Although she’s famously known as “Mama Kelce” to football stars Travis and Jason, Donna Kelce was once a banking executive and a major breadwinner in the family.
In an interview with Glamour, published on Thursday, Kelce sat down with fellow celebrity moms Tina Knowles, Maggie Baird, and Mandy Teefey to discuss motherhood.
“Being a mom is probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Kelce, 71, said.
“It’s so much easier to just go to work, but raising children, when they’re totally dependent on you, and you’re trying to do the best you can with the limited resources that you have, it’s the most daunting task I’ve ever had to do,” she added.
She said later in the interview that Jason and Travis weren’t mean or bad children, adding, “It’s just that they were very rambunctious.”
She reflected on her younger days as a commercial banker. “I wanted to get ahead. I worked really, really hard. I was a major breadwinner in the family,” she said.
Although she felt that it was important for her kids to see that “a woman can do whatever she wants,” she did “stand still” for several years when she postponed her divorce with Ed Kelce, she said.
Still, there’s a TV mom that she looks up to: Clair Huxtable of “The Cosby Show.”
“She was a lawyer. She was a mother of five, and she was a wife, and she could do it all. And I’m like, ‘That’s who I want to be like,’” she said.
Being a female breadwinner
A 2023 report by the Pew Research Center based on data from the US Census Bureau found while female breadwinners are still in the minority, the share of marriages where the wife is either the sole or primary breadwinner has increased from 5% in 1972 to 16% in 2023
The report said that a primary breadwinner is a spouse who earns more than 60% of the couple’s combined earnings, while a sole breadwinner is one-half of the couple who has earnings while the other has no earnings.
Ellen Yin, who runs a social-media marketing agency and is the main breadwinner in her relationship, said it can be stressful sometimes. She added that honest communication with her partner helps.
“It’s been helpful to be married to someone who sees our marriage as a partnership and isn’t intimidated or feels any ego about the financial piece of it,” she previously told Business Insider.
Similarly, Andrea Mac, a growth strategist, and her family’s sole earner, previously told BI that she had to resist the urge to “have it all” or “do it all.”
She advised women not to worry about other people’s perceptions or opinions.
“You’re showing other women that it’s OK to be the primary or sole earner, and showing men that it’s OK for their career to take a backseat to their partner’s career,” she said.
Kelce didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from BI sent outside business hours.
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