Drew Barrymore Just Released A Spectacular Comment On Motherhood

Drew Barrymore with Olive and Frankie, in 2014. Image by Getty Images

By Jenny Singer March 16, 2018

“Olive has a working mom,” begins Drew Barrymore’s essay on parenting, which she released on Friday on Instagram next to a picture of her daughter assiduously marking off days on a calendar when her mother will be out of town. Barrymore, who with her ex-husband Will Kopelman is raising her two daughters Olive, 5, and Frankie, 4, as religious Jews, opened her heart on the values of leaving children to go to work. In a tone both tranquil and determined, the famed actress and producer wrote, “I always explain to her that I love my Job. I don’t say “I have to go work” with a grimace on my face, because I fear it will make her feel negative about something a lot of moms must do to provide.” The 43 year-old actress and current star of the Netflix comedy “Santa Clarita Diet” wrote that she wants “to empower my daughters to think work is good and necessary,” she wrote. “And can even lead them to road of their dreams.”

Barrymore wrote that developing a calendar with her daughter and communicating via mailed letters when she has gone has helped her daughter develop skills and gain a sense of time and place. But the actress doesn’t claim that the system is perfect. “I feel guilty as hell for being away (and what mother doesn’t?!)” she wrote. “But I try a way to empower me and my kids into something more positive.”

In case you’re not tired of being emotionally and ideologically moved by a celebrity who is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, Pink posted this picture of toting her two children around on tour, honoring their desire to dress up. Celebrity moms: They’re (a little bit) like us.

Jenny Singer is a writer for the Forward. You can reach her at Singer@forward.com or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny

Jenny Singer is a freelance writer with pieces in Vox, the Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, Teen Vogue, and more. She was previously a staff writer at Glamour and the Forward, and she’s currently getting an MFA in nonfiction writing at the University of Iowa.

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