Samantha Bee: Hippie Mom at Heart
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Listing “great kids” as her biggest parenting success, The Daily Show correspondent Samantha Bee says that things go best for her family of four when she remembers to take a deep breath … and relax! Case in point? Her daughter Piper, 3, was a late talker. “She’s pretty shy and we didn’t get too caught up in that, even though by New York standards she probably seemed severely behind,” Samantha, 39, recently explained to Babble. “We didn’t get our knickers in a knot over it and now she speaks perfectly clearly in long sentences and won’t stop.”
Of course, that’s not to say Samantha has always been so Zen-like in her approach to parenthood! “I worried about eco-diapers with Piper,” she admits, “but then when we had the second kid, I kind of went, ‘I don’t have time to worry about anything…Anything!’”
“I would pick up a package of diapers from the ground outside my apartment, take them in and use them if I had to. I did become hysterical when it came to New York preschools, because I just got caught up in everyone else’s energy. I regret getting so worked up about it, because in the end we found a great preschool.”
Characterizing both she and husband Jason Jones as “hippies at heart,” Samantha says the mindset she’s adopted since welcoming son Fletcher, 8 months, is in keeping with her own upbringing. “The Canadian style of parenting is very laid-back,” she notes. “I’m definitely a little bit laissez-faire about the whole thing.”
“I’m concerned about safety first and then it’s kind of a free for all. I’m not very rules-oriented. I’m not very structured. I breastfeed my children until they can ask for it by name. I don’t get too worried about the minutiae and I just go with my instincts. That’s working for us so far.”
Click below to read Samantha’s thoughts on having more kids.
Although Piper and Fletcher have both made appearances on the The Daily Show, Samantha has already had to bring the curtain down on her daughter’s participation. “Normally we’re making fun of her, and once we figured that she might sense that, we just stopped entirely,” she explains. “We don’t ever want to feel like we’re damaging her.” Given his young age, however, Fletcher remains fair game! “[He] is on the schedule for an appearance soon,” Samantha revealed.
Neither child should get used to life on a stage, however! “I hope to God that they don’t go into the performing arts,” Samantha admitted. “I pray for all of our sakes, because when I’m old, I would like to be put up in a good-quality nursing home and they won’t be able to afford it if they go into theater.”
“I may have done too many jobs with messed-up children, but, I don’t know, it doesn’t seem like a healthy, laid-back environment. Children already feel like they’re the center of the universe. They don’t need a whole network of people encouraging that on top of what they already feel.”
While she wouldn’t commit to having more children — telling Babble she prefers instead to let her “old, tired eggs” decide her reproductive fate — Samantha clearly enjoys the two she already has, even if it is an enjoyment which took her somewhat by surprise. “Before I had children, I don’t think I felt that there was a maternal bone in my body,” she said. “I mean, I always sort of assumed that having kids was the biological imperative and that I would do that someday, but I wasn’t yearning for it.” As soon as Piper arrived, however, Samantha says she “instantly regretted not starting a lot sooner.”
“I enjoy my children so much; I wish that I had five.”
Source: Babble
