Barkley talked candidly about his connection with his father. He spoke with Renee Paquette of The Volume in 2022 to discuss this element of his life.
“My father passed away a couple of weeks ago. We didn’t have a great relationship my entire life. We reconciled later in life and became friends but I really wanna be a good father and I really worked hard to do that. Because listen, it is hard to be going all the time and I wouldn’t change things because it has given me so much in my life. But it’s hard.”, said Barkley.
Parenting is a topic that the Inside the TNT personality has brought up countless times. He has acknowledged that his daughter received a different upbringing than he did. In his 2002 book "I May Be Wrong but I Doubt It," he questioned if today's kids understand the price their parents paid for them.