TikTok stars Matt and Abby Howard address the Father's Day controversy

TikTokers Matt and Abby Howard have reflected on the backlash they received after announcing they were boycotting Father's Day last year.

100th Couple Series “Unscheduled podcast,” posted on Wednesday, Jan. 8, the pair discussed a viral clip from the infamous May 2024 podcast episode in which Matt, 26, claimed he wouldn't celebrate Father's Day until December of that year because of his June 2023 the celebration was “inauspicious.” “. (The married couple have two sons, Griffin, 2, and August, 1.)

Abby, 25, launched the couple's revisit in the clip, which attracted more than 9.4 million views and an avalanche of criticism. “Mat's Father's Day Birthday Saga. It was an unforgettable moment from (the 2024 Unplanned podcast). How would you rate this moment…one out of 10? You have to include the emotional trauma,” Abby asked Matt in the new episode.

Matt replied: “Oh my God, I can laugh about it now (but) at the time I was horrified. I think it's funny now, I think it's so stupid. The words I said…, was also so stupid, I obviously didn't sound good at all.

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He continued: “I just looked so selfish. I looked so full of myself.”

Despite Matt's obvious remorse, Abby said she thought it was “kind of funny in hindsight”, before adding that she hadn't actually watched the controversial clip and therefore didn't know how Matt came across at the time.

“Overall, I don't think there's anything wrong with…controversy, but I didn't watch the clip and maybe the clip made it look really bad,” Abby admitted. “Then it's up to us. I think we had it.

At the time, Abby, who was pregnant with the couple's second child, revealed how she had combined her husband's birthday with Father's Day in 2023, as both events fell on the same day. The couple had also just returned from their babymoon, and Matt had admitted that the family had been very busy at the time.

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Both Abby and Matt agreed that they would “boycott Father's Day in June” due to the previous year's turnout, and decided to celebrate the event in September because “nothing happens in September.”

High school sweethearts have become somewhat familiar with the controversy over the years, attracting criticism again in September 2024, when they discovered they had gone out to dinner with friends while their children slept in the family bedroom. “So we ended them for five nights and it became clear that they didn't like it and neither did we,” Abby wrote in an Instagram Story at the time. “So we switched our dinner time to AFTER they went to bed and FaceTIMED the monitors while we ate. And it worked out so much better for everyone!”

Despite what a source said, the news was met with widespread condemnation Us Weekly that the families on the cruise had “rooms next to each other and took turns staying there,” adding that the children “were never alone and the use of baby monitors was an added precaution.”

Abby and Matt got married in July 2019 before welcoming their sons. Since becoming parents, the podcast hosts have shared their relationship and parenting highs and lows through podcasts as well as social media.