Jennifer Lopez has come a long way in her attitudes about motherhood. The musician and actor, who has teenage twins with singer Marc Anthony and is now the stepmother of three more children, told Vogue her style of parenting is, "I can hold a boundary with you but also be your ally."
That's different from the way she says she was raised, and also seems to be in marked contrast to her views of romantic love. Self-actualization is difficult to hold on to when you become a parent, especially a mother, but it can also be rough for a woman to stay herself in the context of marriage. When Lopez married actor Ben Affleck in the summer of 2022, although she is still performing as Lopez, she legally changed her last name to Affleck, something that didn't sit well with writers at The New York Times and others. The New York Times called the name change the "most notable of all the emerging details" about the nuptials and described it as "one of the most public acts of submission that a person can perform."
