Matthew McConaughey recently opened up about parenthood and how his perspectives have changed in an interview with Extra. “When you become a parent, your peripheral vision becomes better, whereas before you’re a parent, you can have tunnel vision,” he told Extra. “You can take one-trip tickets to anywhere you want to go. No more on-trip tickets when you become a parent,” McConaughey continued. “It’s round-trip tickets because you know you have to get back and you’ve got dependents.”
McConaughey shares three children with his wife Camilla: Levi, 15, Vida, 13 and Livingston, 10. They tend to keep their children off of social media as often as they can, but recently the pair took a big step in their parenting and allowed their son Levi to join social media for his 15th birthday. “After two to three years of talking about the pitfalls and the upfalls and the downfalls, and him shadowing me on my IGs and his mother on hers and picking out people that he looked up to and talking to them about it, we felt he’s got enough information and is mature enough to tell his own story,” McConaughey told People.
McConaughey spoke about the decision and said that it illustrates one of the major lessons he hopes to instill in his children, which is "responsibility breeds freedom." “You take care of your stuff, chores, you take care of yourself, you will have more freedoms in the future,” he said. McConaughey made sure to clarify that "take care of yourself" doesn't mean he wants his children to grow up fast, more that he wants his kids to be kids and not worry about the pressures of the world too much. “Try to put what they love and what they have an innate ability to do in front of them. Kids feel pressure more now. Feel like, ‘I gotta know what I’m gonna be.’ No, you don’t. Please don’t. Not yet. Now is the time to try a whole bunch of things out that will come. And I don’t want out kids to miss out being a kid.”