Celebrity chef and restaurateur Gordon Ramsay recently took a few jabs at the entitled “snowflake generation” as he detailed his parenting style, which is aimed at keeping his children grounded and grateful.
Ramsay and wife Tana have four children ranging from ages 17-21, with one on the way. While his children definitely have the perk of tough love, Ramsay says he’d never hand over a job to one of his kids; he’d rather they go somewhere else to prove themselves and “learn something different” before they can work for their old man.
“You want to work in this business? You f*** off to another chef, learn something different and come back with something new to improve the business,” he said during a recent radio interview, reported by The Daily Mail.
“I don’t want the staff thinking: ‘F*** it’s Ramsay’s kid, we can’t tell them off,'” he said.
“I’m firm, I’m fair and I will give you everything I’ve got to get you to the very top. And that’s it, no bullsh**,” the famed chef added. “I take a lot of flak for being straight and honest but I’m not worried about that f***ing snowflake generation.”
Aiming to keep his children grateful, Ramsay refuses to simply hand over oodles of cash to his offspring, too. “They have a completely different life than I did growing up. I worked my arse off to get out of the sh** mess that I grew up in and they’re grateful, they’re not spoilt,” he told The Telegraph in 2017.
While the “Hell’s Kitchen” star is worth an estimated $190 million, the chef gives his eldest daughter around $130 allowance per week and around $65 to his son per week so they can learn how to budget money on their own, according to The Epoch Times. “He and his wife have agreed that they’ll pitch in with 25 percent of the deposit needed to get an apartment or flat, but aren’t willing to throw millions at real estate developers to build their children a penthouse of their own,” the outlet noted.
The Ramsay kids won’t be sitting in first class when they fly, either.
“They don’t sit with us in first class,” he said. “They haven’t worked anywhere near hard enough to afford that. At that age, at that size, you’re telling me they need to sit in first class? No, they do not. We’re really strict on that.”
In that unmistakable Ramsay tone, the chef noted that he tells the flight crew not to allow his children near him on the flight: “I turn left with Tana and they turn right and I say to the chief stewardess, ‘Make sure those little f***ers don’t come anywhere near us, I want to sleep on this plane’. I worked my f***ing arse off to sit that close to the pilot and you appreciate it more when you’ve grafted for it.”
But his hard parenting style is for his kids’ own good, he explained. “It’s not in a mean way; it’s to not spoil them. The earlier you give them that responsibility to save for their own trainers and jeans, the better.”