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" Everyone&amp;#039;s jumping on Emma Thompson right now for some comments she made in a Daily Mail interview that was published Sunday. You might&amp;#039;ve missed it in the storm of Kimye wedding press, but basically, the 55-year-old actress was talking about her decision to take a year off acting to spend time with her 14-year-old daughter, Gaia, and her 26-year-old son, Tindyebwa Agaba, and at one point she said this: &amp;quot;You can&amp;#039;t be a great mum and keep working all the time.&amp;quot; Naturally, working moms (and mums) are freaking over the black-and-white-ness of that statement, because it seems so definitive and judgmental. But I&amp;#039;d like to take a step back and toss in some perspective (and not only because I have a major lady crush on Emma Thompson, I swear). I do think the context is important here, because Thompson said many things in that same interview that reveal she&amp;#039;s got a more sunny &amp;quot;Wow, it&amp;#039;s so hard to juggle work and motherhood, so I just tried to pick one for a while, but only because I could!&amp;quot; outlook than a &amp;quot;You, too, have to choose one or the other no matter what; otherwise you&amp;#039;re a bad person,&amp;quot; absolutist attitude. &amp;quot;Motherhood is a full-time job,&amp;quot; Thompson also told the Daily Mail, showing her deep reverence for it. &amp;quot;The only way I could have continued working would have been by delegating the running of the home to other people,&amp;quot; she continued, admitting she felt overwhelmed while juggling her career and raising her children. And, perhaps most importantly, she also acknowledged how lucky she is to be able to take time off work in the first place \u2014 something other stay-at-home mom advocates often sweep under the rug \u2014 saying, &amp;quot;I highly recommend others to do the same if they can afford it.&amp;quot; If they can afford it. While perhaps Thompson should have finished her mommyhood-plus-career train of thought by saying, &amp;quot;I can&amp;#039;t be a great mum and keep working all the time,&amp;quot; instead of, &amp;quot;You can&amp;#039;t be a great mum and keep working all the time,&amp;quot; the fact is that she didn&amp;#039;t. She sort of misspoke, saying something that makes it sound like she doesn&amp;#039;t have respect for working moms \u2014 which, when you think about it, doesn&amp;#039;t make any sense, because she is one. Now, of course, Thompson&amp;#039;s back to working again, filming three major movies to be released in 2015. So should we really be so quick to lampoon her for that one comment without reading the full interview, without giving her the benefit of the doubt? (Especially when she is so celebrated for speaking her mind and being such a wonderfully freewheeling person?) Photo credit: Getty Via ELLE "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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