Zoe Saldaña says she’s raising her boys to ‘celebrate their feminine self’

The whole parenting thing in today’s world is not an easy thing to manage. And, just like us, celebrity moms are figuring it out as they go.

Zoe Saldaña is a mama to three boys. The “Guardians of the Galaxy” actress, 45, recently spoke to People about raising boys and about how parenting is the “most amazing thing, but it’s real.”

Saldaña shares shares twin sons Cy and Bowie, 8, as well as son Zen, 6, with her husband, Marco Perego-Saldaña. The working mom shared how they come together to conquer all things parenting while also supporting each other in their creative endeavors—Perego-Saldaña is also in the industry as a producer and director.

The “Avatar” star says, “Certain seasons, I’m the one that may be taking over all of the domestic operations so that my husband can mentally break away and focus on his creativity. And other seasons when I go completely back into work mode, then we’re switching off,” she continues, “I don’t think it’s ever an even share of the load, which is why I think it’s important to be absolutely transparent with your bandwidth and where you are and how you’re doing.”

She says, “But love comes with everything, so it’s always with the understanding that, ‘Today for you, tomorrow for me,’ and we’ve been constantly in that back and forth.”

But that’s not all the actress shared. She also talked about how they’re raising boys without specific gender roles. She and her husband “teaching our little boys to honor women and to celebrate women,” she explains.

She also says it’s just as important to teach them to “honor themselves, their femininity, to celebrate their feminine self as well.”

“We’re very hard on our boys the same way we’re hard on women. And boys are encouraged to be strong and to suppress their emotions. And then once you learn to do that so much for so long, you become completely excommunicated from your feelings,” she explains. “We definitely understood the assignments and accepted it knowing that we were raising boys during a time when women’s movements are so important.”

The mom of three also spent some time raving about the SNOO. “And our son, for the first year of his life, would just sleep really peacefully in his SNOO and we loved it.” She added that it helped with her exhaustion in the early days of motherhood, “sleep deprivation and rest deprivation is really real when you have a newborn.”