During a Tuesday morning interview on NBC’s Today, actress Eva Mendes discussed her decision to put acting on hold after the births of her two daughters with her husband, actor Ryan Gosling.
“It was like a no-brainer,” she said. “I’m so lucky. And I was like, if I can have this time with my children — and I still work, I just didn’t act, because acting takes you on locations, it takes you away. It was almost like a non-verbal agreement that it was like, okay, he’s going to work and I’m going to work. I’m just going to work here.”
Their daughters were born in 2013 and 2016, and Mendes focused on projects outside of acting, including launching a line of cleaning products and doing voiceover work for the animated show Bluey. Gosling also took some time off from acting. Their focus has been their children while also maintaining their careers — likely made easier because of their wealth, but still frequently attainable for the average couple.
Can both mothers and fathers ‘have it all?’
Actor Oliver Hudson recently shared his point of view of being the child of a busy actress. His mother is Goldie Hawn. “I felt unprotected at times,” he said. “She would be working and away, or she had new boyfriends that I didn’t really like. She would be living her life, and she was an amazing mother. This was my own perspective as a child who didn’t have a dad and who needed her to be there, and she just wasn’t sometimes.”
Other actresses have said that their careers have had a negative impact on their relationship with their children or vice versa. Christina Ricci said her relationship with her young daughter was affected when she began an international filming job. “Last year I was commuting back and forth to Vancouver for ‘Yellowjackets,'” she said. “[My daughter] didn’t know me. We had no bond. So that was very upsetting.”
She added that her children don’t like it when she travels, but that it’s “too expensive to travel with everybody all the time” since, as a series regular, she has “to pay for everything…”
Likewise, singer Lily Allen told the Radio Times podcast, “My children ruined my career. I mean, I love them and they complete me, but in terms of pop stardom, totally ruined it.”
She added, “It really annoys me when people say you can have it all because, quite frankly, you can’t.”
Misguided feminism
From its beginnings, feminism said that women had to become like men in order to be equal to men. This was never true. Women and men, and all human beings, are inherently equal regardless of laws or societal stereotypes. Feminism never should have been about women altering their body’s natural functions to be like men or leaving their kids behind to work like men were expected to. It should have been — and should be — about actual equality in which both parents can pursue their career goals without sacrificing children in the process.
Current society is not built for that, but it is moving in a positive direction.
Feminism ushered in an era of birth control, abortion, smaller families, delayed marriage, and delayed parenting. ‘Stay-at-home moms’ began to be viewed as less productive members of society due to increased expectations for women to work full-time while still parenting. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Taking the responsibilities that traditionally fell on men and adding them to the responsibilities that traditionally fell on women doubled women’s workloads while men continue to live by the same expectations as usual. If women are going to be expected to work outside the home, or if women want to work outside the home in addition to being mothers, perhaps men and women should meet in the middle for the sake of the children.
Research shows that there are negative psychological and behavioral effects on children when both parents work full-time. But sometimes, both parents must work or both parents want to work. In those cases, flexibility can make a difference.
In 2022, Annabel Lee shared how she and her husband balance their careers and parenting. In an article published by Business Insider, Lee explained that when their first child was born, they both switched to working part-time. She worked two days a week and her husband worked four. Years later, they both work four days a week and share the responsibilities of their home and children. Lee was able to switch her career to freelance, allowing her to stay home to work. Though they both took a small pay cut, the new arrangement saved them $40,000 on childcare costs. (This is something to be considered, childcare can sometimes cost just about as much as one of the salaries of the working parents.)
If working from home is impossible, parents can seek out a job with a company or organization that values children and families and offers family-friendly policies and flexible work arrangements to help employees navigate a healthy work-family balance. Employers who understand that children get sick and have special events that are important for parents to attend are a valuable asset to families and the future of society.
More businesses need to step up to support both mothers and fathers so that children do not continue to grow up suffering the negative effects of having little to no time spent with their parents or being raised by childcare workers. While some are doing just that, others have been more focused on offering to pay for their female employees or employees’ wives to undergo abortions. No one should ever be pressured to choose between their children and their job.
Mendes didn’t put her entire career on hold, but she shifted it to fit her family’s needs. Average American parents can do the same.
