Kate Hudson on Parenting: ‘Some Days I Am Literally Hiding From My Kids’

Kate Hudson just opened up about how she feels like she’s a “bad mom” sometimes in a candid and honest post in next month’s issue of InStyle (part of the essay has been posted on their website). Hudson is a single mom to her sons, Ryder 12 and Bingham, 3–so she clearly understands the dark realities of parenthood.

The 36-year-old wrote an essay describing the less glamorous aspects to being a mom–which everyone can relate to. She wrote:

“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.

Yes, I help my kids with their homework. 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.”

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For me, the strongest takeaway is the fact that admitting you don’t enjoy every second of being a mom doesn’t make you a bad parent–it just makes you human. And really, honesty is the only way we can connect to each other, because pretending everything is perfect only isolates us. She duly notes this as well, stating that she doesn’t want to apologize for being upfront:

“…Even though every primal ounce of the nurturing, domestic woman in me gets pulled, I’m a hunter as well. And I love to hunt! And as a woman I feel that somehow we are supposed to feel apologetic about wanting both.

But I don’t want to apologize for that anymore. Being both already comes at an emotional cost, without adding society’s antiquated idea of the traditional roles of man and woman in the home.”

Of course, I know there’s some amount of eye-rolling here, because it’s hard to ignore the fact that Hudson is a wealthy actor–and therefore, has a lot more accessibility to health because of that privilege. However, that doesn’t change the fact that she is still a mother, and a single mom at that.

Either way, it’s important for all moms to speak their truth, regardless of their societal status and financial income. It can only help moms everywhere else to come forward with their stories as well. And that’s what truly matters.

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Joanna C. Valente

Joanna Valente is the former Staff Writer at Kveller. Joanna is the author of Sirs & Madams, The Gods Are Dead, Xenos, and Marys of the Sea, and received an MFA at Sarah Lawrence College. You can follow @joannasaid on Twitter and @joannacvalente on Instagram.