Megan Fox addresses the mom-shaming she gets: ‘Do you ask their dad when he’s out?’

In a new interview with InStyle, Megan Fox isn’t holding back when it comes to addressing the sexism she faces as a woman who is famous and also a mother. Fox has been in the spotlight fairly often lately, usually while out and about with her boyfriend, Machine Gun Kelly. She’s regularly photographed rocking out at his concerts and attending the occasional red carpet event with him.

Fox, who divorced her longtime partner and husband Brian Austin Green in 2019, says she’s faced some harsh judgements from mom-shamers online recently.

“There’s so much judgment,” Fox tells InStyle. She says anytime she’s out with her boyfriend, especially when she’s photographed with him, people constantly ask her “Where are your kids?”

To that, she has one thing to say—and honestly, it’s a very good point.

“Do you ask their dad when he’s out?” she asks.

She and Green have three children together, Noah, 8, Bodhi, 7, and Journey, 5. They’ve been successfully co-parenting their kids together for almost two years, and Green has also been public about his relationship with his girlfriend, Sharna Burgess, of Dancing With The Stars. Fox even recently shared her appreciation for Burgess as a presence in their children’s lives. But, suffice to say, he hasn’t faced the same criticism about his relationship as Fox has.

In her interview, she answered her own question.

“No, because you don’t expect a dad to be with the kids all the time, but I’m supposed to not be seen and be at home with my kids. They have another parent. I have to leave and sometimes I don’t want them photographed and they don’t come with me. This whole year I’ve been very surprised by how archaic some of the mindsets still are in some people.”

Whomst among us hasn’t had someone ask us if our husbands are “babysitting” when we’re outside of our home? They’re not babysitting, they’re parenting their own children. It’s exhausting to have to explain, and the guilt it can trigger just adds to our already heavy mental load.

It’s also worth noting that Machine Gun Kelly (real name: Colson Baker) has an 11-year-old daughter named Casie with an ex-girlfriend of his—and headlines and trolls don’t appear to ask him why he isn’t with his child when he’s out and about.

Later on in the interview, Fox talked about how much her “babies” mean to her, and openly cried when she became overwhelmed when the interviewer asked about them.

Because she’s a mom who, like most of us, loves her kids with her whole heart and soul and is utterly consumed by that love. Going to events with her boyfriend doesn’t change that in any way, and she shouldn’t be shamed for it—especially when dads don’t get the same level of judgment thrown their way (whether they’re famous or not) when they’re not with their kids 24/7.