Gwyneth Paltrow Shares Her Honest Take On Becoming A Stepmom

Gwyneth Paltrow knows firsthand the challenges of becoming a blended family.

During a talk at the Visionary Women’s International Women’s Day Summit on Wednesday, Paltrow quipped that taking on the role of stepparent is “a bitch, right guys?”

“I really like to talk about this because it’s one of my biggest learnings as a human being,” the Goop founder said, according to People magazine. “And my area of growth personally came from the initial difficult relationship I had with my stepkids and now they’re like my kids.”

The Oscar winner said the transition was “really rough,” but she found a way to make it work.

“It’s almost like you have to embody the spirit of the sun and just give and not expect anything back,” Paltrow explained. “I just learned to try to just keep shining like the sun and never keeping score.”

The “Iron Man 3” actor has two children with her ex, Coldplay singer Chris Martin. Paltrow became a stepmom in 2018, when she married her now-husband, producer Brad Falchuk, who also has two kids.

Paltrow has opened up before about the turning point in her relationship with her two stepchildren, saying she found it “really hard at first.”

“You know, there’s no book on this ― nobody tells us what to do,” she explained during an Instagram Q&A last year. “And, in fact, all of the existing media around what a stepmother is casts us is like, in this evil, villainous light.”

She continued, “For myself, the minute I decided ― and fully embodied ― the idea that my stepkids were my kids and I love them just as much, and I gave them the same rules and boundaries and just kind of wholeheartedly went for it, then the easier the whole thing got.”

But now, Paltrow said, things are “pretty great.”