither of us is going to get to walk around.
So we'll just be miserable sitting in this room.
We're just going to sit here with the fucking baby until one of us has like an
emergency reason to get out of here.
That's when it starts to be.
We take turns.
That's horrible.
We don't spend as much time as we used to together because we're taking turns
because we don't have a lot of help.
It's really smart to do that, to take turns.
But we take turns.
Not seeing each other.
You just made a great point.
Why are we both sitting here?
One of us could watch the kid.
You know, I do a lot of quality things with my son.
So now I'm going to go to the gym.
Yeah.
She has her things she wants to do.
And we kind of take turns.
But unfortunately, that means we're not together as much as probably we would
like.
But we understand that.
It's great.
That you're doing that.
And if one person is awake, the other person should fucking be sleeping.
Yes.
So that they'll be useful when the other person finally taps out.
It's just the dumbest thing in the world.
It's like if you're driving a car and then you go just turn the other one on in
the garage and let it run while you're driving one car.
Makes no sense.
Why would you do that?
Yeah, why would you do that?
Because the car that's driving is like, no, if I'm out here dragging people and
groceries around,
you're going to at least be running, you piece of shit.
Like if your cars were married to each other.
A lot of parents make that mistake where they put the kid in the room or
whatever and they both have to stay awake all night.
He's making an amazing point.
If you guys have a good relationship then, because the only reason to share
that shit is because you don't like each other.
Right.
Because you want to put each other through shit.
Right.
Through some hell.
No, that's the best is when you can do that.
And you're doing the right thing by spending a lot of time with your kid
because you start getting, it's like the thing you're dismissing in the first
sentence.
Yeah, I get the love.
But.
Okay.
That's the big part.
That's the huge part.
It's like saying, look, I get that you like living blah, blah, blah, but why
not kill yourself?
I mean, granted, life is worth living, death is terrifying, but still, why don't
you just die?
But there is a sacrifice that's being made by having children.
I don't know whether it's that important of a sacrifice or whether the child is
such a great thing that the sacrifice isn't even a sacrifice to you.
Well, for dads, it's the thing that you don't know automatically is that you
should be with the kids.
Right.
So I always, I kind of had this instinct, be with the kids a lot.
And then it's not a sacrifice.
Like the shit you have to, the fucking shit you have to do, the amount of
errands you have to run and shit you have to go, the logistics of keeping food
and supplies in the house.
The thing I started doing is just always bring the kid with you.
Always, I'll take him.
And then the mom is like, fuck, great.
Because your kid is great company.
They're great.
They're really fun.
To be with.
If you go out, I used to love going out shopping for 50 things as long as I had
my daughter with me.
She's just somebody to talk to.
Right.
And you see the world through their eyes.
Yeah, you get to show your kid every, like I used to go to the supermarket,
which I used to hate doing.
But I'm like, oh, I take a watermelon off the shelf and put it in her lap.
Look at this.
It's a fucking watermelon.
You've never seen one of those before, have you?
And she's got this green.
She's never seen a watermelon.
I handed her her first watermelon and watched her look at it and go, Jesus.
That's amazing.
She just held it in her lap.
I see Travis laughing his ass off too, because Travis is a new dad.
Well, relatively new, you know, a two-year-old.
Two-year-old.
Yeah, that's right.
So I see Travis gets this too.
I always gave my daughter access to the real world.
I don't believe in, like, toys are shit.
Toys are like fake things.
But a watermelon is like, holy shit, that's a watermelon.
Or just give her your computer.
Just here, take this.
Just give her fucking movie cameras and shit to just hold and fondle.
See, whenever I see kids doing that, all I can think of is, is it going to
break it?
They might.
They're going to fuck it up.
They might.
I might break it.
I think.
I don't care.
I don't take care of my shit anyway.
Following your logic, you don't have a connection to the kids, so it's hard to
explain.
Right.
Like, you just see, like, other people's kids.
Yes.
And you're like, why would you do that?
But as soon as your son is born, your life changes fucking instantly.
And it's hard to explain to anyone.
And then maybe some of the stuff you miss, like, we used to go down to the
Caribbean every year.
This year we didn't go.
Yeah.
I miss it, yes.
But like Louie says, it's sort of pushed down, though.
I'm not craving it like, fuck, I can't believe we didn't go this year.
It's okay.
Yeah, it's fine.
And it's just okay.
See, that was my point.
Like, that's okay.
Yeah, but we're going to go next year, and I'm going to bring the kid.
And I know we're going to have a great time.
Everything they do that fucks with you is positive in the end.
Like, my kids, when they'd wake me up at six, and I went to sleep at three,
because I'm a night person.
They'd wake me up, and the feeling in my brain would hurt a lot.
Like, I don't want to fucking be up right now.
Yeah.
But within 10 minutes, we're talking.
I'm talking to them.
Holy shit.
And they're in the morning.
They're just, they got a good attitude in the morning.
I've got one eye open, and I'm going, yeah, what?
Daddy, I had a dream.
Okay, what?
And I'm just listening to it.
And then I'm like, wow, you had that dream?
That is, you know, then you're getting into conversation with your kid, and
they're nice to you.
You know?
I mean, some people have a contrary relationship with their kids.
Yeah.
And they are always, you know, Dad!
Like, those kind of kids.
Yeah, yeah.
Fucking, I would tap right out of that life.
I'd fucking dye my hair and get the fuck out of it.
I wouldn't be able to do it.
Yeah, yeah.
Both of my girls and I have really good relationships.
And the little 