Gwyneth Paltrow Wants An End To ‘Mommy Wars’

Gwyneth Paltrow says her recent headline-making quotes about the differences between being an actress and working a 9 to 5 job were taken out of context and she’d like the “mommy wars” to end.

“A few weeks ago during an interview, I was asked why I have only worked on one film a year since having children. My answer was this: Film work takes one away from home and requires 12-14 hours a day, making it difficult to be the one to make the kids their lunch, drive them to school, and put them to bed. So I have found it easier on my family life to make a film the exception, and my 9-5 job the rule,” she wrote in her GOOP newsletter this week.

“This somehow was taken to mean I had said a 9-5 job is easier, and a lot of heat was thrown my way, especially by other working mothers who somehow used my out-of-context quote as an opportunity to express feelings (perhaps projected) on the subject. As the mommy wars rage on, I am constantly perplexed and amazed by how little slack we cut each other as women,” she continued. “We see disapproval in the eyes of other mothers when we say how long we breastfed (Too long? Not long enough?), or whether we have decided to go back to work versus stay home. Is it not hard enough to attempt to raise children thoughtfully, while contributing something, or bringing home some (or more) of the bacon?”

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Adding, “Why do we feel so entitled to opine, often so negatively, on the choices of other women? Perhaps because there is so much pressure to do it all, and do it all well all at the same time (impossible).”

The 41-year-old actress, who is mom to daughter Apple, 9, and son Moses, 7, with estranged husband Chris Martin, took heat for comments she made to E! News in March.

“It’s much harder for me,” she said at the time. “I feel like I set it up in a way that makes it difficult because – for me, like if I miss a school run, they are like, ‘Where were you?’ I don’t like to be the lead so I don’t [have] to work every day. I have little things that I like and obviously I want it to be good and challenging and interesting and be with good people and that kind of thing.

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“I think it’s different when you have an office job, because it’s routine,” she continued. “You can do all the stuff in the morning and then you come home in the evening. When you’re shooting a movie, they’re like, ‘We need you to go to Wisconsin for two weeks,’ and then you work 14 hours a day and that part of it is very difficult. I think to have a regular job and be a mom is not as, of course there are challenges, but it’s not like being on set.”

— Jesse Spero