Kate Hudson recently revealed some interesting details about her thought processes when it comes to parenting — and there has been some blowback, because she was perhaps a little too honest.
In an essay for InStyle magazine on the pros and cons of life as a celebrity mom, Hudson said she sometimes makes herself hard to find at home.
“Some days I feel like I should win best mom of the day award, and some days I find myself doing strange things that don’t have any real purpose, in faraway corners in my house, and I realize I am literally and deliberately hiding from my children,” Hudson wrote.
She’ll take some criticism for sounding self-absorbed in “deliberately hiding” from her children, but this actually is a natural feeling common to many women who balance career and children.
Perhaps it would be more pertinent to question why she found the need to express this thought to the public. The beauty of an unexpressed thought is greatly underappreciated today. Stars like Hudson routinely take to social media, interviews, and all sorts of other formats to talk to us about subjects, such as her quirky parenting habits, that we probably could stand to hear less about.
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What she needs, what a lot of prominent people need, is a filter — something to stop us from expressing our every emotion and to remind us these words may come back to haunt us.
For instance, her kids probably are too young to read this essay, but they won’t be forever. What will they think when they realize all those times they couldn’t find her that she was indeed hiding? Why do they need to know this? Will they understand that it’s a perfectly natural reaction?
Hudson also said in the essay that she would rather watch “The Bachelor” than help her kids with their math homework.
“Yes, I help my kids with their homework,” she wrote. “But I also get bored doing it. I will sit and listen to my children pontificate and discuss their ideas till the day is long because it warms my heart, but I really don’t want to do math! I’m gonna say it: I’d prefer to watch ‘The Bachelor’ rather than do fractions and divisions.”
Between Hudson and Gwyneth Paltrow, maybe other actresses will learn to stay away from this topic. In 2014, Paltrow tried to explain why her life as an actress and mother was so much harder than other mothers nationwide.
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“I think it’s different when you have an office job, because it’s routine and, you know, you can do all the stuff in the morning and then you come home in the evening,” said Paltrow. “When you’re shooting a movie, they’re like, ‘We need you to go to Wisconsin for two weeks,’ and then you work 14 hours a day and that part of it is very difficult. I think to have a regular job and be a mom is not easy, of course. There are challenges. But it’s not like being on set.”
It fell to Angelina Jolie to push back.
“I actually feel that women in my position, when we have all at our disposal to help us, shouldn’t complain,” Jolie said. “Consider all the people who really struggle and don’t have the financial means, don’t have the support.”
Amen.
Parenting is never easy, but having the kind of resources Hudson and Paltrow have does make it easier, and complaining by movie stars does not engender much sympathy.
It’s not a matter of not thinking the thoughts. It’s not even a matter of not preferring to do math homework or occasionally finding a peaceful corner of the house. It’s a matter of realizing what a blessing children are and how the world could do with a lot fewer complaints from those who have little in the way of real-life hardship to complain about.
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