It really shouldn’t surprise us…but for some reason it always does. An actor, an artist, a writer has kids and their work changes. As fans this might be disappointing, but as humans, it’s kind of strange that it upsets or confuses us.
Didn’t having kids change what you were interested in? What you spent your time thinking about? What you spent your time working on?
Filmmaker Cameron Crowe was recently asked by the New York Times “what happened” to him (a rather rude question, honestly). He’d gone from making films like Almost Famous and Jerry Maguire to We Bought a Zoo and Aloha, with different subject matter and target audiences—and which the Times said “failed to capture the magic of his earlier work.”
But as a parent, this journey makes total sense. We Bought a Zoo is about a family starting over after an unexpected loss. Aloha incorporates themes about family dynamics and morality. And in fact, Crowe is proud of this work.
“When you raise a child … you see what’s truly important. I wanted to learn about that for a while and write with that in my heart, and a lot of the stuff didn’t come out or hasn’t come out.”
Your focus may shift in parenthood, but that’s what’s meant to happen. Your kids become your top focus, and everything around raising them becomes what you think about, what drives your work, what changes the course of your creativity. This is nothing to apologize for. And who knows, it might well lead to your biggest and best work yet.
