Mila Kunis is a Bad Mom. No, not to her daughter, Wyatt, or her upcoming second child with husband Ashton Kutcher.
She’s one of the stars of the movie Bad Moms. But she’s probably a good mom. Certainly, she's a mom that’s willing to get real about the challenges and rewards of motherhood.
She spoke to a gaggle of reporters alongside fellow Bad Moms Kristen Bell and Kathryn Hahn in the salad dressing aisle New Orleans-adjacent supermarket.
Kunis says that one child is something of a parenting sweet spot.
"I only have one little human,” she tells PopSugar. “She's not so bad. [Bell and Hahn] got two. I have an amazing husband and my parents live in same town as I do…but she's only 17 months old. She's rambunctious but she's not there yet where she's two-and-a-half and I'm like 'Holy shit, this is demon baby.'"
She credits her parenting success with a good sense of humor and a healthy fear of weird-colored snot.
"I think people like to know they're not alone,” she tells PopSugar. “I think that the second you're like, 'Oh wait' and that you can put humor at it, and it's something that you can make light of. I think before my parents were raising my brother and I, everything had to go perfectly…Nowadays, if shit's going wrong and I call my best friend and I'm like, 'I don't know, this color is coming out of her nose and I'm pretty sure she's dying.' And it's okay to do that now, but I don't know if it necessarily was okay before. I think this movie brings light to that."
And, finally, she is sure to remember that, as the great philosopher Teddy Roosevelt said: Comparison is the thief of joy.
"It's the competitive energy that is so destructive,” she tells PopSugar. “It's just like you said — we're all in it together. You only are a mommy in this way for such a brief amount of time anyway that you don't wanna look back and be like, 'Why did I care about that stupid nonsense?'"
There is well-documented thinking that comparing ourselves to others can be psychologically unhealthy. Children, especially extremely young children, reach milestones at a sometimes-blinding pace. One day they’re walking and the next they’re hitting you up for gas money so they can go to a party. It’s stressful enough juggling that without wondering if they’re tying their shoes at the same exact age as Tyler down the street.
Just remember: As long as you're better than Philip Larkin's parents, you're doing fine.
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