Jane Fonda Opens Up About Parenting Mistakes—and Says It’s Never Too Late to Change
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Jane Fonda just got real about motherhood. In a new interview with CNN’s Chris Wallace, Fonda, 85, revealed that she has some parenting regrets about the kind of mother she was to her children—Mary Williams, Vanessa Vadim, and Troy Garity—who now range in age from 49 to 55.
“I was not the kind of mother that I wished that I had been to my children,” she told Wallace. “I have great, great children—talented, smart. And I just didn’t know how to do it.”
Fonda is an Oscar-winning actress and a passionate activist, and it’s oddly refreshing to hear that even she has faced struggles throughout motherhood. Her candor shines a light on a sentiment many mothers may related to: They just don’t know how to parent. “I’ve studied parenting, and I know what it’s supposed to be now,” she says in the interview. “I didn’t know then. So I’m trying to show up now.”
According to Fonda, not being the mother she wanted to be is one of her great regrets—and she doesn’t want to reach the end of her life with too many of those. In a 2017 interview with fellow actress Brie Larson, Fonda had shared a similar sentiment. “I regret that I wasn’t a better parent. I didn’t know how to do it,” she said. “But you can learn, so I studied how to be a parent. It’s never too late. I am trying to make up for what I didn’t know before.” Fonda finished that thought by saying how important family relationships are. “When I die, I want my family to be around me,” she said. “I want them to love me, and I have to earn that. I’m still working at it.”
Fonda had Vanessa with her late first husband, producer Roger Vadim, and shares Mary and Troy with her late second husband, Tom Hayden. She was also married to Ted Turner, the creator of CNN, after those marriages. And while speaking to Wallace, Fonda revealed that not only did she not know how to be a mother, but she also had misconceptions about how to carry herself as a woman. “I just assumed that nobody would be interested in knowing me unless I was with a man who was really interesting,” she said.
But divorcing Turner and starting the 2000s as a newly single—and 60-something—woman helped Fonda realize that she can stand on her own two feet. “I kind of thought, Oh, I’m single—and I’m okay. I don’t need a man.”
Watch the entire interview below.
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