Celebrity moms seem to have more hours in their day than the rest of us. They appear to be loving parents with highly successful careers and tidy homes. Somehow they manage to find time for socializing and self-care, too.
You wonder how you’re barely holding it together while these moms are getting it all done — and then some. There’s an essential but under-discussed key to their success at home and at work: great child care.
The same day Philipps wrote: “I wouldn’t have made it this far as a mom and a human without the incredible women who’ve helped me show up for my kids as my best self. Their love and care for my kids has allowed me to go to work and travel with the knowledge that the two humans most important to me will be taken care of.”
“It hit me. I wasn’t transparently sharing what my day-to-day really looks like because if I did there’s no way they could think that I was doing it all,” Weisberg told HuffPost. “I certainly don’t feel like I am. The truth is no one can do it all. And I certainly don’t want to perpetuate the myth that you can or feel like you should have to.”
In the comments on Teigen’s, Philipps’ and Weisberg’s posts, many women wrote how grateful they were to see caregivers being recognized for the integral yet often behind-the-scenes role they play in families.
“And I had this reaction that this is something you’d never call men out for. Because historically they have leaned on their wives to handle all the child care and housekeeping responsibilities. It really made us stop and think about how women have been shamed and made to feel guilty if they can’t handle balancing their careers with having a family and managing the household.”
“I have fallen into two buckets. The first is not having enough of the right support or resources and then feeling the overwhelming weight of responsibility and anxiety because of it,” she said. “The other is feeling guilty or ashamed of the amount of support that I have and then feeling like I’m not doing it all and I’m cheating. Neither of these are good. And it’s not what I want others to feel.”
“The more women and men talk about the complexities of child care — and how challenging it can be — the better,” Gabriel said, in order to “nudge organizations” to offer much-needed child care support for their employees.
“We need it as a society, and it hasn’t been made accessible,” they said. “The more transparent we all are, the more we can stop feeling guilty for needing help and start seeing that for women to stay in the workplace, it’s largely unsustainable unless we have some type of child care support.”
This content was originally published here.
