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Parenting & Family Quote by Tina Turner

"I regret not having had more time with my kids when they were growing up"

About this Quote

There’s a particular sting when a titan of self-mythology admits the myth cost something real. Tina Turner’s regret isn’t framed as scandal or confession; it’s plainspoken, almost disarmingly domestic. That simplicity is the point. Coming from a performer whose life story is routinely told in extremes - survival, reinvention, spectacle - the line shifts the spotlight to a quieter deficit: time, the one resource fame can’t buy back.

The intent feels less like self-punishment and more like a warning delivered without moralizing. Turner isn’t saying success was “worth it” or “not worth it.” She’s acknowledging the trade-off that pop culture encourages us to romanticize: the grind, the tour, the comeback, the necessary hunger. The subtext is that ambition can be both liberation and theft. For a woman who fought to reclaim her life and name, motherhood becomes the one territory where control is messier, where agency runs into logistics, custody, schedules, distance, and the sheer velocity of a career that demanded constant motion.

Context matters: Turner’s public narrative is built on endurance and escape from abuse, and that story often gets flattened into empowerment branding. This regret complicates that packaging. It insists that triumph can coexist with loss, that “survivor” doesn’t mean untouched. In a culture that treats celebrity parents as either aspirational multitaskers or tabloid villains, Turner’s line lands as something rarer: an earned, unsentimental honesty about what achievement can quietly erode.

Quote Details

TopicParenting
Source
Unverified source: Proust Questionnaire: Tina Turner (Vanity Fair) (Tina Turner, 2011)
Text match: 85.00%   Provider: Cross-Reference
Evidence:
This is a primary-source Q&A published by Vanity Fair. The quote appears verbatim as Turner’s answer to the prompt “What is your greatest regret?” The web version shows publication metadata “May 9, 2011” and also labels the feature as “June 2011.” The Vanity Fair Archive indicates there was an ea...
Other candidates (2)
Inspirations for Today (Dorothea Erdmuth Lotze-Kola, 2018) compilation95.0%
... I regret not having had more time with my kids when they were growing up. —Tina Turner Meditation: I remember how...
Tina Turner (Tina Turner) compilation40.0%
d youre not going to take it anymore dismiss them and you will be the only one holding the
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About the Author

Tina Turner

Tina Turner (November 26, 1939 - May 24, 2023) was a Musician from USA.

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