HARDY became a dad earlier this year when he and his wife, Caleigh Ryan Hardy, welcomed their first child, daughter Rosie, in March, and he isn’t lacking for advice from other artists who have been in his position. Speaking to Audacy’s Rob + Holly for the Friday Night Takeover, HARDY shared that he and Caleigh have decided not to use a nanny or any paid help to take care of Rosie, something that Luke Combs and his wife, Nicole, also chose not to do with their children.
“There’s no judgment toward anybody that has any help, but Luke Combs told me one time, it was just me and him, we were sitting out by a fire somewhere random, and he was like, ‘Man, we don’t do it,’” HARDY recalled. “He’s like, ‘I go home, and we’re putting the kids to bed, and we’re giving them baths. That’s just the way that we want to do it.’”
“Caleigh and I are just gonna try it because that’s how we were raised, and we want to raise our kids in a very nuclear mom and dad family,” he continued, “and we’re just gonna try as hard as we can to not have any sort of paid help.”
HARDY joked that while it might be difficult to go out in public as a family, he wonders if the public won’t care quite as much by the time Rosie is a little older. “Even though it’s not gonna be normal, that’ll come with its own set of challenges when it’s like we wanna go to the county fair and walk around or we wanna go out to eat or whatever, and our kid having to deal with maybe that, but hopefully I’ll be washed up by the time she’s a teenager,” he said.
The 35-year-old will return to the road next year on his COUNTRY! COUNTRY! TOUR, which begins in February in Ontario and runs through August at arenas and amphitheaters across North America. Having been at home with Caleigh to care for Rosie over the past several months amidst the release of his album COUNTRY! COUNTRY! in September, the new dad knows just how difficult it can be and said he has a “different respect” for his wife since she became a mother.
“I’ve always known she was tough, but it’s different now,” HARDY said. “I just have a different respect for her. Obviously, immediately watching my wife give birth was insane, but the big thing now is now that I’m going back on the road because I have to, it’s my job, and she stays at home.”
“I know how the nights can be, and I know that they’re hard, and she doesn’t really get a break,” he reflected, confirming that the couple doesn’t “do the nanny thing or anything like that.” He later added, It’s just us and the help that we have from our family that lives in Nashville, but she’s doing it all on her own while I’m gone, and that’s the respect I have for her now. That’s why when I come home, I’m gonna help as much as I can because she’s grinding while I’m gone for sure.”
Luke Combs previously opened up about not having a nanny, so that he and his wife Nicole Combs could give their kids as much of a “normal life” as possible.
“It’s going to be a challenge because we don’t have nannies or any of that stuff,” Combs told Audacy’s Katie Neal. “We’ve thought about it, and it’s not a question of ‘Can we afford that?’ It’s a question of ‘Do we want that for our kids?’ And right now, at this time, I don’t think that’s something that we’re really interested in because I want our kids to have as normal of a life as possible considering the circumstances. I’d rather them be riding bikes than riding a tour bus.”
Combs also talked about the respect he has for Garth Brooks for taking time off to be present in his children’s lives when they were young. “No doubt people thought he was nuts. But it all makes sense once you have kids… I’m not saying that’s what I’m going to do,” Combs shared of Brooks’ decision to be as present as possible for his kids. “My kids didn’t ask to be born. It was our choice to have them so it would feel pretty selfish to not give them all the attention.”
