Jake Owen is ‘Eager to Jump Into’ Second Time Fatherhood
"I'm at a place in life where I feel really happy and blessed and I want to keep it that way," said Owen.
Jake Owen and his girlfriend Erica Hartlein welcomed their new daughter Paris on April 29, and even before her arrival, Owen was feeling a sense of gratefulness for the many positive attributes in his life.
The sweet new addition to Owen’s family culminates in a year filled with memorable achievements, including a No. 1 single with “I Was Jack (You Were Diane),” an album he refers to as his favorite of his career with Greetings…From Jake and working on his first film that stars Casey Affleck and Dakota Johnson.
But at the top of Owen’s priority list is spending time with his family. Outside of select festival dates, the country star says he’s not planning on touring in 2019 to devote his attention to his new daughter. “I want to enjoy my life this year… I’m at a place in life where I feel really happy and blessed and I want to keep it that way,” Owen tells Sounds Like Nashville and other media. “I’m at a place now where I’m able to take a few weeks off and just love having a new addition in the family and just living life and enjoying that.”
The couple’s first child together also has an older sister in Pearl, Owen’s six-year-old daughter from his marriage to ex-wife Lacey Buchanan. He admits that when Pearl was born, he didn’t have the opportunity to take time off in the midst of a hectic touring schedule, and like many parents, becoming a father for the first time was a learning experience for the country star. “I think you think when you become a dad, you’re just going to get into dad mode and it’s not. You catch yourself all the time going ‘I’m a dad, I should not be doing this,’” he explains, adding that as his eldest daughter continues to grow, he’s learning to explain the world and his life in the spotlight to her.
“As I get older, she’s getting older, so she’s understanding and watching everything I do a lot more and wanting to know why things are. It’s really important for me to teach her as a father that the life that dad’s living out on the road and this whole celebrity thing, that’s not reality, so that’s what I’m having to teach her more now that she wasn’t aware of,” he says. “But just as the human being that Pearl is and how she was raised and her kindness, she’ll be a great sister.”
As he continues to learn how to parent his eldest daughter, the “Anywhere With You” singer is ready for the new lessons that will come with second time fatherhood. “It’ll be like any person that has another child and understands that kind of dynamic between the first child and the new child and balancing children’s feelings,” Owen anticipates. “I’ve never dealt with that yet and I’m eager to jump into it and see how it goes.”
Owen recently released “Homemade,” the third single off his 2019 album.
