Being a parent is, notoriously, not an easy task. Being a parent to four kids possibly ups the difficulty level at least a degree or two. Being a parent to four kids when Kanye West is the other side of the equation? Well…
Kim Kardashian, who was married to the ever-controversial West from 2014 to 2021 and shares kids North, 12, Saint, 9, Chicago, 7, and Psalm, 6, with him, opened up to Alex Cooper on Wednesday’s episode of Call Her Daddy.
In the wide-ranging interview, Kardashian, who has shared much of her life on television and social media, filled in some of the blanks. On the podcast, she and Cooper discuss her relationship with her sisters (Kylie and Khloé are Kris Jenner’s favorites, Kim thinks, and she’s closest with Kourtney, even with the “Not Kourtney” group text and similar brouhaha. “They just see us fighting and then they drag it on for months and we’re, like, hanging out and we’ll be good”), trigger a Kris Jenner momager freakout with a vague prank text about TMZ, and even the emotion behind Kim’s infamous diamond earring meltdown (“They weren’t insured yet. That’s why I was so upset, is because that would be money down the drain.). She estimated that she probably spends more than $1 million but less than $5 million on her glam every year, and that she’ll find out in November whether she passed the bar exam (“I don’t really care to have my bachelor’s degree. I just want my law degree.”).
And, of course, there was no ignoring the Ye-shaped elephant in the room. Kardashian filed for divorce from West after public disclosure of his bipolar disorder diagnosis and escalatingly bizarre behavior including a 2020 presidential bid, offensive comments about various groups on social media, and public insults to Kardashian and her family, among other incidents. Their divorce settlement granted joint custody and access to the children.
“What do you think co-parenting with Kanye West is like?” Kardashian asked Cooper when her infamous ex inevitably came up. “It’s not easy.”
The two were together for nearly 15 years, Kardashian said, and she now raises their children “full-time. They live with me.”
“I welcome a great healthy relationship with my kids and their dad, and I think he knows that, I push for it all the time,” she said. But just because she welcomes it doesn’t mean that it necessarily happens. “It’s not easy.”
Kardashian’s kids see West “whenever he’ll call for them and ask,” she said, though “it’s probably been a couple months since we’ve heard from him.”
Though Kardashian’s chauffeured black car has a high road-only route programmed in when it comes to navigating her relationship with West, both public and private, that doesn’t mean she’s unbothered by some of the things said about her.
“The one thing that just gets me is that there’s this narrative that, like, I keep the kids away from him,” she said. “I’ve never once done that. Like, there’s been so many times where I’ve been like, ‘Oh, I just wanna show all of these texts. What are you talking about?’”
Headlines often take her by surprise, she said. “I think it’s all good and we’re living our life and then I just wake up and there’s all these tweets about how I’ve kidnapped the kids and I’m like, it’s not a kidnapping, it’s a divorce.”
There wasn’t one specific thing that made her reach a breaking point and end the marriage, but consistently “not feeling safe” with West.
And even though she hasn’t publicly rebutted West’s claims about her parenting doesn’t mean she hasn’t been tempted. Kardashian revealed that she lives and dies by writing emails and tweets that she’ll never send.
“There has been so many times where I’ve written a draft and been like, ‘I’m gonna go,’ and then I’m just like, what’s the point? You know, what is the point? Am I gonna go back and forth? My kids are gonna see this.”
The temptation is still there, though. Recently, she said, “I had a good post, ready to go…The group chat read it, approved it.” What gets her going isn’t personal insults or politics, she said.
“I don’t care what you say about the world and your beliefs and any of that,” she said, but what Kardashian will not take is discussion of her children. “I don’t care what it is. You know, it, that’s hard for me to sit back and be like, come on. You know, even just like, you know, sharing stuff about them, you know? It is hard to sit back, and when he says things about my mom, that’s what’s really hard for me because she loves him and to this day, still does and is super emotional about it and sad about it.”
And though Kardashian is currently single, she didn’t rule out a future fourth marriage. She even knows what she’d wear: An unfinished design by Thierry Mugler.
“I was starting to have Manfred Thierry Mugler design a wedding dress. I just wanted it in my archive of like what I would wear. And I had the perfect one and we were designing it and making it,” she said. Mugler died in 2022 before they were able to finish the project.
As for who that future partner might be, Kardashian nixed the idea of another rapper or athlete.
“I think we’re going, like, lawyers and longevity scientists that can give me all their secrets.”
Representatives for West and Kardashian did not immediately respond to Vanity Fair’s request for comment.
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The post Kim Kardashian Explains What It’s Like To Co-Parent With Kanye West: “It’s Not Easy” appeared first on Vanity Fair.
