Kristen Bell is getting candid about the challenges of being a working mom.
“It’s hard,” Bell, 46, told Bustle in an interview published on Thursday, October 22. “Do not think because I am on your television that it is easy for me. It’s brutal. I cry weekly.”
Bell added that she often turns to Dr. Becky and Lisa Damour, Ph.D., experts in child and adolescent development and parenting, for advice on raising daughters Lincoln, 13, and Delta, 11.
“Oftentimes when you’re in that cyclone of puberty, you could think, ‘My kid is the only one doing this.’ And that is just simply not a fact,” she added.
While the Nobody Wants This star and husband Dax Shepard have long been open about their parenting strategies and challenges, she admitted that she has struggled to maintain that candidness as her daughters have gotten older.
“For the good of the people, we should share our dirty stories, we should share our shame, we should share our hardships,” Bell told the outlet. “But for the good of the one? My main job in life is to protect those two.”
She continued, “I guess a conclusion we came to at a time in our parenting journey is, like, we can share all the cute things when they’re little, but when they could possibly be exposed to [media] or possibly have a feeling in response to it … well, now, the equation has changed. There’s someone else in the mix, and you have to have enough self-awareness and consideration to consider that person. And that person is my daughter, so she’s No. 1.”
Despite publicly discussing their parenting journey, Bell and Shepard, 51, have maintained their kids’ privacy by choosing not to post their faces on social media. However, they still celebrated their girls whenever possible.
“13 years ago today we had our first baby girl ❤️,” Bell wrote via Instagram in March alongside several photos and videos of Delta with her face hidden. “Getting to know her wit, compassion, and sense of adventure has brought us a kind of joy we didn’t have a word for before we met her. She reminds us every day that family is literally the best of it- the real stuff. (And also to never under estimate how good it feels to hold someone’s hand).”
Bell added that “parenting is, for me, both the hardest and best thing I’ve ever done.”
“Thank you to all the role models we have had for our girls (I’m looking at you Mrs Browne!!!) and to the village who taught us how to be parents,” she continued. “Getting to love this kid is the greatest job on earth. Happy 13th birthday baby girl ❤️.”
