Having Kids Has Reframed Macaulay Culkin’s Complicated Feelings About Father’s Day

Now that he is a father of two himself, Macaulay Culkin is taking a good look at his feelings about Father’s Day. The Home Alone star has been estranged from his own father, Kit Culkin, since he was a teenager, and has been open about experiencing cruelty and abuse from his dad as a child. Understandably, this has made Father’s Day an uncomfortable day for the actor. But now things are feeling different for him. Because he’s a “papa” himself.

“If you know a little about me then you’d know I’ve had a complicated relationship with Father’s Day in the past,” Culkin wrote on Instagram on Thursday. “But since becoming a papa myself I’ve decided to reinvent the wheel.”

Culkin shares 3-year-old son Dakota and a 1-year-old son whose name has not been shared with wife Brenda Song. His way of reframing the way he looks at Father’s Day was to simply make it about his sons more than himself.

“After all, they are the ones who made me a father (no offense to Brenda),” he added. Culkin shared a photo of a Star Wars-themed gift box he had received as a care package from LucasFilm, which included items for his sons to enjoy. “I try to do fun things for the boys on Father’s Day. It’s a special day. All of this is a way to say thank you to @lucasfilm for sending me a care package full of things that are more meant for my children to enjoy (with the exception of the hot sauce). Father’s Day isn’t for me, it’s for the people that make me feel like a father.”

Macaulay Culkin has not had contact Kit Culkin for many years. Nor has his younger brother Kieran Culkin, who is also a dad of two. The Good Son star has accused his father of physical and mental abuse, saying in a 2018 interview on WTF with Marc Maron, “[He said] ‘Do good or I’ll hit you.’ He was a bad man. He was abusive, physically and mentally — I can show you all my scars if I wanted to.”

The actor told New York Magazine in 2006, “I think there’s two different fathers that I have. I have my father, and I have the one in my head. The real one is gone and should be gone.”

As a father himself, he said at the time he took notes on what not to do: “I knew from a very early age that I better take notes on him. Notes on how not to be, notes on how I don’t want to be when I grow up.”

Fortunately, it seems that having children of his own has done even more to inspire Culkin to be the kind of dad whose children are happy celebrate Father’s Day with him.