Nick Cannon made headlines not long ago when he welcomed four new babies into his brood in a matter of months, expanding his family to seven kids by four different women. Not everyone was thrilled by the Masked Singer host’s prolific fatherhood, so in a new interview on The Breakfast Club radio show, he defended his actions by saying that monogamy is a “Eurocentric concept.”
On June 14, Cannon welcomed twins Zion Mixolydian and Zillion Heir with Abby De La Rosa. Just nine days later, model Alyssa Scott gave birth to his son Zen. Back in December, he and Brittany Bell — with whom he also has a four-year-old son named Golden — welcomed their daughter, Powerful Queen. Cannon also has 10-year-old twins (son Moroccan and daughter Monroe) with his ex-wife Mariah Carey.
After host Charlamagne Tha God told Cannon that people “question” why he has so many kids with multiple women, he responded, “That’s a Eurocentric concept when you think about the ideas of you’re supposed to have this one person for the rest of your life. And really that’s just to classify property, when you think about it. When you go into that mindset, if we’re really talking that talk, the idea that a man should have one woman — we shouldn’t have anything. I have no ownership over this person.”
“It’s about what exchange can we create together,” Cannon continued. “I’ve never really subscribed to that mentality. I understand the institution of marriage if we go back to what that was about … I don’t have ownership of any of the mothers. We create families in the sense of we created a beautiful entity.”
Cannon pointed out that many people can be “indoctrinated” into thinking there’s a single right way for relationships and families to be formed, and he said he does not “subscribe to monogamy.”
“Those women and all women are the ones that open themselves up to say, ‘I would like to allow this man in my world and I will birth this child.’ So it ain’t my decision, I’m just following suit,” he said, adding, “They know how I feel. I’m not going around like, ‘Who am I gonna impregnate next?’ … The woman is always the one who leads and makes the decision.”
Cannon’s right, of course, that there are plenty of cultures outside of the Western/European world in which polygamy — or even just fathering children with multiple women without necessarily marrying them — is more commonplace. (Whether those who adhere to said lifestyle would be equally fine with a woman marrying or having children with multiple men is a whole separate issue.) But is that just an excuse to deflect criticism?
Ultimately, it shouldn’t matter. If all of the women involved are fine with the arrangement they have with him — and of course, assuming he’s actively involved in the kids’ lives, which it sounds like he is — who are we to judge? Consenting adults bringing new life into the world outside the constraints of a traditional marriage or monogamous relationship isn’t exactly something to clutch our pearls over. As long as everyone involved is happy and provided for, we should all mind our own business and save our outrage for more pressing matters, like someone naming their child Zillion Heir.
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