Motherhood Quote by Valerie Bertinelli

There is a quiet flex in the word order: mom first, actress second. Valerie Bertinelli isn’t just describing a schedule; she’s renegotiating status. In an industry that treats motherhood as a career interruption (or a PR “reinvention”), “full-time” reads like a deliberate rebuke to the idea that parenting is what you do in the margins. She claims it as the main job, the one with no hiatus, no understudy, no wrap date.

The phrase also performs a public balancing act. Bertinelli came up in the late 70s and 80s, when the “working actress” brand was supposed to look frictionless: be bankable, be likable, don’t be complicated. Saying she’s “part-time” signals responsibility and control rather than decline. It’s a soft way to explain reduced visibility without inviting the brutal Hollywood calculus of “washed,” “difficult,” or “past her prime.” She frames the choice as values-driven, not market-driven.

There’s subtext for women listening, too: permission. Not the glossy “you can have it all,” but the more honest admission that life is a set of trade-offs you’re allowed to narrate yourself. “Right now” does crucial work here, making motherhood not a permanent retreat from ambition but a season of priority. It’s both self-protection and self-definition: a public figure refusing to let the job title write the whole biography.