Megan Fox. Lester Cohen/Getty Images for The Recording Academy

Megan Fox has learned a lot about being a mom over the years thanks to her little ones.

Fox was first introduced to motherhood in 2012 when she and then-husband Brian Austin Green welcomed son Noah. The pair, who were married from 2010 to 2020, expanded their family with sons Bodhi and Journey in 2014 and 2016, respectively. (Fox was also the doting stepmom to Green’s son Kᴀssius whom he shares with ex Vanessa Marcil.)

Following her split from Green, Fox began dating Machine Gun Kelly. The couple connected while on set for their film Midnight in Switchgrᴀss. In January 2022, Fox and the rapper, who is father to daughter Casie, got engaged.

In November 2023, the actress revealed she suffered from a pregnancy loss which deeply affected her. One year later, Fox revealed that she and MGK (real name Colson Baker) are expecting their rainbow baby.

“Nothing is ever really lost,” Fox wrote via Instagram alongside a pH๏τo showing off her baby bump. “Welcome back 👼🏼❤️.”

Keep scrolling to see Fox’s best motherhood quotes over the years:

1st Time Mom Ups and Downs

After welcoming Noah, Fox opened up about the highlights and struggles she faced while embarking on her motherhood journey.

“The whole thing has been overwhelming because I didn’t realize you could love something so much, and I know people always say that but I love him so much it hurts, and it’s an interesting feeling to have because I never felt that before,” she said to E! News in December 2012. “But, he’s getting to that place where he’s smiling and he’s almost ready to laugh, and I can’t wait for that baby laugh that almost makes you feel like you can fly … like your heart’s going to explode.”

Always With Her Little Ones

Fox shared during an August 2014 appearance on Chelsea Lately that her sons are always by her side, even during her bathroom time.

“When you have babies, you don’t really have a life,” Fox confessed to host Chelsea Handler. “Every minute is dedicated to someone else. You don’t even get to poop alone. You have to take the baby with you.”

Letting Her Kids Be Themselves

Megan Fox and Brian Austin Green. Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images

The Jennifer’s Body actress exclusively opened up to Us Weekly about how her go-to parenting method involves “releasing control” and letting her children figure out their idenтιтies.

“It’s not about allowing them to be, it is about allowing, not encouraging them to be who they are,” she exclusively told Us in December 2019. “Allowing them to be who they are and relinquishing control, because they were born to be who they are.”

Fox added that her “job” as a mother was to help “support that process” and not “micromanage” them into who she thinks they should be.

“So, it’s just being of that mindset, of realizing that they come as the teachers to us,” she reflected. “We’re here to keep them alive, but we’re learning all the lessons from them.”

Calling Out Double Standards

Fox clapped back at the double standard moms face when they’re out and about without their children compared to dads.

“You don’t expect a dad to be with the kids all the time, but I’m supposed to not be seen and be at home with my kids. They have another parent,” she said to InStyle in July 2021. “I have to leave and sometimes I don’t want them pH๏τographed and they don’t come with me. This whole year I’ve been very surprised by how archaic some of the mindsets still are in some people.”

Finding Her Calling

Theo Wargo/Getty Images for Tribeca Festival

In a July 2021 profile with The Washington Post, Fox admitted that becoming a mom “saved” her.

“I needed an escape,” she said to the outlet before comparing being a parent to a garden. “It’s fertile soil. It’s given me the ground I needed to grow into something quite special.”

Missing Her Little Ones

Fox got real about how “hard” it is to find time to spend with her children as she balances traveling for work and their school schedule.

“I wish I could take them out to travel with me, it would make things a lot easier,” she reflected in an April 2022 interview with Glamour U.K. “I cry often, every new moon usually. I get in the bath and cry a lot about it, because it is hard and not because of pressures that anybody else or society puts on you, but it is just hard being separated from them in that way. They are my DNA.”

She added that she also struggles that she “constantly” feels like she doesn’t do a “good enough job” as she coparents with Green.

“I can only have them half of the time. That just is what it is,” she told the outlet. “And in some ways that allows me to have moments for myself, where I can live my life as me, not just always being someone’s mother and that’s nice, but you always struggle with the guilt, kind of feeling, like, ‘I haven’t done enough.’”

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Being a Boy Mom

Fox shared that her approach to raising her sons was to make sure they are nothing like the men she’s previously dated.

“It’s very important for me to raise boys who are able to have a very deep emotional intimacy with their partner. It’s very important to me that they are not liars, that they are able to be fully transparent and honest and respectful and experience at some point in their life,” she said in a November 2023 interview with Women’s Wear Daily. “I don’t expect them when they’re 16 to have a sacred love, but I do expect them at some point to get to that place, because I am their first introduction into women and the way that I love them is going to influence the way they are allowed to love others when they go out into a relationship.”

The Transformers star added that she hopes that her “transparency” with her sons guides them to love in a “really healthy way.”