Ryan Gosling’s partner Eva Mendes reflects on ‘hard time getting through’ parenting

Eva Mendes got candid about the struggles she goes through as a parent because of the way she was raised.

“I think one of the hardest patterns for me is yelling. Because I don’t yell when they need me,” the Hitch actress, who is a mother to Esmeralda, 10, and Amada, 8, with longtime partner Ryan Gosling, shared on the Oct. 15 episode of Parenting & You With Dr. Shefali.

“I’m never like ‘shut up.’ It’s not like a ‘mean’ yell, but it doesn’t matter. I yell. And it’s this yelling that I find so cultural.”

“I’m having a hard time getting through and not yelling,” the 50-year-old continued. “The rushing and the yelling, that’s the hardest thing to me.”

Eva, the daughter of Cuban parents Eva Pérez Suárez and Juan Carlos Méndez, said that one thing she doesn’t want to do is “raise by fear”, which is something she faced as a child, despite having a “lovely” household.

“I hope I don’t look back in 20 years and go ‘oh shoot,’ because I really don’t want to raise by fear,” Eva noted, getting teared up while speaking.

“That’s the one—sorry, I get emotional over it—because it’s so not fair to the kids. I hope that I’m not unknowingly putting some pressure on them through fear like I was raised.”

The Ghost Rider star further discussed becoming like her mother with time, which she never wanted.

“When I was in my 20s, for sure, I’m like, ‘I’m not gonna be like my parents,’ you know, that whole thing,” she admitted. “And I’m shocked [by] how much I’m like my mother. I adore her. She’s on a pedestal… but yeah, my household when I was little was very chaotic, a lot of screaming, a lot of anxiety, a lot of turmoil, even though I had a loving family.”