Nate Berkus and Jeremiah Brent are super honest when it comes to their parenting strategies. “We’re certainly not experts,” Nate Berkus admitted to Arianna Huffington, on Episode 19 of The Thrive Global Podcast, in partnership with iHeartRadio and Sleep Number. “[We wanted to] raise them in a way that honors everything that we’ve tried to understand about life, and the lessons that we’ve learned, and forge a path… in a home that is meant purely to support who they are meant to be.”
Berkus and his husband Brent star on TLC’s Nate and Jeremiah by Design, and the two fathers sat down with Huffington to talk all things marriage, career, and kids.
When asked about their experience raising their two children as a same-sex couple, Berkus noted, “I think that we live in a very special time, and Jeremiah and I have always believed that love is love. We both, individually and especially as a couple, wanted to bring children into the world.”
On the podcast, the couple shared stories from their babies’ births, their special relationship with their surrogates, and even the aspects of fatherhood that no one can fully prepare for. “The surreal thing is actually looking at somebody that is an extension of you,” Brent noted. “It is such a beautiful experience. I’ll spend my entire life trying to describe what that was like, and seeing that. It was so special.”
In addition to talking about their unconditional love for their children, the couple also spoke about the positive effect that fatherhood has had on their relationship with one another. “I didn’t realize that love could evolve,” Brent shared, “And then you have a child and you watch that love evolve into a very different direction in an entirely different type of love.”
To find out more, listen to the full conversation on iHeartRadio, here. You can also listen to the Thrive Global podcast internationally for free on iTunes and Stitcher.