Eva Mendes Says She's Glad She Waited Until She Was In Her 40s To Have Kids

When Eva Mendes became a first-time mom, she was in her 40s. And she would not have had it any other way. The Hitch star admitted in an interview with People that she definitely could not have been raising children in her 20s, and has no regrets about waiting to have babies until she really felt like it was her season to become a mom.

Mendes welcomed her oldest daughter, 9-year-old Esmerelda Amada, when she was 40 years old, and two years later welcomed daughter Amada Lee, both of whom she shares with partner Ryan Gosling. “When I was 40, it was a big deal for people when I was pregnant, and it wasn’t for me. And then I was 42 and I was pregnant with my second one and people were like, ‘Oh my God, you’re going to be so tired. That’s why people have kids in their 20s.’ I was like, that’s the most sorry, asinine thing I’ve ever heard,” Mendes told People.

Mendes went on to share with the magazine that becoming a mother in her 40s “takes more patience,” before adding that she was not ready to become a mom as a younger woman. “In my 20s, I shouldn’t have even been around a child. I was just foul-mouthed and smoking. I could not have raised kids in any other era of my life but now, for sure.”

Mendes decided to step away from her acting career after becoming a mom, and she told People that it was “the easiest decision I’ve ever made.” Made even easier because she felt like she was at the right stage of her life. “I was older and I knew that my kids are going to be little once, and whatever I do or don’t do right now is going to affect them the rest of their life.”

While Mendes did take a step back from acting, she wrote a children’s book as a “love letter” to her daughters called Desi, Mami, & the Never Ending Worries. A book about winding down at the end of the day, something Mendes struggles with, apparently. “I’ll tell you something that my kid told me, like, three years ago,” Mendes shared with TODAY in an interview last month. “She’s like, ‘Nighttime Mama’ is kind of, like, different.’” When she asked her daughter to explain, the little girl said, “‘Well, Nighttime Mama, you just have to chill your life down at night.’ I was dying because I was like, ‘I do have to chill my life down at night.’”

It sounds to us like Eva Mendes knows exactly how to chill down her life.