15 Celebrity Moms Who Don’t Pretend to Be Perfect

Mila Kunis was in a movie called Bad Moms, so she knows that it’s not always easy to be a parent. Recently, she caught flak for saying that she doesn’t bathe her kids until dirt can be seen on them. But she didn’t take the criticism to heart too much. She shared this video of her actually bathing her kids and laughing about the whole situation.

Kristen Bell keeps it pretty real online and in her interviews when it comes to raising her two kids. She also gives herself a lot of grace. “I’m not a good mom; I’m not a bad mom. I’m the mom I am and I try very hard, and when I fail, that’s OK,” she said a few years ago. That’s the spirit. There’s no such thing as a perfect mom.

Chrissy isn’t afraid to be honest about being a mom — the highs and the lows. Like when she posted a photo wearing mesh underwear and a diaper after giving birth to son Miles. She said she does it to remind other people — and herself — of the realities of motherhood. “My posts of real mom shit, and wearing the diaper, and having that mesh thing, and real postpartum business? I think as important as it is for people to see me do that, it’s also really important for me.”

Jennifer is a super hands-on mom, but even she doesn’t get it right all the time. “The absolute [greatest] thing about being a parent is that every day is a fresh start,” she once said. “You always can say, ‘Today we’re going to try this!’ And if it goes horribly, you can say, ‘Today we’re throwing that out, and we’re trying this!'”

You don’t have to be perfect at parenting to be doing your best.

“Parenting is the hardest thing,” Sarah Michelle Gellar admitted to Today. But because she knows it’s impossible to be perfect, she doesn’t let other people’s critiques get to her. “I would feel mommy-shamed if I raised a serial killer,” she said. If you’re not doing that, you’re doing pretty great!

We’d all love to pretend that our kids are super well-behaved all the time but meltdowns do happen — even to celebs like Olivia Wilde. And she was fine with admitting that on Twitter.

“Couple days ago my kid was having a level 10, defcon 1, couldn’t-control-his-body meltdown at a restaurant … The place was packed, and we were very much on display. I was in way over my head. I stayed calm, but I was kind of crumbling inside,” she said. “2 strangers, a young man and woman, approached and asked if they could help. I swallowed my pride and said yes, please … I thanked them and they said, ‘Hey, no problem. We all have days like this.'”

It’s nothing to be ashamed of.

Reese may look perfect, but no mom is. “How do I do it all with 3 kids & a full-time job? This is how. Me & every other mom,” Reese captioned a photo of her passed out in a bathrobe, with trash and food strewn around her. Every mom will recognize the complete exhaustion in this photo. It’s so normal to feel this way.

Her life with Dwyane Wade may seem picture-perfect, but Gabrielle Union doesn’t think it’s possible to be a perfect mom. “A mother, to have it all, has to somehow also provide a check, also be superfreak Kama Sutra down to the ground, be a size double zero, be super present in the PTA but still putting in extra hours at work. It is impossible. There are literally not enough hours. To me, having it all is not having it all and it being OK,” she said to Health.

An exhausted-looking Pink posted this photo of her daughter playing in the house. The singer captioned it, “Yeah my kid rides her bike inside. Without clothes. And helmets. While I ignore her and look at my phone. #failingbeautifully.” This isn’t failing, though. This is parental honesty.

Busy’s child Birdie is gay and goes by they/them pronouns, which Busy admitted was an adjustment for her. She even said she’d “been doing a bad job” remembering those pronouns. But she’s been learning as she goes, and that’s what’s important. “You don’t have to understand it. You can choose to believe what you want, but you don’t get to have jurisdiction over anyone else’s body or belief system,” she said.

Tia knows that one of her biggest parenting successes is also one of her biggest weaknesses. She’s not afraid to call herself out for that. “I am fun, I’m funny, I am like your best friend,” she told People. “That would probably be my worst quality as well! I have to learn how to draw that line and be like, ‘Tia, maybe this is why sometimes your kids run all over you. Because they think you’re their friend!'”

Since Amy is always pretty raw and real about her life, we didn’t expect anything less when she had a child. And she was instantly willing to admit she didn’t always know what she was doing. “I got some nice advice from Natalie Portman,” Amy said on Late Night With Seth Meyers. “She was like, ‘You have more instincts than you know you have.’ And what I’m finding is that Natalie Portman is a huge liar. Because, so far, my instincts are all dead wrong.”

We feel that.

Jenna has two kids, including a pretty young baby. And that’s tough. “Didn’t nail it this week. A lot of things I wish I handled a little differently,” she captioned this Instagram photo. “I’ve also realized it’s pretty healing to just accept you’re not perfect. When you have the best of intentions but it doesn’t always go the way you were hoping and you take a moment to look at your harried self in the mirror and it’s okkkkkk. It’s all about growing and learning anyways. Go lightly people.”

The mom of two is busy with parenting and her career, and she knows she can’t necessarily balance it all. “I have a lot of mom guilt,” she admitted. “There are days where I cry and I’m like, ‘I don’t know if I can handle all this!’ or get it all done. But at the end of the day, 99% of the time, it’s awesome and it’s worth it, and that’s what I say to myself.”

The tennis pro loves her daughter, Olympia, so much and she loves her career and she’s working to balance both while also caring for herself. At times, she’s struggled on that journey, but what mom hasn’t?

“You know, it’s hard. Sometimes my heart literally aches when I’m not around her,” Serena once said of her daughter. “But you know, it’s good for me, I guess, to keep working and just to all moms out there that it’s not easy. It’s really kind of painful sometimes. Sometimes you just have to do what you have to do.”