Since having her first child last year, life has expectedly changed in many ways for Anne Hathaway. The actress, who recently gave a speech at the United Nations about paid parental leave, opened up to ELLE magazine about her feelings on "mommy guilt."
In an interview for the magazine's cover issue for April, Hathaway discussed the importance of paid parental leave and why we shouldn't judge each other.
"When [my son] Johnny was a week old and I was holding him and I was in the ninth level of ecstasy, I just all of a sudden thought, 'Mommy guilt is invented nonsense,'" she said. "We're encouraged to judge each other, but we should be turning our focus to the people and institutions who should be supporting us and currently aren't."
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Hathaway makes a great point about mom-shaming — yes, it's a real thing, and too many of us are quick to point fingers when we think that someone isn't parenting in a way that we believe is right or productive. Take, for example, the unsolicited parenting advice Chrissy Teigen constantly gets from strangers.
Though this kind of judgment might be par for the course for many who find themselves in the public eye, those of us who aren't celebrities aren't immune, either. Remember the mom who was shamed for giving her child chocolate cake? Or the time a daycare centre shamed busy parents for having their phones out while picking up their kids?
Hathaway is right — we need to stop judging and shaming each other, and instead making time and energy to focus on institutions that might not be supporting all of us.