• Ben Stiller, 59, says splitting and getting back together with his wife made him a better parent.
• He said his parents were often busy with work, and he ended up doing the same with his kids.
• “And then I realized it was impossible to avoid making the mistakes they made,” the actor said.

Ben Stiller says he tried not to repeat the same parenting mistakes as his famous mom and dad, but realized it wasn’t easy.

In an interview with The Times, published on Saturday, Stiller spoke about his bond with his late parents and how it mirrors parts of his own relationship with his kids.

The actor said he remembers his parents, comedians Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, working long hours and being away from home for weeks at a time.

“I just remember missing them terribly,” Stiller, 59, told The Times.

When he thinks about his own kids, Ella and Quinlin, whom he shares with his wife, Christine Taylor, Stiller says he’s made similar mistakes.

“But, then, I probably fucked up more with my kids than my parents did with us,” he added.

Stiller recalled casting his daughter in “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” only to cut her scene from the final film.

“My son tells me that being a dad might not have been at the top of my list,” he said.

Still, he says he feels regretful about how he handled certain things with his kids while they were growing up.

“Like any parent, I remember things that weren’t happy about my childhood and go, ‘I’ll do better,'” Stiller said.

“And then I realized it was impossible to avoid making the mistakes they made,” he said. “When they were young, I thought, ‘Oh, the kids are young, I can work away and be a good dad earning for the family.’ But the bonds you form with your kids when they’re young are so important.”

Reflecting on his brief split from his wife in 2017 before reuniting in 2020, Stiller said the time apart put a “strain” on his relationship with his kids.

“And I’d think, ‘Well, my parents never did that.’ But a long relationship is hard. You lose the freshness. I feel bad about what us breaking up did to the kids, but it was possibly the best thing to happen to Christine and me,” Stiller said.

The actor shared that the separation “changed” their relationship for the better.

“We don’t take it for granted anymore, and if you are happy, you’re going to be a better parent. You have hurdles and try to figure it out, and if you stay, all you can do is acknowledge the past and try to repair. That’s what we have in our family. It’s not perfect — at all. But that’s just life,” Stiller said.

Speaking to People on Sunday at the premiere of his new documentary about his parents, Stiller said hearing from his kids for the film showed him what he “got wrong” as a parent.

“And I really appreciated that, because it’s one of those things where you think you know, ‘Oh, I know what I’m putting out there to them.’ But from their perspective, it was totally different,” Stiller said.

A representative for Stiller did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider outside regular hours.

This isn’t the first time that Stiller has talked about the relationship with his kids.

In a 2022 interview with Esquire, Stiller said his daughter called him out for “not being there” during her childhood.

“They just want a parent who’s emotionally present and supportive of them. That’s probably what they want more than for me to be going off and pushing the bounds of my creativity,” he said.

• AI is fueling growth but eroding jobs, pointing to an era of “jobless growth” in the US, Goldman Sachs wrote.
• Soaring productivity may squeeze workers as companies cut costs to stay efficient.
• There’s at least one benefit to productivity gains: keeping a lid on inflation.

The US economy is strong, but America may be entering an era of “jobless growth” because of artificial intelligence, Goldman Sachs wrote in a Monday note.

“The modest job growth alongside robust GDP growth seen recently is likely to be normal to some degree in the years ahead,” analysts at Goldman Sachs wrote.

They added that this trend is likely to continue, with most potential growth coming from AI-driven productivity. Meanwhile, population and lower immigration would contribute only modestly to the labor supply.

There are already signs of a weaker job market, wrote the analysts.

The analysts pointed out that job growth outside the healthcare industry has turned negative in recent months, and that corporate management teams are increasingly focused on using AI to reduce labor costs — a shift that could weigh on hiring long term.

AI’s uneven impact on the workforce

However, concerns about technology displacing workers are nothing new, Goldman’s analysts acknowledged.

Over the past decade, there have been growing concerns that new technologies could eliminate jobs faster than they create new ones. Until recently, that disruption hasn’t shown up clearly in the data.

But that may be starting to change.

“Over just the last few years, AI does appear to be hurting the employment prospects of the most closely exposed workers, such as young technology workers,” the analysts wrote.

Employment growth has already turned negative in the most AI-exposed industries, even if the broader impact remains modest for now, they added.

“While we are skeptical of the boldest claims that rapid technological progress could lead to very high unemployment, some transitional friction is possible,” wrote Goldman’s analysts.

They described that friction as a normal part of the economy adjusting to new technologies.

“Innovation and greater spending power as output and income rise will also create new work opportunities that offset job losses,” they wrote.

The bank’s research shows that past waves of technological progress have temporarily increased unemployment and forced more workers to change occupations.

The kind of innovation matters, too: Some technologies create jobs, while others, like many AI tools, replace them.

“If AI is mainly labor-substituting, it could present a greater challenge to maintaining full employment,” the analysts warned.

The risk of a ‘jobless recovery’

Still, the true test for the AI economy may not come until the next downturn, Goldman’s analysts wrote.

“In past recessions, employment of workers in routine occupations has dropped sharply — especially when they followed productivity booms — and did not recover after,” they wrote.

The analysts point to the early-2000s “jobless recovery” as a case in point. After the 2001 recession, US GDP bounced back quickly thanks to tech-driven productivity, but total employment lagged for years as companies used the downturn to cut jobs.

“A leading explanation for this phenomenon is that companies use recessions to restructure and streamline their workforce by laying off workers in less productive areas,” they wrote.

“This is especially true when recessions follow productivity booms that give companies some pent-up ability to cut labor costs and improve efficiency without significantly hurting their productive capacity,” they added.

Higher unemployment isn’t the only risk. AI could also deepen inequality, rewarding workers who can leverage new technology while squeezing out midlevel jobs.

AI could “hollow out” middle-income white-collar roles, much like factory automation once displaced skilled blue-collar workers, the analysts wrote. Early evidence suggests that in some cases, the technology might actually help lower-skilled workers more than higher-skilled ones.

A silver lining for inflation—and the Fed

There’s one upside to all this: Faster productivity growth tends to keep inflation in check, they wrote.

That could give the Federal Reserve room to cut rates even if unemployment drifts higher, mirroring its approach during the early-2000s recovery.

Goldman’s latest report on AI’s impact comes as the US grapples with a range of uncertainties, including the lack of official job data amid the government shutdown, the fallout from President Donald Trump’s import tariffs, and the seismic disruption caused by AI.

In September, the private sector lost 32,000 jobs, according to ADP data.

The outlook wasn’t brighter by other metrics.

Workforce analytics firm Revelio Labs reported a 17.2% drop in job openings from a year earlier. Challenger, Gray & Christmas found that hiring plans have fallen to their lowest level since the Great Recession, with the smallest number of new hires announced in the first nine months of a year since 2009.