Anne Hathaway Admits Feeling "Defeated" by the Myth of Work-Life Balance

During her conversation with Harper's Bazaar, Hathaway, who's a mom to sons Jack and Jonathan, told the outlet that before she became a mom, there was a "really uncompromising and uninterrupted" focus, but with kids, there are more ebbs and flows that make balancing things out a little harder, reports people.com.

She said: "Before, there was this focus that was really uncompromising and uninterrupted. And I just can't tell you anymore what life is like without kids, but kids interrupt you all the time."

"My friends and I talk about it a lot, and we actually feel very defeated by the concept of balance," she said.

"If the weight shifts in one direction, you then have to bounce it up on the other side, and we find that it winds us up as opposed to making us steady."

Instead of seeking balance, the actress said she and her friends aim for a more forgiving concept.

"We're like, 'We seek to harmonize our life,'" she said.

The Princess Diaries actress and her husband, Adam Shulman, welcomed their older son, Jonathan, in 2016. Their son Jack joined the family three years later in 2019.

Hathaway often shares how her life has changed since welcoming her boys, including the impact motherhood has had on her character.

"I didn't feel fully landed and fully here until I was a mom," she told WSJ Magazine in March 2022.

"It's not like I was lacking integrity, but it made me want to be completely, on every level, true to my word. And that meant stopping any nonsense that I had going on inside myself. And it's little breaks that you give yourself sometimes when you know that you're not being your best self."

- IANS