Becoming a stepparent or bonus parent to your partner’s kids doesn’t come with a blueprint. Even if you already are a parent to your own kids, it can be challenging to figure out how to blend your family (Jennifer Lopez, Jennifer Garner, and Ben Affleck are the exception). Gwyneth Paltrow recently spoke up about the challenges she faced being a stepmom to her husband Brad Falchuk’s kids, and the harmful stepparent stereotypes she’s had to fight against.
Gwyenth Paltrow Is a Stepmom to Brad Falchuk’s Two Kids
The Goop founder is mom to Apple, 19, and Moses, 17, with ex-husband Chris Martin, and she’s a stepmom to Falchuk’s kids Isabella, 19, and Brody, 17, from a previous relationship. In a recent Instagram Q&A, Paltrow talked about being a stepmom.
“I did find it really hard at first,” she said on Instagram, per InStyle.
“You know, there’s no book on this; nobody tells us what to do. And in fact, all of the existing media around what a stepmother is casts us in this evil, villainous light,” she continued. “So, it’s kind of like trying to avoid land mines. And then you’re going into a family with dynamics. And there’s all kinds of fear around loss and what does this person mean?”
She has some great points! It’s hard not to think of Cinderella’s evil stepmother when you hear the word, which isn’t fair at all to kind, loving stepmoms and stepdads who just want to have happy, blended families (which is probably most of them?).
She ‘Whole-Heartedly Went For It’
During the interview, the Shakespeare In Love alum shared the one thing she did to make things better with Falchuk’s kids.
“But for myself, the minute I decided, and fully embodied the idea that my step kids were my kids and I love them just as much and I gave them the same rules and boundaries, and just kind of whole-heartedly went for it, then the easier the whole thing got. And now it’s pretty great,” she said, per InStyle.
Advice For Other Step Parents
This isn’t the first time Paltrow has spoken about being a stepmom. In a September 2022 episode of The Goop Podcast with Falchuk, she shared, per PEOPLE, “It’s funny because there’s just no playbook for how to do it and nobody says, ‘Hey, you’re going to be a stepmother.’”
“I don’t know, I think there’s like this archetypal evil stepmother and this inference that it’s going to be this fraught thing, so I think I came into it on tenterhooks, like, ‘Oh my Gosh,’” she went on. “It’s like you can only kind of do the wrong thing, especially because your kids were more resistant.”
She also opened up about the one thing she regrets. “That’s my only regret. Is that whenever it was, however many years ago, when I was just like, ‘F— it, these are my kids, I love them. I’m not going to be scared to discipline them or draw the boundary,’” she said. “That’s really what shifted everything, I feel like.”
“From day one, just like really treat them as your kid,” Paltrow continued. “Don’t have trepidation because they’re not [yours] and you don’t have jurisdiction and God forbid — be your full self as a parent with all the love and all the acceptance and all the boundaries. I just wish I had done that earlier.”
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