Inside Jennifer Garner's Grounded Parenting Mindset In Hollywood: 'It Is Just Going To Be Imperfect'

The pressure placed on moms can either make diamonds or cause meltdowns in the school drop-off line. While celebrity moms get afforded the relief valves of financial comfortability and hired help, they have to do this whole parenting thing underneath a microscope — trying to do it all while dodging, at best, public opinion, and, at worst, public ire. Actor Jennifer Garner, for one, seems to have opted out of the race to perfection and has instead adopted a stuff-happens attitude when it comes to raising her three children. Garner sat down with InStyle for a June 2026 article, and she took a moment to share her parenting philosophy and comfort the interviewer, a new mom whose baby and nanny got scraped up in a trip-and-fall accident the day before. 

Garner told her that, when raising kids, it's necessary to relinquish control and accept that things will happen to them, but it's about how you react as a parent. Garner said, "You have to raise yourself at the same time. And just be so radically kind to yourself about how imperfect it is. And that it is just going to be imperfect. There's no such thing as balance. There's no such thing as doing it right." Along the same lines, Jennifer Garner won't apologize for balancing her "selfish" acting career and motherhood, either. She's been racking up the TV and film credits since the mid-'90s while ignoring any ideas about what mothering should look like.

Jennifer Garner and ex-husband Ben Affleck famously separated in 2015 and officially divorced in 2018, but not before they welcomed three kids: Violet Affleck, who is growing up fast, and then Fin and Samuel. Jen and Ben are among the celebs who have co-parenting down to a science, but still, Garner says the arrangement is not without its challenges — but also opportunities for growth. In a February 2026 interview with Bustle, she related her parenting style to the main character in the book "Anne of Green Gables," an orphan who's being raised not by a couple but by a brother-sister duo who employ different but complementary approaches. "I think that I do a bit of both [formal bringing up and encouragement]," she said of her own parenting method. 

Garner added, "And I think my kids' dad does too, especially when your kids grow up in two separate households. I become mom and dad; he becomes dad and mom. You kind of can't help it, right?" She added that there were downsides to the arrangement, but acknowledged the benefits as well. "There's a little bit of loss in that, but there's also something gained in that ... It's made me let go and not focus so much on the bringing up."