How Jennifer Lopez Responds When Asked If She’s a ‘Good Mom’
Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck are now a married couple with a blended family. They have a total of five children from their previous relationships. Lopez takes being a parent seriously. She often talks about how her children changed her life and helped her see the world differently. Here’s what J.Lo once said about being a good mom.
Jennifer Lopez says her children showed her what real love is
Lopez credits her children, Emme Maribel Muñiz and Maximillian David Muñiz, with opening her eyes and showing her real love. In her book True Love, she says she finally understands what love is and how to give and receive love.
Lopez says having children filled her with a love she had never experienced before. She says the love of a child isn’t “traumatic, tormented, or complicated,” but “perfect and simple and true.”
Another realization Lopez had after her children were born was that something was missing from her romantic relationships. She says the pure love of her children gave her an understand of the things that were dysfunctional in her romantic life.
How Jennifer Lopez describes herself as a mom
During her interview with Oprah Winfrey, Lopez was asked to describe how she is as a mother. Lopez says she thinks of herself as “loving.”
“I’m a loving mom first,” says Lopez. When asked if she is a good mom, Lopez says, “I think I’m a really good mom. I think I’m a really good mom because I relate to my kids in a way that doesn’t make them feel less than me. Where they feel like they can talk to me. I talk to them. We talk to each other with love and respect.”
Lopez says she wants to create a home that her children “always want to come back to.” She says she makes sure her children get what they need from her. She’s mindful of the challenges that come with co-parenting, so she makes sure to stay in contact with the mother of the children of whomever she’s in a relationship with.
“The kids have a network of people who love, adore them, and want the best for them,” says Lopez. “I think we figure it out as we go.” Lopez says she kept Alex Rodriguez’s ex-wife, Cynthia Scurtis, in the loop when they were dating. This way, the children always had a “network” of loving adults looking after them.
What Jennifer Lopez learned after her divorce
When Winfrey asks Lopez what she knows about love now that she didn’t know in her 20s, she says learned she had to be OK alone. This is the best relationship advice she can give after experiencing so much heartbreak.
“I had to love myself and be OK on my own before I could be in a healthy relationship,” says Lopez. She tells Winfrey that right before she met Rodriguez, she was at a point where she wasn’t afraid to be alone.
Lopez says she re-examined her life after divorcing Marc Anthony. “I waited to have kids,” she says. “I had kids when I was 38. I never wanted to not be with the person I had kids with. When [Marc Anthony and I] got divorced it was the lowest time of my life. I felt like I had failed miserably. And that I was not going to give my kids what they needed, and I just didn’t know what to do. So, I had to regroup at that time.”
Lopez says her feelings of defeat after her marriage ended were mostly due to how she was raised. She was taught that children need both their mother and father. She was reluctant to get a divorce and break up her family. However, she later realized that it was important for her to be happy.
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