Good cop, bad cop! Matthew McConaughey opened up about his and his wife Camila Alves’ parenting tactics.
“Sometimes loving your kids means giving them just what they want,” the actor, 50, told Town and Country on Wednesday, June 17, of Levi, 11, Vida, 10, and Livingston, 7. “Other times, it means tough love. Affluent people can give their kids everything they want, but they’re not usually going to get what they need. Loving a child is a lot harder if you really give a damn.”
The Oscar winner went on to say that telling a kid no “takes a lot more energy,” explaining to the magazine: “It’s a lot easier to say ‘yes.'”
When Alves, 38, laughed, McConaughey joked, “From the snicker that my wife’s giving me, it seems that I’m more consistently the yes guy. She’s probably right.”
In March, the Texas native said during a HISTORYTalks event that he wants a bigger brood, but his family of five is all set, explaining, “I’d like to have eight more kids, but my wife [is] not on the same page. I understand that. It’s a lot easier for us [men].”
The Dallas Buyers Club star gushed that he has dreamed of “be[ing] a dad” since he was 8 years old and plays “a large hand” in raising Levi, Vida and Livingston.
“That’s the thing I think I do most honorably is having three autonomous, conscientious, confident children,” McConaughey said at the time, noting that he “puts them to work” every time they visit him on set.
“We give them a little cash for catering,” the Golden Globe winner explained. “My daughter’s gone in to work with seamstresses and the costume departments.”
His youngest is growing into “a literal handful,” McConaughey told Ellen DeGeneres of Livingston in January 2019. “He sometimes doesn’t like to use his words enough to get his point across. He gets a little of that from me. I like to wrestle. … I’m the one who comes out of it with the bruises.”
He and Alves tied the knot in June 2012 in Texas.
