Parents have to make a thousand decisions in the best interest of their kids. There’s no handbook or one-size-fits-all method. Things get even more complicated when parents are public figures.
Kerry Washington and husband Nnamdi Asomugha, a former NFL player, have made a conscious choice to keep their kids out of the limelight. They are raising three children together. They share biological kids Isabelle and Caleb. Kerry also parents a stepdaughter, whose name is private. She opened up about this to People at a screening of UnPrisoned at the American Black Film Festival in June of 2024.
This choice began the moment the two started dating. "I think just from the very beginning, Nnamdi and I have been really protective of our partnership and our relationship, because we wanted it to belong to us, and we found that we were able to define and create a relationship for ourselves and with each other outside of the public eye," she explained. This naturally evolved into how they raised their children. “We just want to give our kids that same opportunity to define a life for themselves and to enter the public space in their own way," she added.
Kerry joked that she is not a scary, tyrant-type mother. "They're not, like, locked in a dungeon,” she explained.”They do, you know, come to set, we go places, we do things.”
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For Kerry and Nnamdi, it is all about protecting them and giving them a choice. "We do feel like we want to give them agency to engage in a public life in the way they want to, because this is what we do. We've chosen to be athletes and artists, and that's our choice. But we want to let them be kids," she explained.
Kerry learned the value of privacy early on in her career, even before she was a mother. “The first time somebody recognized me on the street, they were like, ‘Kerry.’ And I was like, ‘Hey,’ because I assumed it was maybe somebody I went to college with," she explained in a Marie Claire interview in 2018. "This was after Save the Last Dance. And I hugged them because I assumed I knew them, and they were like, ‘I’m such a huge fan.’ And I felt so unsafe. I was like, ‘Oh, I’m now in a situation where I have no boundaries with this person, and I have no idea who they are, and I can’t do this anymore.’ It was the beginning of me learning to hold the world at arm’s length just for my own sense of safety.” This is a lesson she has continued to heed as a mother.
It's not always easy. Kerry loves her kids and wants to shout it from the rooftops. "I have moments where I take pictures or videos of one of my three amazing kids and I wanna post it online, and I tend to just send it to my parents or my shrink instead," she explained to Sunday Today. "I'm like, 'My kids are so cute and I don't wanna post about them, so look how cute they are!' "
