Parenting & Family Quote by Susan Powter

Powter flips the celebrity script with a simple inversion: the person society expects to be exemplary is openly demoting herself. Coming from a fitness celebrity who built a brand on command-and-control motivation, the line lands as a deliberate renunciation of the pedestal culture that fame keeps trying to build under her. It’s not faux humility. It’s a tactical refusal of the “public figure as moral instructor” job description, especially the version that mothers are pressured to perform without ever slipping.

The intent is protective as much as it is philosophical. By saying she’s “not a role model,” Powter shields her kids from being recruited into her public identity and shields herself from the impossible standard of performing sainthood at home. The subtext: my children see the unedited cut. They’re not buying the brand, and that’s a good thing. In a media ecosystem that rewards parents for curating “inspiration” (before we even had influencer parenting as a genre), she’s insisting on a private reality where admiration runs upward, not downward.

The second sentence does the real work. “They’re a role model to me” reframes childhood as a moral mirror: kids model honesty, appetite, curiosity, quick forgiveness - traits adults sand down to look competent. It also punctures the myth that authority equals wisdom. Powter’s line isn’t anti-responsibility; it’s anti-performance. She’s arguing that the most ethical parenting might be less about being watched and more about doing the watching, letting your kids pull you back from your own persona.