It used to take a village.
Now it takes a podcast.
We're Matt and Stacy Barnes and with two sets of twins four and under, we know all too well how hard parenting can be!
Having never received the operating manuals for our kids (we figure the hospital must have lost them), we decided that a podcast would be a great place to share what we've learned and, more importantly, steal all of the great ideas we can get our hands on from our listeners. (Basically, we’re crowdsourcing parenting.)
So, jump on in for stories of going from zero to four kids in 17 months; working through infertility, IVF and surrogacy; juggling our careers with that of our kids’ (our son Wells plays Baby Jack on “This Is Us”); figuring out how to get four kids to eat the same dinner; and so much more!
(And then send us your suggestions about how to do all of that better.)
Join our podcast village and share the parenting journey, because, as we all know, parenting is hard!
For more about our story, visit www.thatbarnesfam.com
Follow the show on IG @parentingishardpodcast
Follow Matt on IG @immattbarnes
Follow the kids on IG @thosebarnestwins
MCCOY
(AGE 4) WAS BEING ODDLY COOPERATIVE FOR THIS SHOOT. WE’RE PRETTY SURE HE WANTS SOMETHING FROM US.
POPPY
(AGE 2) IS ALWAYS SMILING… EXCEPT, OF COURSE, WHEN WE TRY TO DO A PHOTOSHOOT.
FAQs
What’s the podcast about?
On our last podcast (the not-so-award-winning Bros Before Rose: Men Who Watch The Bachelor), we ended up with an amazing community of people from all over the world. And that was a fairly dumb (but fun!) podcast about The Bachelor! We thought, what if we could build an awesome community of parents from all over that could share experiences and figure out parenting together? We certainly don’t have all the answers, but we’ve learned a few things we can share and we’d love to create a place where we can all learn from each other. Along the way, we’ll tell some stories about parenting two sets of twins, life on set at This Is Us, balancing a crazy work-life with a crazy home-life and a bunch more.
Will there be guests?
Sometimes! We know some pretty great parents as well as experts in the field of parenting, child psychology and education, so we’d be pretty dumb not to try to trick some of them into giving us all their secrets!
How often will new episodes come out?
Every Monday, for now.
Do you really have two sets of twins only 17 months apart?
Yeah. The older two are McCoy Kobayashi and Violet Maru (#BarnesTeamAlpha) and the younger two are Poppy Sky and Weldon (Wells) Walker (#BarnesTeamBravo). And yeah… it’s a lot! But it’s also a lot of fun.
I have a question for you/a funny story/advice to give/a parenting quandary I need advice about. Where can I submit that for the show?
We LOVE interacting with our community. We also know that we don’t have all the answers and want to steal as many ideas from our listeners as possible! Just fill out the form on this page and we’ll take it from there!
I miss Bros Before Rose. Is this why you stopped doing it?
Nope. While we loved doing Bros with our friends, it took 2-3 nights of every week between watching the show, recording two episodes per week, editing and posting the podcast. Basically, it was killing us (and our families didn’t appreciate it much either). Once we got our time back, we realized that doing a podcast that we could record whenever we wanted sounded pretty freakin’ great!
VIOLET
(AGE 4) SEEN HERE IN THE MIDDLE OF ONE OF HER DANCE PARTIES FOR ONE.
WELLS
(AGE 2) MAY HAVE THOUGHT THIS WAS AN AUDITION FOR SOME INTENSE DRAMA. CALM DOWN, WELLS.