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Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos will always be their kids’ biggest supporters.
On Friday’s episode of Live with Kelly and Ryan, the mom of three, 52, opened up about the difficulties of “adulting” as her kids join the workforce, sharing that her oldest son Michael, 25, had a hard time with his post-college job.
“Adulting is hard nowadays. It’s very hard for kids. Job opportunities aren’t what they were. The economy is driving this trend.” said Ripa. “I know that Michael graduated college in May of 2020 and he had a writing job lined up which evaporated because the pandemic shut down the production and it just never came back.”
“So, you know, we gave him a grace period of an additional year to find other job opportunities because it’s hard,” she said of her and her husband Mark Consuelos.
Along with Michael, Ripa and Consuelos are also parents to son Joaquin, 19, and daughter Lola, 21.
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Ripa went on to explain why she feels it’s a “unique time right now to have kids in college.”
“I said to them, these are years that you won’t get back and this is a time where we won’t mind supporting you financially as long as you work — as long as you maintain a job for your add-ons, as I call them,” she shared.
“The bells and whistles; the stuff that they want — as long as you work for that, we will cover the core expenses, but once you graduate, that’s over,” she continued. “Because we were married at 25, you know what I mean? And we feel like because we didn’t have safety nets, we got something cooking.”
Sami Drasin
Michael had a major achievement earlier this month — making it into PEOPLE’s 2022 Sexiest Man Alive issue!
The 25-year-old appeared in a portfolio of famous sons, where he joked that his father, 51, always wants him and his brother Joaquin “to look like him.”
“I got new glasses and then my dad texts me, ‘Where did you get those glasses?’ ” Michael recalled. “And I’m like, ‘Oh no, can you at least pick a different color?’ My dad, my brother and I will be wearing the same black pants and gray shirt and I’m like, I try to look a little different than that. I like to stand out a little bit.”
