Parenting & Family Quote by Kent McCord

There is an almost defiant simplicity to Kent McCord's wish: not a manifesto, not a parenting hack, just a reset button. Coming from an actor - someone whose working life is built on sets, schedules, and the synthetic intimacy of cameras - "the country" reads less like a postcard and more like an exit ramp. It's a statement about control. In an industry where you're constantly at the mercy of casting, public perception, and geography, choosing where your kids grow up becomes a rare, concrete form of agency.

The line also smuggles in a quiet critique of modern success. McCord doesn't say he wants his children to "have opportunities" or "get ahead". He wants them to "be a part of nature", framing childhood not as a resume-building phase but as an apprenticeship in reality: seasons, weather, boredom, animals, limits. That phrasing matters. "In the country" could be consumer taste; "a part of nature" is identity-level, almost spiritual, suggesting that disconnection from the non-human world isn't just unhealthy, it's deforming.

Contextually, for an American actor who came up during the mid-century boom of suburbanization, TV saturation, and later the Los Angeles-as-lifestyle brand, the sentiment tracks as both nostalgia and pushback. It's a small sentence with a big target: a culture that treats kids as projects and adulthood as permanent indoors.