Nick Cannon is not ruling out future fatherhood, but after welcoming four babies over the past 10 months, he says he's trying to remain celibate...at least this year.
When Dr. Mehmet Oz asked if he expected more children in the near future, the 41-year-old TV personality and comedian said on Friday, Nov. 19, "I don't know, doc. What do you think? Where should I stop?"
Nick has seven children with four different women: He and ex-wife Mariah Carey are parents to 10-year-old twins Moroccan Cannon and Monroe Cannon; he and model Brittany Bell share son Golden Cannon, 4, and 10-month-old daughter Powerful Queen Cannon; he and model Abby De La Rosa share 5-month-old twin sons Zion Cannon and Zillion Cannon, and he and model Alyssa Scott share 4-month-old son Zen Cannon.
"I don't know how I'll feel in five years," Nick said. "When people say, 'Are you going to have more kids,' that's a difficult question to ask, unless I did have something like a vasectomy, because I don't know if I'm going to find love again. I don't know how deep I'll go again. I don't know. You never understand what the universe is going to present to you."
In an Oct. 1 interview on Revolt TV's Drink Champs podcast, Nick said he was "celibate right now" and was "going to see if I could make it to 2022." On Dr. Oz, he spoke about coming from a religious background, in a church that considers premarital sex to be taboo, and said he practiced celibacy while filming the 2002 movie Drumline.
"I was settling for like a year and a half, because I was in a relationship," he said. "We were being groomed to get married."
Nick said that about a year ago, one of his therapists talked to him about public perception of the star having multiple children and asked him about how he felt about "taking a little sabbatical." Nick said, "I was kind of trying to make my point like, I'm not driven by sex, so I could stop right now if I wanted to."
"And throughout that challenge, especially with the new show coming forth and being focused, I was like, all right, I'm going to see if I can make it to 2022 so I could focus on my show, he said, referring to his daytime talk show, The Nick Cannon Show, which premiered in September, adding, "So I could...not feel drowsy because I was out all night chasing and doing all of that stuff. So it's been quite entertaining on the show for people to see if I could make it to the goal. Other people have diets. I guess, I have [this]."
When Dr. Oz asked when he last engaged in "intercourse that could make a baby," Nick replied, "since we started the show. I'm doing well, too. I'm gonna make it, doc, I'm gonna make it."
Nick said one of his biggest fears was not "giving others who aren't my children my time. "That can keep my up at night," he said. "If I'm somewhere else where my children aren't, then I'm like, I'm not being the best dad I could be in the moment. So by taking that entire energy away, now I can say, hey, I'm working or it's kids. There's no in-between and I really like how that feels."