It seems like all moms come under fire these days, no matter how good a job they’re doing. Moms with careers outside the home are sometimes shamed and guilted about not spending enough time with their kids, while on the flip side, moms who choose to stay at home can be thought of as achieving less than working women. The reality is that being a mom is tough, whether you’re balancing work or at home all day, and there’s no right way to do it. Different methods work for different people, and as long as a mom is trying her best and acting in the best interests of her kids, she’s doing just fine. And she should be celebrated for all her hard work.
Celebrities often choose to keep up their careers after having children, which is totally up to them. At the same time, there are some famous faces who decide to take a more traditional approach and leave Hollywood behind, even if it’s only temporarily, when they have children. Ever wondered which of your favorite stars chose to stay at home with the kids, and which ones kept working with the help of nannies?
Keep reading to find out!
19 Jennifer Garner Puts Her All Into Her Kids
Though Jennifer Garner is no longer with ex Ben Affleck, she still puts her all into her three kids, Seraphina, Violet and Samuel. She has praised stay-at-home moms for their hard work, and says it’s a role she’s taken on many times before. “It’s about getting the kids up and fed, getting one to school, getting the other down for a nap, going to the grocery store, picking one up from school, getting the other one down for another nap …I live my life at these two extremes. I’m either a full-time stay-at-home mom, or a full-time actress.”
18 Elizabeth Hurley Gave It Up To Raise Her Son
In the 1990s, Elizabeth Hurley was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. She was an it-girl, known for her fashion, acting talent and connections to names like Hugh Grant. Following her split from Grant, Hurley had a son with Steven Bing and totally re-evaluated her list of priorities. After the arrival of Damien, she chose to step away from the spotlight for several years and focus only on her family. She raised Damien on a farm in England, giving him a sense of stability and peace that he perhaps would have lacked growing up on movie sets.
17 Rhea Wahlberg Gave Up Modelling To Stay With The Kids
Rhea Wahlberg was a successful model when she met her current husband, actor Mark Wahlberg. She became the first model to take over the Revlon contract after icon Cindy Crawford, and was working her way up to the status of supermodel. But as her relationship with Wahlberg blossomed, she decided to leave her career behind and focus on raising their family. “ … I stopped modelling after my son, Michael, was born to stay at home with the kids. I still do that now. I’m a stay-at-home mom,” she said in an interview with Tinseltown Mom.
16 Drew Barrymore Is First And Foremost A Mom
In 2012, Drew Barrymore became engaged to art consultant Will Kopelman. They were married later that year in Montecito, California, and now have two daughters together: Olive Barrymore Kopelman, who was born in 2012, and Frankie Barrymore Kopelman, who was born in 2014. Though they separated and divorced in 2016, the couple are still there for their children, and Barrymore has been open about her role as a stay-at-home mom, and the fact that now her kids come before everything else in her life, including her career. “I’m a real stay-at-home mom,” she said. “I’m really hands on. Everything else became secondary.”
15 Katherine Heigl Hated Not Being There For Her Daughter
Since becoming a mom, Katherine Heigl has valued the time she has alone with her kids, and doesn’t want to take any of it for granted. It was rumored that she quit Grey’s Anatomy in order to spend more time with her family and stay at home with the kids, since her schedule was taking up too much of her time. Though her career was finally in a place that she’d been working towards, she wasn’t happy spending so much time away from the kids. “I would come home angry and frustrated that I’d missed everything with my kid that day.”
14 Amy Poehler Finds Being A Stay-At-Home Mom Amazing
Amy Poehler shares two sons with ex-husband Will Arnett: Archie, born in 2008, and Abel, born in 2010. She and Arnett were married in 2003, but divorced officially in 2016. While her career as an actress and comedian is currently thriving, she has been open about choosing to stay home with her kids and put them before her career. She has also praised stay-at-home moms for the work they do, and spoken positively about the role. “When you’re a stay-at-home mother,” she said, “you have to pretend it’s really boring, but it’s not. It’s enriching and fulfilling and an amazing experience.”
13 Jamie Lynn Spears Puts Her Children Before Her Music
Jamie Lynn Spears already had a promising career of entertainment in front of her by the age of twelve. At the height of her career, after her show Zoey 101 had been on the air for three years, Spears announced that she was pregnant at the age of sixteen. She chose to forget Hollywood for the time being and focus on raising her daughter. She eventually returned six years later to pursue a career in country music, but enjoyed the time she had at home with her daughter. “I needed to take time to figure out who I was as a woman, and focus on being a mom so it was the only option for me.”
12 Busy Philipps Wrapped Up Filming Just In Time For Her Pregnancy
For Busy Philipps, switching her focus from career to family began before she had even given birth. While she was still pregnant, she wrapped up filming and swapped to being a full-time mom. “I’m kind of lucky that we’ve finished shooting Cougar Town, so I’m able to kind of just enjoy my pregnancy and be a stay-at-home mom and go to prenatal Pilates and do all that fun stuff that, if I were working, would be almost impossible to do,” the actress explained. While she has returned to acting, she did enjoy taking time out to focus on looking after herself and her family.
11 Mila Kunis’s Daughter Comes Before Hollywood
Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher are two of the most famous parents in Hollywood, though they protect their kids from the gaze of the paparazzi. After daughter Wyatt was born, Kunis made the decision to take a break from the spotlight and stay home to look after her. It has also been reported that Kutcher is a very hands-on father, as well. There’s definitely not a lack of love in this household! Being the daughter of immigrants with traditional ideals, Kunis has been open about wanting to raise her kids without spoiling them, and making sure they don’t grow up to be entitled.
10 Teri Hatcher Chose To Focus On Her Daughter
Prior to rising to global fame through the 2004 smash television show Desperate Housewives, Teri Hatcher was a stay-at-home mom. She had previously had a successful acting career in the 1980s, but after having her daughter, decided to dedicate her time solely to being a mom. “I feel like I’m a stay-at-home mom,” she says of her role on Desperate Housewives, “which I was for the five years before this. She’s absolutely been my focus. That’s the choice I made. Desperate Housewives is perfect for me. I get to go back to work and still be able to take my daughter to school and pick her up.”
9 Demi Moore Moved To Idaho For Her Family
During Demi Moore’s marriage to Bruce Willis, she had three daughters. Although she and Willis were one of the highest profile couples of the late 1980s and 1990s, they decided that the best move for their children would be to pack up and move to a small town in Idaho. Their three daughters, Rumer, Scout and Tallulah, spent the majority of their childhood in Hailey, Idaho, where they received their parents’ full attention. Eventually, when the girls were older, the family moved back to California and Moore and Willis started to balance out their focus a little more.
8 Phoebe Cates Left Her Huge Career Behind
During the 1980s, Phoebe Cates was an acting phenomenon, with roles in huge movies like Gremlins, Drop Dead Fred and Fast Times at Ridgemont High. During the 1990s, though, fans wondered where the rising star had vanished to. After having a son in 1991 and a daughter in 1993 with husband and fellow actor Kevin Klein, Cates’s career took a back seat to her children. Although the spouses agreed to coordinate their schedules so they could share the child-rearing, Cates ended up choosing to stay home with the kids. Being a stay-at-home mom just agreed with her!
7 Vera Farmiga’s Kids Always Come First
Actress Vera Farmiga has some impressive acting credits to her name, including The Conjuring where she played supernatural expert and hunter Lorraine Warren, Bates Motel, The Departed and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. But all of that comes in second to her children. The actress has spoken out about seeing her children’s needs as her own needs, and so always puts them before everything else in her life. She lives with her kids and husband on a farm in Upstate New York, where they’re surrounded by the serenity of farm animals instead of swarming fans and paparazzi.
6 Shania Twain Raised Her Family In Peace And Quiet
For over twenty years, Shania Twain has been a household name in the world of country music. When she was at the peak of her career, she and her then-husband, Robert Lange, decided to move as far away from the craziness of Hollywood as possible and raise their son, Eja, in peace. They moved to Switzerland, where Twain could devote all the time she wanted to her little boy without tours, performances, press or studio time getting in the way. And now that he’s all grown up, she’s back on the road taking on a global farewell tour.
5 Jessica Alba Loves Her Nanny
Having a nanny doesn’t make you any less of a mom, and one star who showers her kids’ nanny in praise is Jessica Alba. She has been known to dedicate posts of appreciation on social media to Connie, whom she has known for more than a decade. Alba said Connie taught her how to “soothe” a new baby, and also said she taught her about “the importance of taking care of myself and gave me the space to have all the feels and not feel so alone.” Alba has also stated that, usually, she prefers to work with younger family members rather than trusting strangers with her children.
4 Beyonce Has A Team Of Nannies
When you’re one of the biggest names on the planet and you have career commitments left, right and center, you’ll probably need more than one nanny to help you with your three kids. Queen Bey reportedly has a team of nannies that help with Blue Ivy and twins Sir and Rumi. The Daily Mail claimed that Bey and her husband Jay-Z have no less than eight nannies, making sure that their kids are cared for around the clock. “The twins don’t sleep at the same time,” said an inside source, “so she decided she needed three per child, working in eight hour shifts.”
3 Kim K Reportedly Has A Nanny For Each Kid
Beyoncé isn’t the only star who has a team of nannies. Reports claim that Kim Kardashian-West has three nannies on hand to help care for her three children with husband Kanye West, North, Saint and Chicago. These nannies are never captured on the family’s reality show Keeping Up with the Kardashians, nor are they mentioned on social media, but sources have claimed that they’re definitely there! Even if KKW didn’t have one nanny per child, she has such a big family behind her that we’re sure she’d still find help with her kids whenever she needed it!
2 Mariah Carey Is Hands On, But Has Nannies
She gets a lot of flak for being a “diva”, but Mariah Carey is actually thought to be quite hands on when it comes to raising her twins, Moroccan and Monroe. In an interview with The Breakfast Club, Carey said, “Unfortunately I have to have nannies but I’m very hands-on. I fire nannies like this.” The singer admitted that she’ll have a nanny’s job if she thinks she’s getting too close to her children. “And I hate doing it, but I have t because if they try to make themselves more important in the baby’s mind than me.”
1 Gwyneth Paltrow Needs Nannies Who Are Fluent In Other Languages
In Gwyneth Paltrow’s household, nannies can earn up to $100,000 per year. However, there are strict rules they must abide by, and they have to have certain skills that regular nannies probably aren’t required to have. For one thing, Paltrow likes her nannies to be fluent in at least four languages—Greek, Latin, Spanish and French—in order for her kids, Apple and Moses, to learn foreign tongues. The actress also asked that the nanny be able to play at least two musical instruments. The family has had the same nanny since daughter Apple was 14 months old.
references: tinseltownmoms.com, motherly.com, workfelxibility.com, usweekly.com, babygaga.com,
