When you think of all the gorgeous Hollywood moms out there, who stands out as someone who rocks motherhood and balances her success with a genuine sense of humor and love of life? Chances are actress Blake Lively and her kids top your list. (She tops ours too!) Now a mom of four — yes, FOUR — kids, Blake Lively is probably exhausted but still finds time to maintain a successful acting career, run a business (she founded Betty Buzz, a premium drink mixer brand), and support her husband’s soccer team — the Wrexham AFC.
And, amid doing it all (and she seems to do it all), Lively has shown she’s quite the protective mama bear with strict rules about protecting her kids’ privacy and maintaining a sense of normalcy in their lives, despite having world-famous parents.
Blake Lively is the gold standard in showing her kids that moms can have their careers, be fantastic mothers to their kids, and have lots of laughs and joy along the way. She’s the Hollywood bestie you want to have IRL, and since you probably fell in love with her watching Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants or Gossip Girl, chances are, you’ve been a Blake fan for a long time. But now, seeing her as a mom who admits motherhood is challenging and the best thing she’ll ever do, we love her even more.
10 Quotes from Blake Lively on Motherhood
1. She admits she doesn’t have all the answers. But she’s doing her best to raise strong girls who believe in themselves.
“We’re all born feeling perfect until somebody tells us we’re not. So, there’s nothing I can teach my daughter [James]. She already has all of it. The only thing I can do is protect what she already feels,” Lively said in a 2017 interview with Glamour.
When asked how she plans to protect what James already feels, Lively responds with refreshing honesty, saying, “I have no idea! I do know that I have to watch her and listen to her and not project any of my own insecurities or struggles on her.”
2. Blake Lively protects her kids from Hollywood’s unrealistic beauty standards.
“What you’re seeing on red carpets and in magazines takes a lot of effort and a lot of people. People don’t understand that it’s all very constructed,” Lively told Refinery29. “What little girls are seeing isn’t what [these celebrities] look like when they wake up in the morning — even though it’s no less beautiful.”
She continued, “There’s this awareness of what [little girls are] going to be exposed to and what they grow up seeing. For me, it’s important for my daughters to know that it’s not real life. They’re seeing me dressed up in all this hair and makeup, but they also see me without that. I want them to see both sides because there is never just one side.”
3. She’s a fiercely protective mama bear, shielding her children from the paparazzi so they can have a normal childhood with privacy.
“This is so disturbing,” Lively wrote in response to seeing pictures of her children online. “I’ve personally shared with you that these men stalk and harass my children – and you are still posting. You said you would stop; you personally promised me. This is not casual appreciation: This is you also exploiting very young children. Please delete, please.”
“Some parents are ok with this,” Lively added. “We are not.”
4. She wants her girls to see her do and be other things beyond motherhood, so they will know they can maintain different identities if they have children.
“I want to be as present of a mother as humanly possible, and I want them to feel my presence, but I also think the best way to be the best mother is to show them that you can have a life and have a passion and have an identity outside of just being a mother,” she said in a 2021 interview with People. “I mean, being a mother is completely all-encompassing, and that doesn’t mean there are a lot of mothers who don’t have the opportunity to work as well, but just having your [own] identity is, I think, very important.”
“So it is very important for them to see me working. I mean, it’s amazing they’re not hidden under my skirt right now,” Lively added. “I bring them everywhere.”
5. She advocates for clothing designers to offer all shapes and sizes so all women can find something that fits well.
Shortly after her daughter Betty was born in 2019, Lively posted an IG story about having to piece together an outfit for a TV interview because “No one had samples that fit me after giving birth. And so many clothes from stores didn’t fit, either. So. Many.” Her post went on to read, “It doesn’t send a great message to women when their bodies don’t fit into what brands have to offer. It’s alienating and confusing. And I wish I felt as confident then as I do now, a year later looking back. That body gave me a baby. And was producing that baby’s entire food supply. What a beautiful miracle. But instead of feeling proud, I felt insecure. Simply because I didn’t fit into clothes. How silly is that in retrospect.”
6. As a multitasking queen — Blake Lively even works out with her kids!
“I woke up at 5 a.m., but mostly because I was doing momma duty with my girls,” she explained, describing how she trained for the movie The Rhythm Section. “I would actually wake up and work out with my girls. So I would sort of use them as weights. Instead of wearing a weight vest, I got to wear my children.”
7. She has learned to appreciate and love how motherhood has changed her body but admits that she still fights insecurities.
“Once I had children, that just became even more profound because my time was even more precious, but also I think having children made me feel so much more in my skin,” she said in a 2022 interview with Forbes. “I never felt more myself or at ease in my own body or more confident — not to say that there aren’t a bevy of insecurities coming at me a million times a day, but I just feel incredibly settled.”
8. She tells everyone that the perfect picture of motherhood — with a clean house and well-behaved kids — isn’t her reality.
In a candid interview with Seth Meyers, Lively talks about unrealistic IG feeds. “My kid is playing with explosive devices — I don’t know where she’s found them — sticking them in our dog’s ear,” the actress said jokingly of her daughter James. “She already knows how to drywall because she puts holes in the wall,” she added.
(Thanks, Blake! I feel 100 times better about the state of my household!)
9. She admits that motherhood is hard — for everyone, even famous movie stars. But just like your kids are learning, so are you.
“[Inez] was not sleeping through the night because she was a baby,” the actress explains. “And then she finally started sleeping through the night because she was old enough, then my older daughter James decided that she doesn’t sleep through the night anymore.”
“What they don’t tell you is that it never gets less overwhelming, but with each kid, I do learn more.”
10. At the end of the day, she wants her kids to be proud of their mom.
“Family is at the root of everything that I do and it’s also at the root of everything that I create,” Lively explained to Forbes. “So, whenever I create something, I create something with family in mind, because that’s just how I live. That also goes into the types of films I want to be a part of. I want to be in films, I want to make films, I want to author films that I would be proud for my children to see. Even the gowns I wear — I just want my kids to be proud.”
We know Hollywood moms live a different life from ours in many ways. They have drivers. They have stylists. They probably have house cleaners and assistants and maybe even personal chefs. But at its core, motherhood is still motherhood. We are all that vulnerable mom, coping with changes in our bodies. We’re hearing our newborn cry for us in the night. We’re trying to figure out what our new reality will look like day by day. And we appreciate when famous women we’ve idolized since our pre-motherhood days, women like Blake Lively, who tell it like it is. Women who admit that it’s hard and offer support to their fellow mothers so they know we’re all in on this journey together, whether we live in LA or on a cul-de-sac in Kansas.
If you’ll excuse me, I’m off to make a cocktail from Betty Buzz while I binge on some old-school Gossip Girl. I wonder if Blake is doing the same tonight.