Bad mom, good attitude.
While she may lead the Bad Moms movie franchise, Mila Kunis has fully embraced the role of parent since she and husband Ashton Kutcher welcomed their two children, daughter Wyatt Isabelle, 8, and son Dimitri Portwood, 6. While the couple has been fiercely protective of their family's privacy and Kunis, who turned 40 on Aug. 14, is one of the rare A-listers to remain off social media, the Luckiest Girl Alive star has always kept it real when speaking publicly about the highs and lows of motherhood.
"It's so taboo to be like, 'I feel like I'm not perfect. You just have to know you're doing the best you can, and that's more than enough," Kunis told A Plus in 2016. "As mothers, we need to be able to admit that we can't be perfect all the time."
As the Internet would say: Kunis really is mother.
In honor of Kunis' milestone birthday, we're looking back on all the times she was relatable AF about being a mom:
Mila Kunis knows that nobody's perfect, and she'll be the first to fess up to her mistakes—especially when it comes to apologizing to her two kids with husband Ashton Kutcher—daughter Wyatt Isabelle, 8, and son Dimitri Portwood, 6.
"The only thing I've ever felt guilty about, and I actually apologized to my 3-year-old, is when I overreact," she told People in 2017, recalling an encounter with her then-toddler-aged daughter. "I'll walk away, and I'll come back, and I'll sit her down and I'm like, 'I'm really sorry. Mommy overreacted. Do you forgive me?' And she's like, 'Yeah, I forgive you.' Whether she understands what just happened or not, I want her to know that I'm as flawed as she is."
Kunis encourages all moms to realize that their best is more than enough for their kids.
"It's so taboo to be like, 'I feel like I'm not perfect,'" she explained in a 2016 interview with A Plus. "You just have to know you're doing the best you can, and that's more than enough. I know I'm the best mom Wyatt's ever had, and I'm the best mom for her."
During an appearance The Ellen DeGeneres Show, the actress revealed the real reason she and Kutcher teamed up for their Super Bowl 2021 commercial for Cheetos, which found the couple working with Shaggy to put a modern spin on the singer's hit, "It Wasn't Me": They needed a break from their kids.
"It was in the peak of the pandemic, it made no sense logically," Kunis explained. "I was dying to get out of the house."
Kunis then joked, "I got two days off from my kids, I'm a horrible mom!"
Kunis' biggest parenting fail?
"Well, here's a story that's about to get me in trouble," Kunis recalled on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in 2021. "There was a little kid in my kids' preschool that wasn't very kind and pushed my daughter."
Kunis' immediate response was to ask Wyatt if she had pushed the classmate back, a tactic Kutcher did not co-sign.
"I was like, 'Push her back next time. You push her back, and you say, 'No, thank you,' and you walk away,'" Kunis shared. "And I turned around,
She continued, "I was like, 'Don't push 'em off of a ladder or off a swing or off of a slide, but on the ground, even Steven? You push 'em back.' I'd say that that's a parenting fail."
Remember when Kunis and Kutcher nearly broke the Internet in 2021 by discussing their family's grooming routine—or lack thereof?
"When I had children, I also didn't wash them every day," Kunis said on the Armchair Expert podcast. "I wasn't the parent that bathed my newborns—ever." Kutcher added, "Here's the thing—if you can see the dirt on 'em, clean 'em. Otherwise, there's no point."
Kunis and Kutcher have established open-door policy at home. Literally.
"That includes the bathroom," the Luckiest Girl Alive star told E! News last year. "It's just one of those where, for better or for worse, as a family and the kids have all kind of embodied bodily function as a very standard norm."
And if people find themselves surprised by Kunis' admission, not to worry, she understands: "I'd never thought that I would be the person that was able to go to the bathroom with the door open."
Kunis just can't hang like she used to and she'll be the first to admit it.
"My girlfriends and I went out to dinner a month ago and I got home at 10:30 from a dinner and I had three penicillins which is a delicious, delicious beverage," Kunis told E! News in 2017. "[I was] hammered. Three drinks, I am now a very cheap date."
But what about wild date nights with her husband?
"No, because in the morning we still have kids," she joked. "Your date night can't be that wild because at 7 in the morning you still have, 'Mama' and you're like, 'What? I'm up.'"
"I think we're silly at home. We're very goofy parents when it comes to our children, but that don't have skill," Kunis said of her and Kutcher's shared parenting style on the Teach Me Something New podcast in 2020. "I think that's just being idiots. I think we're very comfortable with ourselves acting a fool at home, but maybe that comes from the idea of being comfortable in your own body, and in your own skin, and in your mind and not having a fear of making a fool of yourself."
And that extends to sometimes wearing a costume you don't want to in order to please your child, which Kunis did for Halloween one year.
"This is what sucks about having a kid: They tell you what to do and you listen. Because you pick your battles, and you're like, 'Well, I guess this is not one of them," she explained to Jimmy Kimmel in 2017. " I was trying to convince my daughter, 'Don't you want to be Batman or Superman or something awesome?' She's like, 'No, mom! I'm going to be Cinderella!' I was like, 'Eww! Gross! OK!'"
As for Kunis, Wyatt requested she dress up as Elsa from Frozen. "I was like, 'No, kiddo. Mama's not Elsa,'" the actress recalled. "Guess what mama was? Mama was Elsa. I sucked it up, you guys. I had a blonde wig on and everything."
Even though she didn't love dressing as the ice queen for Halloween, Kunis did take away one major lesson from playing Elsa: Let it go!
"Another important thing to learn is that kids have a personality that has nothing to do with you," she explained to Glamour. "I have a really sweet daughter. She wants to hug all the other kids. I didn't teach her to be sweet. It has nothing to do with me. I've realized you can control only so much."
"If she murdered somebody in cold blood, I would love her," Kunis joked to Ellen DeGeneres of her daughter. " I would be like, 'That's okay.' It's so weird, but when she was born, I was like, 'This is the most incredible thing that's ever happened.'"
After taking an extended break from acting following Wyatt's birth in 2014, Kunis admitted she "cried" when she returned to work.
It's weird, it's very strange," she told Jimmy Kimmel. "If anyone's a mom, and being a stay-at-home mom, it's a very weird feeling to all of a sudden leave your child."
During a Reddit AMA held during her break from acting, Kunis explained of becoming a parent, "It is the most life-changing experience you can have, in my opinion. Everything changed. I am proud to be a stay-at-home mom. I have no desire to be in front of the camera. I find her to be the most challenging job I've had."
All of the pressure Kunis felt the first time around melted away when she became pregnant with Dimitri in 2016.
"With the first one, I was on the app every day,," Kunis recalled on Live! With Kelly. The second time around, she continued, "The other day, someone asked how far along I was. I was like, 'I have no idea. I can tell you when I'm due, and then do the math afterward.' For the first one, I could tell you precisely what she was developing, what stage it was. The second one, I'm running after a toddler, or working, so I'm like, 'Oh, that's right: I'm pregnant.'"
Finding clothes that feel comfortable during and after pregnancy is a struggle that the Friends With Benefits star can relate to.
"Having a baby and breastfeeding," Kunis told E! News, "nothing fits in these dresses anymore."
Before she became a parent, Kunis was reluctant to seek guidance.
"Nowadays, if s--t's going wrong," she told PopSugar, "I call my best friend and I'm like, 'I don't know, this color is coming out of her nose and I'm pretty sure she's dying.' And it's okay to do that now, but I don't know if it necessarily was okay before."
Kunis isn't here for any mommy shaming.
"It's the competitive energy that is so destructive," the That 70s Show alum made clear to PopSugar. "You only are a mommy in this way for such a brief amount of time anyway that you don't wanna look back and be like, 'Why did I care about that stupid nonsense?'"
"It didn't matter to me what other people thought," Kunis explained to Vanity Fair in 2020. "That's what I chose to do, but I think it's unfortunate that people are so hard on women who choose to do it and do it in public. In the States and in our culture, we sexualize the breast so much that there's an aspect of it that people just don't know how to wrap their head around the idea of showing your breast in public. But I respect the opinions on both sides. If it's not for you, don't look."
Putting pressure on herself to have it all? Hard pass.
"There's no such thing as balance," Kunis told E! News at the premiere of Bad Moms in 2016. "It doesn't exist."