Kristen Bell wants to make one thing very clear: parenting is not easy for her. During a recent interview with Bustle, Kristen, 46, about the realities of being a mom. She and her husband, Dax Shepard, are parents to two daughters: Lincoln, 13, and Delta, 11.
She emphasized that her kids are truly her priority. And at the same time, raising them can be absolutely “brutal.”
She said her kids always come first.
When she’s trying to decide what projects to take on, she first thinks about how each project would impact her children. “Is this going to pull me away from my kids too much? Will I still be able to be the mom that I want to be?” she told Bustle. “That’s really the No. 1, to be honest. There’s nothing higher than that.”
And she really means it. “I would easily let my whole career and all its legacy and notoriety ‘disapparate’ tomorrow if it meant sacrificing something major in my kids’ lives, or not being there,” she added.
And she cries regularly.
Obviously, the assumption tends to be that celebrities have more support and resources than most parents do. Often, when celebrities talk about the challenges of parenting, critics point out that they likely have nannies to care for their children. So, these critics are often skeptical that celebrities who talk about the difficulties of parenting truly understand how challenging it can be.
During the recent interview, Kristen emphasized that her celebrity status does not make parenting (or marriage) easy for her. “It’s hard,” she told Bustle. “Do not think because I am on your television that it is easy for me. It’s brutal. I cry weekly.”
The reason she’s talking about it is, at least in part, because she wants other parents to know they’re not alone in what they’re dealing with—especially when it comes to parents of tweens.
“Oftentimes when you’re in that cyclone of puberty, you could think, ‘My kid is the only one doing this,'” she said. “And that is just simply not a fact.”
Right now, she’s away from her kids—which is also causing problems.
Often, when she’s away from home, she finds that her kids and her husband are “mischievous” together. And that’s sort of what has happened this time around as well, except her oldest daughter, Lincoln, has been sending her updates about what Dax has been doing while she’s gone.
“Whenever I leave town, I usually receive, almost immediately, notifications on my phone,” Kristen said during a recent appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. “‘Your McDonald’s has been delivered.’ ‘Your Taco Bell has been delivered.’ They just eat fast food.”
But now she’s receiving additional notifications: photos from Lincoln. “Here’s what (Dax) didn’t consider,” Kristen said. “I have a mole on the ground, obviously. So I was getting in-house paparazzi photos from my oldest daughter, going like, ‘Dad is… it’s 10 p.m., we’re supposed to be in bed but Dad is in the cereal cupboard and he’s just going hogwild.”
Kristen added that she gets “all the details” now, thanks to her daughter. “That’s my girl, right there,” she said.
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