Abhishek Bachchan believes parents shouldn’t be friends with their kids, says ‘a father will never be able to replace a mother’

Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan are parents to 13-year-old Aaradhya Bachchan.

New Delhi | March 11, 2025 08:09 PM IST

3 min read

Abhishek Bachchan with wife Aishwarya and daughter Aaradhya. (Photo: Aishwarya Rai Bachchan/Instagram)

Abhishek Bachchan welcomed his daughter Aaradhya in 2011 with wife Aishwarya Rai and in the last few years, Abhishek has been playing many girl-dad roles in the movies. While promoting one of his upcoming films, where he plays a girl-dad again, Abhishek shared that the emotions of a father are often ignored in general discourse, and also because they often don’t showcase their emotions openly. He said that while women are the “superior race”, people must not discount what a father does for his child. He also said that being friendly is at the core of the parent-child relationship, but they shouldn’t be friends.

In a chat with Fever FM, while promoting Be Happy, Abhishek said, “A lot of the time, in general discourse, we forget what a father might be going through. I feel men are not very good at expressing. It’s a huge flaw and we feel that we just need to very silently take on whatever responsibilities or pressures and just get on with it.” He then added that a “father will never be able to replace a mother” and said that while women are the “superior race, that shouldn’t have to discount what a father does. And it’s nice, once in a while, to just throw maybe a bit of light that ‘hey, maybe nothing compared to what a mother does, but they do try their best.'”

Talking about maintaining a relationship with kids, Abhishek Bachchan said that in today’s day and age, parent-child relationships are “more friendly” but he doesn’t think that the relationship should turn into a “friendship.” “I think you should be friendly with your kid, you can’t be your kid’s friend. You are their parent. You are there to protect them and guide them but you have to be friendly enough for them to feel comfortable enough to come and confide in you and you should be the first person they would think of calling, if anything but I also believe that at the end of the day, you are their parent. They must understand that distinction, that’s what I believe,” he said.

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Abhishek also shared that after one becomes a parent, many people share their advice but in fact, it is a journey of self-discovery that one has to take by themselves. “At the end of the day, you have to make your own mistakes and you have to find your own way. That’s something life teaches you. Each parent is unique and their approach to bringing up their children is unique and actually it’s a journey of self discovery because you discover a lot about yourself when you have to not think about yourself but think about somebody else, who you love more than yourself,” he said.

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