Joe Wicks “didn’t believe in marriage” when he was younger.
The 37-year-old fitness expert tied the knot with former model Rosie Jones – with whom he has daughter Indie, son Marley, and another baby on the way – in 2019 and admitted he thinks his teenage self would have been very shocked with the way he’s settled down because his parents’ own troubled relationship put him off the institution.
He said: “Younger me would not believe I got married. I didn’t believe in marriage and never thought for one minute it would happen to me.
“Now I know that marriages are legit and they can work.”
Joe clashed frequently with his mum when he was a teenager, while his dad was a heroin addict.
And the ‘Body Coach’ star drew on his own childhood experiences when it came to working out the kind of parent he wanted to be.
He told The Big Issue: “I don’t want to be intolerant and slapping the kids, I want to be really loving.
“I’m constantly learning and challenging myself to be a better dad.”
But Joe admitted he isn’t a perfect parent.
He said: “Eight times out of 10 I think I’m fun and calm.
“Sometimes the kids go on and on and on and I end up going, ‘I can’t handle it.’ But that’s just human nature.
“So I’d say two times out of 10 I might have a little shout, but that’s pretty decent I think.”
Although Joe’s mum was strict, in hindsight, he's grateful he and his brothers had firm boundaries imposed on them.
He said: “I’d tell my younger self one day he’ll actually be thankful his mum is so strict.
“I can see now how important the boundaries she set were. She sat us down and said, you have to be home by this time, you can’t do this and that.
“If we hadn’t had those reins on us, we would have been a little bit loose. We wouldn’t have come home by midnight. We would have been up to all those naughty things kids do between midnight and 4am, partying, getting drunk, experimenting with drugs.
“She had this really strict old-school approach. And it worked – I was there, running up that hill to be in by midnight.”
