Hilary Duff Said Motherhood Means Getting Good at Being "Disappointed" in Yourself

Hilary Duff is serving up a dose of relatability when it comes to the realities of motherhood. When speaking with Shape for their Innovation Issue, the actress and mother of three candidly admitted that being a parent means getting used to falling short.

“I’ve had to get really good at being disappointed in myself,” she told the outlet. "I think that when you have a baby, you’re just wired to think that you are loaded with all the answers and all of the capability, and we’re still just human beings.”

Duff gave an example by talking about when she sent her oldest kid, son Luca (whom she shares with ex-husband Mike Comrie), to his soccer game in the wrong colored jersey because she missed the message in the parents' WhatsApp thread. “But I have two other kids to deal with and three dogs, [Matthew] was out of town, I had just thrown my mom her 70th birthday, and I was a little hungover …" (all perfectly great excuses if you ask us). But the mishap left Duff feeling inadequate.

While Duff describes motherhood as “fucking hard," at the end of the day, it's an “endlessly rewarding" job. “I just love watching my kids form into their own individual unique selves,” she said. “I love my loud household with mayhem and the craziness and all the love and all the dirt. I love [parenting] with my husband. I love feeling like hugs and cuddles can make everything better. I love the pressure of being like, ‘How the fuck are we going to make it through this day?’ And making it through the day and being like, ‘I don’t know how everyone is tucked in and fed and happy after all the things we’ve had to do today.’”

As for her work life, Duff has had a long illustrious career that stems all the way back to her Lizzie McGuire days on Disney. And when asked about the canned reboot, the actress said she will never say never to any specific project. Though, the outlet notes that she doesn't want to be 40 years old and playing a teenager (fair).

In the meantime, she is currently starring in Hulu's How I Met Your Father (a sequel to the hit 2000s show How I Met Your Mother), and, this season, Duff even gave fans a little taste of nostalgia with a flashback featuring Lizzie McGuire. However, she conceded, “I don’t think it was enough to satisfy the fact that [the Disney+ Lizzie McGuire revival] project is shelved."

Duff also serves as executive producer on the series — which stars Josh Peck, Francia Raisa, Chris Lowell, and more — and while the crew and fans alike are still waiting to learn the fate of season 3, Duff feels satisfied with the way they have executed the series. “The fear of failure is, of course, there, but I don’t think if our show didn’t get picked up, I would be like, ‘I could have done this differently,'" she said.