Macaulay Culkin Reveals How His Abusive Father Inspired His Own Parenting Style

They say experience is the best teacher, and this couldn’t be any more true for Macaulay Culkin who hasn’t spoken to his father in thirty years.

The rift between them is so wide that Culkin calls him an “abusive narcissist” who never sees himself as the problem.

These days, Culkin is a father of two boys himself, and his most important mission in life is to not become like his father.

Macaulay Culkin Says His Father Particularly Hated Him Due To His Early Career Success

To be one of the most famous people in the world before you can even hit puberty is a feat only a select few achieve, and this was something that Culkin smoothly did before he rounded out his first decade on earth.

Being the insecure father that Culkin makes his father Christopher “Kit” Culkin out to be, he couldn’t stomach seeing his young boy become something he tried so hard to do with little success.

“Now that I got kids of my own, it makes me kick up some dust and I go, ‘I can’t believe he was like that. He had all these lovely kids,'” Culkin told Kate and her brother Oliver Hudson on their podcast Sibling Revelry, adding that he believes his father “had a certain amount of resentment towards me. Because he wanted to be an actor. He never really got as far as chorus on Broadway, and then he did some ballet too.”

At age 11 or 12, Culkin had already decided that he wanted to quit Hollywood and told his father so. Long story short, his career was making them a lot of money and his father just wasn’t ready to let go of his meal ticket. “I felt trapped,” Culkin recalled feeling at the time.

By the time he was 14, his mother Patricia Brentrup provided a much-needed way out for him when she divorced his father. “I said, Great, I quit, ’cause now he’s out of the picture,” he said. “I hope you guys had a good time and made as much money as you possibly could because there’s no more coming from me.”

Despite the childhood traumas, Culkin is doing great with partner Brenda Song and their two young sons, Dakota and Carson. Now, he’s “in a really great place, probably in the best place of my entire life.”

We love to hear that, don’t we?

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