Gwyneth Paltrow Talks Motherhood, MAHA, And The Raw Milk Revolution

In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, Gwyneth Paltrow opened up about motherhood and offered an unfiltered take on everything from raw milk to the growing distrust that’s reshaping industries in America.

Paltrow is obviously booked and busy—she’s running Goop, acting, and raising her two kids. Her children, however, are her top priority. “I didn’t even contemplate doing anything that would take me away from my kids,” she says, adding, “I’ve always sort of understood how finite this period of childhood is.”

Her daughter, Apple, became the internet’s obsession when her photos surfaced online. Yes, people made fun of her name, but she also became a poster girl for the “nepo baby” fiasco, a term that Paltrow dislikes. Fans know that Paltrow was born to the actress Blythe Danner and Bruce Paltrow, a director-producer. Her godfather is the Steven Spielberg.

Paltrow’s Parenting Style

Paltrow was never here for the “gentle parenting” movement. In her house, it was all about structure. “They’re not supposed to lead themselves because it challenges their survivability in nature,” she says. But at the same time, she’s been intentional about raising Apple and Moses with the right blend of normalcy and self-awareness. “Look, they’re the children of two super-famous people, and so they understand what comes with that. They’ve grown up in it,” she explains. But still, she swears, “You would be surprised at how lovely and unassuming and down-to-earth they are.”

Paltrow is more emotional than we realize when it comes to her kids. “There’s this weird, deep grief that comes with letting go, saying goodbye, and then calling into question your own purpose,” she admits. “Who am I now?”

Remember when we all collectively rolled our eyes at the “conscious uncoupling” thing that happened between her and Chris Martin? Luckily, the Goop-ified rebrand of divorce worked out for their family. “It’s not quite brother, but we are complete family,” she says of her relationship with Martin. “He is there for me through anything, and vice versa.” The two, along with her husband Brad Falchuk, Martin’s girlfriend Dakota Johnson, and Falchuk’s ex-wife, have managed to create a blended family dynamic that is, in Paltrow’s words, “actually quite beautiful.”

It wasn’t always easy, though. She remembers one particular Sunday brunch when things were rough. “We were in a really bad spot. I was like, ‘F*k this. I cannot do this.’” But Martin looked her in the eye and said, “‘I love you. We can do this.’”

Institutions, Raw Milk, and Voting With Your Wallet

With her influence, what should Paltrow impress upon the culture next? Surprising no one, the California-born wellness obsessive is “very fascinated” by Make America Healthy Again (MAHA), the sweeping movement championed by new Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. MAHA advocates for some commonsense concerns like curbing ultra-processed foods and banning red dye in food and drugs.

Lest anyone think she’s only about jade eggs and bone broth, Paltrow has some thoughts on the bigger picture too. “A lot of our institutions are really failing us and that is this pervasive, sweeping axiom that Americans feel,” she says. And she believes that when those institutions let people down, they take matters into their own hands. “Consumers shape markets and people are starting to vote with their wallets on this stuff.”

She’s one of us, guys. Paltrow loves raw milk. In fact, she’s been vocal about her daily splash of unpasteurized cream, pointing out that humans drank raw dairy for millennia. “There is a line of thinking that says, ‘It’s not necessarily that cow dairy is so hard for us. It’s the way that we raise the cows.’” The same school of thought posits that “we have for millennia been drinking milk that’s unprocessed and doesn’t have antibiotics.”

She cites raw milk as an example of a topic “where people say, ‘Oh, this is pseudoscience’" and point to a lack of evidence. But “is someone going to invest in getting a data set around raw milk?” Paltrow asks. “It’s not going to be the dairy industry, right?” I mean, is she wrong?

As Paltrow settles into this next phase of life—empty nesting (which she’s renamed “free birding”), steering Goop through its latest evolution, and maybe even getting back into acting—she’s reflecting on what it all means. “I feel like more than being a successful actress or being a part of #MeToo, or being one of the first actresses to launch a lifestyle brand,” she muses, “it might just be that my role is to pave the way.”

“By some instinct or curiosity or desire, I go somewhere and I hack through the path and I get the scratches of hacking through, but I make space for other people, then, to do it.”

Subscribe today to get unlimited access to all of Evie’s premium content.