Ben Stiller, the son of Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, shared how he and his wife Christine Taylor are approaching parenting their children.
Ben Stiller is taking responsibility for his shortcomings. The Zoolander alumnus said that he and his wife Christine Taylor are still learning how to raise their children, Ella Stiller, 23, and Quinlin Stiller, 20, in his new documentary, Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost, about his parents, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara.
“Having kids who are now actors also, and experiencing that, that became part of the movie in terms of talking to them about how cyclically, generationally these things get handed down,” in an Oct. 23 interview on The View, Ben clarified. “You want to do better than your parents.”
In fact, according to the developer of Severance, he alternates between choosing "better" and "worse" options than his deceased parents. “It’s that struggle we all go through.” he said.
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“Every family you have to deal with whatever it is,” Ben clarified. “Parents have to go out and work and that time that you don’t spend with your kids and that struggle.”
"That is something that they feel all the time," Ben said, acknowledging that his parents never really mastered the work-life balance.
In the meantime, Ben's children discussed how they felt about his Hollywood profession.
“After a tough day, or if something was going wrong, you can kind of get into your own head,” according to US Weekly, Quinlin told his father in the documentary. “And when you get into that place, it’s hard to get you out of it. So that would kind of put a damper on the fun part of being on vacation.”
The 20-year-old acknowledged that his father's plate was quite full, but he acknowledged that there were moments when it became too much.
“You have all these hats that you’re trying to balance,” he went on. “Being a director, an actor, a producer, a writer. But also just, like, a father. And sometimes, I felt that would come last to these other things.”
Ella went on, “I literally can’t ever remember you being around when I was growing up.”
Ben acknowledged his children's emotions in another segment of the documentary, stating in a confessional, “It was the same thing I was going through as a kid and I just couldn’t see that at all at the time.”