Last night Mary-Louise Parker was in attendance at the 5th Annual Worldwide Orphans Foundation Benefit Gala in New York. She spoke to People Magazine about her adopted Ethopian daughter Caroline Aberash, whom MLP calls “Ash”. Ash and William, MLP’s son with Billy Crudup, “put on shows all the time with top hats… It’s very vaudeville. They are really sweet together and sometimes they hurt each other, but they are just like me and my brother.” MLP also talks about her new boyfriend Charlie Mars. Charlie is the guy she allegedly “stole” from his girlfriend, but MLP doesn’t talk about that. She just calls Charlie a “sweet” guy.
Nothing beats the home life for Mary-Louise Parker.
“Becoming a mom is the best thing that’s happened to me,” Parker, 45, told PEOPLE at the 5th Annual Worldwide Orphans benefit gala in New York City Monday. “I’ll be the first to admit that it can be very hard to raise two kids, but I absolutely love it. I can’t imagine what my life would be without my children.”
Parker, already a single mom to William Atticus, 5, her son with former boyfriend Billy Crudup, adopted Caroline Aberash, whom she calls “Ash,” from Ethiopia, now 3, in August 2007. She says it was the “best decision I’ve ever made.”
“She says, ‘I love you mommy’ and asks, ‘Do you love me so much,’ ” Parker said with joy. “She has a little bit of a speech delay; Amharic was her first language she heard. But she’s really indomitable. She’s really strong and she’s like a little warrior. She’s really amazing.”
And she’s a great fit with her big brother.
“They both want to put on shows all the time with top hats,” Parker said. “It’s very vaudeville. They are really sweet together and sometimes they hurt each other, but they are just like me and my brother.”
These days Parker can share the joys of motherhood with her musician boyfriend Charlie Mars, 35, whom she calls a “great guy.”
“It’s an inferable thing when you like someone,” Parker said. “He’s kind and very sweet.”
Now that Parker has two kids in her life, what has she learned about herself?
“They really put you in touch on how little you know and how little you are capable of and much you are capable of,” she said. “They are very humbling children. I am more patient now. I’ve become much more patient.”
[From People]
Sigh. I love MLP. I love her suit here too – it’s subdued but still sexy. Other than that, I like what she says about her kids and her new boyfriend, but I’m still torn. Charlie’s cute and everything, but I want her to get back with Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who is unbelievably sexy. They made such a hot couple, and they should have gotten married. Maybe he’s a weird guy, though. He seems like he would have skeletons in his closet. Of course, he also seems like he would be incredible in bed, so you win some, you lose some.
Suit photos credit: WENN.com
*sigh* Well, I suppose I could take one for the team and console JDM for her. I mean, if I really must.
LOVE HER!!!!!
She will always have the “Ruth” quality to me.
@ Icecat – yes, she will always have the “Ruth” quality to me, too! I totally know what you mean. But…have you seen her in Weeds? Nancy is no Ruth, lol!
Kaiser, I know what you mean about JDM – she and he did make a great couple. Cute daughter.
All these trendy forgein adoptions really bother me. What about all the kids here who need, want, and deserve homes??????
Cristina: Cause Ethiopian orphanages suck ten times harder then American orphanages? I’m sure America has a more regulated and healthy place for unadopted children than a third world country.
Yes!! I did/do see her in Weeds and you’re right – totally different. LOVE Weeds, and I cannot picture anyone else in that role…
I guess I just loved FGT so much, and she was such a great character in it…Ruth will always have a place in my heart!! 🙂
@ Cristina – do you happen to have some kind of sliding scale of how much a kid deserves to be loved and cared for, based on where they happened to be born? Is there some compelling reason why you are AGAINST foreign adoption… like that you think those kids are not worthy? Is it because they’re (gasp) FOREIGNERS?!
Ruth will always have a place in my heart, too! Great movie, great character.
As for this local/foreign adoption debate – does it really matter where a kid is adopted from as long as they are getting a good home? Isn’t that the point? Kids all over the world need homes. We are all on this planet together, we don’t need to be so focused on borders.
I think well-intentioned laws to protect biological parents have made U.S. adoptions more difficult, particularly when very young children are involved. It is very difficult to terminate parental rights, particularly if there are two warring parents.
Even when it comes to the foster parenting and possible adoption of older children, judges and social workers often make re-uniting the biological family top priority.
Parents adopting U.S.-born children love and care for them knowing that at any time they can be taken away and returned to a less-than-ideal home.
The upside is that this protects the rights of parents who might be seen as less socially desirable – say, a recovering drug addict who really does love her child. The downside is that potential adoptive parents who fear getting their hearts broken look for children outside the US.
Adopt in this country or out. Who cares where the child comes from as long as it makes it to a loving home. That’s one less child in the world that needs a home, and that should be all that matters to any of us.
I agree with Candy Kay, people go for kids from foreign countries because then they can commit and love them unconditionnally, as there own, as they won’t be taken back. The whole thing about the word – adoption-, is first to be abondonned or an orphan.
Appart from that, some people should just cool down and avoid jumping on others comments. Yeah, we all know what is right to think, but life is subtle, and there is nothing wrong with questions or trying to understand how things works.
I agree with CandyKay to a point…I have an adopted daughter and legally no one will ever be able to come and “take her back”. My name is on her birth certificate, period, done deal. That being said, open adoption is about the only kind in the U.S. these days and that in my book, scares most celebrities away from domestic adoption. It’s a hard, hard road to travel, especially if a birth mother with her own agenda shows up a few times a year confusing an already delicate situation. Foreign adoption may not be the most PC, but I certainly get it.
I actually went through a phase as a teen where I insisted on being called Ruth. 🙂 And my sister … Idgie. 😀
….secret’s in the sauce…
Adopting is always a nice decision full of love and commitment. Good for her!
Love MLP, and love that she adopted.
As for the US vs. foreign adoption, which pops up whenever a celeb adopts a child, the issue isn’t one of being “trendy”. In the US, termination of parental rights is a lengthy process, meaning that children often spend several years in foster care, generally going to several homes, having parental reunification meetings, etc. Most children in the US who are legally free to be adopted are older. If you want to adopt a baby, your only option is really an open adoption, which a lot of people aren’t comfortable with (fyi, open adoption means that the birth parent(s) and the adoptive parents have an ongoing relationship during the child’s life). So if you want to adopt a younger baby in a more traditional “closed” adoption situation (no contact between birth parent(s) and adoptive parent(s)) then you have to go abroad.
Ultimately, if a child in need of a family gets one, who cares where the child is from?
There you are Fire!
sorry i know i sound crazy…
anyway she has cray eyes in that pic. But, I like her alot. And i love Weeds.
I like pretty little black babies getting adopted! yay!
I guess I’m an ass because I think that charity should begin right here at home. Think about it…all those unwanted kids in foster homes here in the US will have more bearing on our society if they languish in custody. Imagine if you were one of those kids…wouldn’t you ask why nobody wants to adopt you? Wouldn’t you be mad that all these kids from other countries are getting adopted instead of you? We need to stop pretending like the US is perfect and things are automatically better here, because they aren’t. US children deserve a home just as much as anyone else, and shouldn’t be ignored just because it’s “easier” or more trendy to pick out a Third-World baby.
I mean, I am truly sorry for those children, but they should not take precedence over our own needy children. Let Ethiopia and those countries take care of their own children, and we’ll take care of ours. We cannot be the saviors of the world, nor should we try, because like I said, charity begins at home, and when people are traipsing all over the world to fix everyone else’s problems, who is going to fix ours? And yes I do care about American children over those from other countries, because I am an American and my country comes first. Sorry if that is not in line with the whole “global village” bullcrap, but that’s how I feel. Those children here without homes will grow up and live right here, and are more likely to cause problems down the road since they never had a stable, loving family…so it DOES affect us all, and anyone who does not see that is just sticking their head in the sand. Address these problems now, head them off at the pass if possible, or address them later, because we WILL have to do so at some point. Just the facts, people. If we don’t care about our own, who will? Certainly not Ethiopia or any other country….
@ pickelhaube – maybe it’s never occurred to you, but the internet is not exclusively American. A lot of your rant is lost on me, because I can’t fathom putting America’s needs ahead of any other countries’. Did you read any of the comments offering explanations for going overseas to adopt? (able to adopt a baby instead of a kid, less risk of having to return said child to it’s bio family… ???)
Mostly, I just think it’s sad that you can actually type out sentiments like “Let Ethiopia and those countries take care of their own children, and we’ll take care of ours.” I hope that you actively apply this philosophy in more areas, and aren’t a hypocrite about it. Like, I hope you are against American military involvement in the conflicts overseas (Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Israel…), because hell, why should you be over there in some other countries’ problems, geez. I also hope you are one of those who disdains for Angelina Jolie’s charitable works in various impoverished nations, as well as those of numerous other celebrities. They should use their money to feed and school AMERICANS only, right?
You gross me out, picklehaube.
@ Christina: The great majority of all those kids who “want, need and deserve homes” are not free for adoption. There is a birth parent somewhere in the picture who is trying to get the child back.
In NYC, where I live, thanks to a number of highly publicized abuse cases which resulted in the death of the children, the policy of the NYC Dept. of Social Services became “When in doubt, yank ’em out”. While this undoubtedly helped to provide protection to some very vulnerable children who needed it, it also led to an enormous number of children placed in foster care who should never have been removed from their homes. One of the most common occurrences was when a child saw his mother getting beaten up by her husband or boyfriend. Instead of booting the boyfriend out, the court removed the child from an “unsafe environment”, in effect punishing the child and the mother for the man’s actions. Tens of thousands of kids ended up in long-term foster care.
Once they decided too many children had been removed unnecessarily, the policy was changed to do everything possible to keep the family together. A lot of families that would have been broken up received preventive services to help the parents cope with stress. While this helped keep a lot of families together, it also put more children at the risk of abuse or neglect when it turned out that some families were resistant to in-home services or were so dysfunctional that they were beyond salvaging.
I don’t know what the answer is, beside the obvious conclusion that one size doesn’t fit all. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that 100,000 children in foster care means 100,000 children waiting for adoptive homes. For the great majority of those children, their birth families are still involved in their lives.
She is a jerk – what about all the kids here in the US – there are many many kids in the foster care system. This is just trendy bs. Comedian Katt Williams has adopted 8 kids from the US foster care system and his PR people aren’t shopping his story around! Katt is a real role model and a hero!
Yuk what narrow minded thoughts you have pickelhaube. Unfortunately someone’s nationality doesn’t dictate their requirement for love, care and a happy home. Children without a loving family deserve the chance of gaining one regardless of whether or not they are American.