Cardi B Says Motherhood Requires Sacrifice and She Wants Her Kids to Understand Why She Works the Way She Does

Cardi B covered Vogue Arabia for their September 2026 issue and used the conversation to speak candidly about what it actually looks like to be a mother of four while maintaining a career at the level she operates at. The Bronx-born Afro-Latina artist, born Belicalis Almánzar, is mother to Kulture, 8, Wave, who is four and a half, Blossom, 23 months, and a son whose name has not yet been publicly shared, whom she welcomed in November with ex Stefon Diggs. Her three older children are with estranged husband Offset.

 

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She told the outlet that she tries her best to keep her kids close but that the nature of her work means she cannot always be there, and that mothers in every profession make similar trade-offs without apology. She compared herself to a lawyer who has to travel out of state for weeks at a time for a case, noting that those professionals do not make excuses for their absence and neither does she. Her hope is that when her children are old enough to look back, they understand that she was working rather than partying, that every hour away from them was a sacrifice made for a better life rather than a choice made for herself.

How She Thinks About Raising Her Kids

Cardi B has been consistent across multiple interviews about the kind of upbringing she wants for her children, and the vision she describes is one that most celebrity parents do not articulate this way. She wants her kids grounded in two very different realities simultaneously, the privileged environment they were born into and the world she came from. She told Jennifer Hudson during an appearance on the Jennifer Hudson Show in September 2025 that her children still spend time with family in environments that look nothing like their day-to-day lives, including a trip to the Dominican Republic where her grandmother had them cleaning and doing chores, and regular visits to cousins and family in the neighborhoods where Cardi herself grew up.

She described her children as genuinely enjoying those experiences rather than tolerating them, saying they love going to their cousins’ houses and to their grandfather’s, and that she is proud of how well-rounded they are as a result of being exposed to both sides of her life. Her framing was direct: she wants them to know that there is another world outside of their world, one that involves rats and mice rather than foxes and deer in the backyard, and that understanding that difference is part of what she considers a complete upbringing.

Keeping Kulture in School

An earlier interview with Allure earlier in 2026 added another layer to how seriously Cardi takes the practical responsibilities of parenting alongside her career. She mentioned that her daughter Kulture, who had attended several shows during her first tour, would not be joining her on the road during the school year because her school has strict attendance expectations that Cardi respects completely. The way she said it left no room for negotiation, describing the school as one that does not play around about missed classes and making clear that she agrees with that stance.

The combination of those decisions, keeping school as a non-negotiable priority, ensuring her children spend time in environments that humble and ground them and being honest about the sacrifices her career requires, paints a picture of a mother who thinks carefully about what she is building in her children beyond the material comfort her work provides. Cardi B is one of the most commercially successful artists of her generation, an Afro-Latina woman who built that success from nothing in the Bronx, and the way she talks about her children suggests she is determined that they understand exactly where it came from.