Over the last 17 years, we have watched the Jersey Shore cast go from one-night stands in the smush room, bar brawls, and drunken kookah slips to doting spouses, PTA parents, and, in some cases, sober mentors. Their evolution from fist-pumping partiers in their early 20s to domesticated homemakers and successful businesspeople in their early 40s has been well-documented on MTV’s Jersey Shore Family Vacation, which begins airing its final season tonight. While they are certainly exemplary role models at this point in their lives, they know their young children will one day come across their carefree days in Seaside. What will they tell them? Well, the cast paid a visit to DECIDER’s studio last month, and we got to ask!

Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi was the first of the group to become a parent. If you remember, her husband, Jionni LaValle, was initially one of those one-night stands in the smush room back in Jersey Shore Season 3. But by the next season, the two were smitten with each other, and, come Season 6, Polizzi was pregnant with their first child, Lorenzo. Want to feel old? “Lorenzo is going to be 14. Sick,” Polizzi told DECIDER. She and LaValle also share daughter Giovanna, 11, and Angelo, 6.

“They see things on TikTok and I’m still at the point where I’m like, ‘That was acting. I had a script and I had to do that,'” Polizzi revealed. “But I think Lorenzo’s now like, ‘Mom, I see you drink wine. I see you get silly.’ I feel like the oldest understand that mommy was young and enjoying myself. But [I was] an actor until they’re of age.”

It’s not always easy to keep things hidden, as Jenni “JWOWW” Farley likely realized when her 11-year-old daughter Meilani brought up the moment she peed behind a bar at Karma in the last season of Jersey Shore Family Vacation. Ronnie Ortiz-Magro, who reportedly has full custody of his and his ex-fiancé Jenn Harley’s 8-year-old daughter Ariana, said that while his daughter has sent him videos from the early seasons of Jersey Shore, he still uses the same excuse as Polizzi. “I get it from Ariana. She sends me stuff. She sends me YouTube videos,” he shared. “It was acting! That’s what I tell her. It was acting.”

Both Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino and Sammi Giancola‘s children are too young to know anything about their pasts at this point, but they both co-signed their co-stars’ parenting tactics.

“Yeah, my babies are four, three, and two, so they’re too young. But, hopefully, they can watch the Jersey Shore Family Vacation series first, if I’m lucky. But if that doesn’t work? I was an actor,” Sorrentino said, while Giancola—who just gave birth to her first child in August 2025—added, “I love that idea.”

Meanwhile, Deena Cortese—who shares sons CJ, 7, and Cameron, 5, with her husband Chris Buckner—plans to be a bit more straightforward with her kids. Per the self-proclaimed “Blast in a Glass,” because her sons are often featured on Jersey Shore Family Vacation, they already know everyone in production, and “feel very cozy” with the idea of being on television.

“They’re very aware I’m on a show. I feel like eventually my kids are going to come across things, and it is what it is, but it’s why they have their lives today,” Cortese said. “I’m going to say, ‘You like your trips to Disney? Mommy had to do what she had to do.'”

The ninth and final season of Jersey Shore Family Vacation premieres tonight at 8 p.m. ET/PT on MTV.