Long Island celebrity dads on parenting

Billy Joel

The Piano Man, who hails from Hicksville, has three daughters: Alexa Ray, whom he shares with ex-wife Christie Brinkley; and Della Rose and Remy Anne, whom he welcomed with wife Alexis Roderick when he was in his late 60s. “I'm kind of old to be a parent again, but they made me feel a lot younger,” he told Newsday in a 2019 interview. “It's amazing … Life is good, so I’m in no big hurry to leave.” In 2017, Joel told Rolling Stone: “My favorite thing about my whole life is probably being a father. I didn’t have a father, so it was very important to me to be a father and kind of compensate for what I didn’t have.”

Jerry Seinfeld

Here’s what Jerry Seinfeld, who was raised in Massapequa, had to say about not being a "mean" dad to his daughter’s dates: “I really was determined not to be those dads. I hated those dads when I was a kid dating and you would go to a girl’s house and the father would be so mean and I don’t want to be that guy. You feel those feelings,” he told People in 2019. “You feel possessive and protective, but I refuse to be one of those disapproving dads.” The comedian has three children.

LL Cool J

Bay Shore native LL Cool J, who has four children, talked about the importance of not spoiling his kids during an interview on Oprah’s Master Class in 2017. “After my experiences coming up, I’ve been a little uncomfortable with really putting a lot of pressure on my kids, but I am a stickler for excellence and I’m not going to spoil you,” the actor-rapper said. “Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with helping your kids getting into position and stuff like that but I want my kids to deserve and earn it, too, because this is a real world, they're real people and I’m a blue collar guy at the end of the day and I want them to understand that.”

And how does he instill this valuable lesson? “I just try to lead by example, encourage them [and] make sure they can do anything they put their minds to. I’ve always been really trying to teach them to believe in themselves and not be limited,” he said.

Matthew Koma

Musician Matthew Koma, who hails from Seaford, became a new dad in 2018 when he and "Younger" actress Hilary Duff welcomed daughter Banks. "The whole cliche saying 'it goes too fast' is actually true in its entirety," Koma captioned an Instagram photo of himself with Banks in May 2019.

Alec Baldwin

Massapequa-raised Alec Baldwin opened up about fatherhood with People in 2018. “Being a father can be very challenging because kids are obsessed with their mothers,” the actor said. “I’m in a room with my kids and I’m doing really well until my wife walks in! [Then] they just dump me. That’s just how it is — there’s nothing I can do about it!” His advice for new dads: “If your wife is a great mommy, appreciate that and enjoy that. That’s a great thing to have.” Baldwin has five kids: four young children with wife Hilaria Baldwin, and an adult daughter whom he shares with ex-wife Kim Basinger.

Ralph Macchio

Huntington native Ralph Macchio, best known as the star of “Karate Kid” and now its YouTube spinoff series “Cobrai Kai,” has two grown children. In a 2018 interview with Newsday, Macchio reflected on how he raised them, saying, "I’ve certainly been hands-on with both of my kids, and I think they're better-served for that. Would I have dialed back on carrying everything for them, and doing all those things? Probably would have, because sometimes they’re like ‘Mom, Dad, I’ll see you over there ... take my stuff.’ Sometimes you have to carry your weight, and I think it helps with just independence when you get out there, when you don’t have your parent or mentor with you."

Scott Disick

Reality star Scott Disick, who dated Kourtney Kardashian and shares three children with her, spoke about their co-parenting on her blog Poosh in 2019. The two spoke about the challenges they faced co-parenting since their break-up in 2015 and how they have made it work for them. “It’s not like the easiest thing for us but the fact that we tried and we made it work makes life that much better. I mean I couldn’t imagine raising three children with someone that I couldn’t speak to every day,” Disick said. “Just because we are not together our kids should not suffer.”

For Kardashian, the biggest challenge of co-parenting came when they both started seeing other people, while Disick said his biggest challenge was “trying to figure out how we separate, you know, our relationship as friends and parents and still be on the same page and what’s I guess appropriate and what’s not and when to be able to talk to each other.” Disick’s late mother and father lived on Long Island.