Nick Cannon is opening up about one of the most talked-about parts of his personal life, and this time he is tying it directly to heartbreak. In a candid interview, the TV host said the years after his divorce from Mariah Carey left him emotionally unmoored and far less careful than he should have been. He said having 12 children was not part of some grand plan, but a byproduct of unresolved pain, freedom, and a refusal to slow down. Now, Nick Cannon is looking back on that chapter with more honesty than ever.
Cannon made the remarks during an appearance on The Breakfast Club, where he said it took therapy for him to fully grasp how much the end of his marriage affected his choices. He described himself as “careless” and “frivolous” during that period, explaining that he had the means and access to live without much structure. Rather than dealing with the emotional fallout directly, he suggested he kept moving, kept working, and kept entering new relationships. In hindsight, he said he should have done more healing before making life-changing decisions.
Nick Cannon Links Family Life to Divorce Pain
Cannon and Carey married in 2008 and welcomed twins Moroccan and Monroe in 2011. Their split became public in 2014, and their divorce was finalized in 2016. In the years that followed, Cannon’s family expanded in a way that kept drawing headlines. He now shares children with six women, including Carey, Brittany Bell, Abby De La Rosa, Bre Tiesi, LaNisha Cole, and Alyssa Scott. His son Zen, whom he shared with Scott, died from brain cancer at 5 months old in 2021.
During the interview, Cannon made clear that he does not regret his children. In fact, he stressed that each child was conceived out of love and that many of those relationships were meaningful at the time. That point mattered to him. He was not dismissing fatherhood or acting as if his children were mistakes. Instead, he was admitting that the path he took came from a place of emotional avoidance rather than emotional clarity.
Therapy Changed the Way He Sees It
One of the biggest shifts in Cannon’s recent comments is the role therapy now plays in how he understands his past. He said therapy forced him to slow down and confront things he had long outrun with work and constant motion. That self-reflection seems to have reshaped the way he talks about both the divorce and the years that followed. The public may still debate his choices, but Cannon is no longer pretending those choices happened in a vacuum.
He also said fatherhood now teaches him more than he once expected. Over time, he has framed parenting as one of the biggest sources of purpose in his life, even as critics keep questioning the size and structure of his family. That tension has followed him for years. However, his latest interview gives the story a more reflective angle than the usual shock-value framing around his 12 kids.
The Mariah Carey connection, of course, is what makes this admission land harder. Their relationship was a major celebrity story from the start, and their split marked a sharp change in how Cannon seemed to move through his private life. By tying that pain to the choices that followed, he is not asking for a pass. He is offering an explanation.
That does not mean everyone will buy it. Some readers will see growth in his honesty, while others will hear an excuse wrapped in self-awareness. Either way, Cannon has given the public a new lens for one of his most scrutinized chapters, and it starts with the marriage that still shapes his story years later.
