Anne Hathaway Admits She Feels ‘Very Defeated’ by the Idea of Balance as a Mom of 2

NEED TO KNOW

• During an interview with Harper’s Bazzar, Anne Hathaway said she and her friends aim to harmonize their lives instead of striving for balance

• Previously, the actress shared how motherhood shifted her focus and made her feel more grounded and authentic

• Hathaway tends to keep her family life with her two sons Jack and Jonathan private

Anne Hathaway isn’t seeking balance in her life as a working mom of two.

During her conversation with Harper’s Bazaar, the Devil Wears Prada 2 star, 43, opened up about how she feels “very defeated” by the concept of balance. Hathaway, who’s a mom to sons Jack, 6, and Jonathan, 10, told the outlet that before she became a mom, there was a “really uncompromising and uninterrupted” focus, but with kids, there are more ebbs and flows that make balancing things out a little harder.

“Before, there was this focus that was really uncompromising and uninterrupted,” Hathaway explained. “And I just can’t tell you anymore what life is like without kids, but kids interrupt you all the time.”

“My friends and I talk about it a lot, and we actually feel very defeated by the concept of balance,” she said. “If the weight shifts in one direction, you then have to bounce it up on the other side, and we find that it winds us up as opposed to making us steady.”

Instead of seeking balance, the actress shared that she and her friends aim for a concept that is more forgiving.

“We’re like, ‘We seek to harmonize our life,’ ” she said.

The Princess Diaries actress and husband Adam Shulman welcomed their older son, Jonathan, in 2016. Their son Jack joined the family three years later in 2019. Hathaway often shares how her life has changed since welcoming her boys, including the impact motherhood has had on her character.

“I didn’t feel fully landed and fully here until I was a mom,” she told WSJ Magazine in March 2022. “It’s not like I was lacking integrity, but it made me want to be completely, on every level, true to my word.”

She added, “And that meant stopping any nonsense that I had going on inside myself. And it’s little breaks that you give yourself sometimes when you know that you’re not being your best self.”

The Hollywood actress tends to keep her professional life separate from her personal one. In a November 2023 interview with NET-A-PORTER’s digital title PORTER, she opened up about her choice and explained why she hasn’t shared much information about her kids.

“It’s something I feel is not just essential for my health – I’m on a team, it’s my family, and it’s not just about me,” she said.

Hathaway added, “My family has needs, and one of the needs of children is that they need to be able to define their own lives. It doesn’t even occur to me to link the two up, except through gratitude that they serve each other so beautifully. But they serve each other through me, and not through a space that’s outside of myself.”

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The Ella Enchanted star previously told WSJ Magazine that she hopes her kids stay out of acting while they’re still young, which is an approach she learned from her own mother, Kate McCauley Hathaway, who is also an actress.

“I would probably take the same tack that my parents did with me, which is: You have all the time in the world to be a professional actor; you can only be a child once,” Hathaway said.

“So I would encourage them to study, to go to classes, to read, but I would strongly discourage them from starting too young,” she continued. “I think that they’ll be in a position where they’ll be able to go to college and figure out where they want to go from there.”

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