Actress Mary Louise Parker has always dreamed about adopting, so she says to People in a recent interview. As a little girl, Mary Louise says that she always daydreamed about adopting.
“I would daydream about it all the time. I thought about the fact that there were children who didn’t have anything, and I felt like I could help. It was something that weighed on me.”
In August of 2007, Parker, who was already a mom to William Atticus, her son with former boyfriend Billy Crudup, made her dreams come true.
Mary Louise Parker on adopting daughter Aberash, who will turn three in August:
“It was something I did for the world and for my son and then for me,” Parker, 44, said of adding a second child to her family. “And when I say the world, I also mean my daughter. Once I knew her, she became part of that. But it’s hard raising two kids as a single person. It’s a lot of pressure.”
On whether or not she wishes she weren’t a single mom:
“Sometimes, sure,” says Parker, who has been single since her on-again off-again relationship with actor Jeffery Dean Morgan ended earlier this year. “I wish I could give them everything that was a perfect little family paradigm, but I can’t. Honestly, I feel like that doesn’t even exist, or at least I try to tell myself that when I am feeling bad about not providing it.”
On how she introduced her son William to adoption:
“I didn’t want to give him too much time to ruminate about it. I talked to him about adoption and asked him what he thought about it, so he understood what it was all about. Then one day he said out of the blue, ‘Mommy, a brother or sister is something that I don’t have, so I think that we should go to the store and get me a brother or sister.’ ”
On her adopted daughter Aberash:
“She’s really tough,” says Parker. “She can hurt herself and then get up and dust herself off. But at the same time, she’s really girlie. For her, it’s all about purses and panties and sunglasses. She has a massive ‘fro that she loves to put flowers in.”
Click here to see more pictures of Aberash and Mary Louise Parker
