The Backstreet Boys opened up about fatherhood, and these three lessons stood out

In a candid podcast conversation with Kylie Kelce, the pop icons reflect on the grounded parenting lessons that matter most.

They’ve sold over 130 million records, played stadiums on every continent, and are now headlining a residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas. But when the Backstreet Boys sat down with Kylie Kelce on her podcast Not Gonna Lie, the most memorable stretch of the conversation wasn’t about music. Between laughing about their very first gig on a wet trampoline at SeaWorld in 1993 and blind-ranking their old music video outfits, all five members talked openly about fatherhood, what they’ve learned from raising kids while constantly on the road, and the advice that’s stuck with them the most. Some of it is funny, some of it hits harder than expected, and all of it comes from men who’ve had more reasons than most to check out as dads and chose not to.

The clearest theme running through what each of them shared was presence, and how genuinely difficult it is to give when you’re flying in and out of your kids’ lives on a touring schedule.

Kevin shared a piece of advice from a booking agent early in his career. He was picking up a souvenir to bring home to his young son when the agent stopped him and asked why. Then he said something Kevin never forgot: every time Kevin left the house, no matter where he was going, his son was going to start expecting something when he got back. The lesson was to stop buying gifts and just come home. “Your presence when they get home is the present,” Kevin said. “The hug and the hey buddy, I missed you.” He’s carried that with him since.

Nick echoed it from a slightly different angle. Coming home from a long stretch on the road and actually disconnecting from tour life, he said, is harder than it sounds. He gave real credit to their wives for holding everything together while the group is away, calling them “sometimes the mother and the father” during those stretches. Just being in the moment with the kids when he walked through the door, rather than still half-living in whatever city he’d just left, is the thing he’s had to consciously work on.

AJ took a lighter approach, though there was something serious underneath it. With a 13-year-old daughter who’s starting to talk about boys, he’s already thinking about the years ahead. He borrowed a line from a friend who told his daughter, before her first date, to remind the boy of one thing: my dad always says you can date when you’re married. “He got her back an hour early,” AJ said, laughing. His dad’s version was simpler: you can date when you’re married. He seems to like both.

Howie got visibly emotional. He talked about teaching his boys to be respectful to their elders, to be gentlemen, and to give everything they have to something worth doing or not do it at all. What got him was an email from a teacher praising his son for being polite and respectful. “You send your kids out into the world, and you hope that you’ve imparted on them something good so that they can bring good into the world,” he said, his voice catching. A teacher’s email, he added, is the kind of pat on the back that tells you you’re headed in the right direction.

Lessons learned from the Backstreet Boys members

What came through just as clearly as the individual advice was the family they have built together over 33 years. These are five men who’ve spent most of their adult lives in close quarters under enormous pressure, and they’ve come out the other side genuinely showing up for each other’s families. But beyond the feel-good story, there are some genuinely practical things here that any dad can put to work this week.

The first is Kevin’s lesson, which is probably the most immediately useful. If you travel for work, or even just work long hours, the instinct to compensate with gifts is almost universal. It feels like proof that you were thinking about them. But what Kevin’s booking agent understood is that gifts train kids to associate your absence with something they get, rather than your return with something they feel. Next time you come home, skip the souvenir and put everything you have into the first hour you’re back.

The second is Nick’s, and it’s harder to do than it sounds. Being physically home and actually being present are two different things. Most dads know this, but knowing it and acting on it aren’t the same. One useful move: leave work behind before you walk through the door. Put the phone in your bag. Decide that whatever just happened on the road, in the office, or in your inbox gets dealt with tomorrow. Your kids can tell the difference between a dad who showed up and a dad who arrived.

Howie’s lesson is the slowest-burning one, but it might be the most important. The manners, the respect, the habit of giving something, everything you have, or not doing it at all: none of that gets built in one conversation. It accumulates in the small interactions every day, in how you treat the waiter, how you talk about other people, and whether you follow through when something’s hard. The teacher who emails to say your kid is one of the polite ones? That email doesn’t come from a single good day. It comes from years of consistent effort that the child absorbed without anyone making a big deal of it.

The Backstreet Boys have spent more than three decades being famous, and for most of that time, fame was the whole story. What was clear in this conversation is that for all five of them, it stopped being the main thing a long time ago.