Hilary Duff Opens Up About Balancing Quality Time With Son After Daughter’s Birth

Since becoming a mother in 2012, Hilary Duff has quickly gone from a former Disney Channel actress to an outspoken activist for modern-day parenting.

The 32-year-old star of TV Land’s “Younger” has been consistently open in her parenting questions, concerns and milestones over the past few years, discussing breastfeeding, paparazzi, and now, mom guilt.

As Duff and her husband Matthew Koma “conquer and divide” their daily responsibilities while social distancing at home, the actress told People about the motherly guilt she was experiencing after the birth of her daughter Banks in October 2018.

“A newborn needs their mom so much, and so much of that time is sitting and nursing. You’re kind of incapable of physically doing anything else with another child,” she said.

Duff went onto explain that because of all of the time required to care for her new daughter, she worried about her first child, Luca, now 8, receiving enough attention.

“Luca was almost seven when I had her,” she said. “I had a lot of guilt and felt like, ‘Am I giving him enough?’”

The former “Lizzie McGuire” star said her worries were cleared once she saw how well her two children interacted and said the age gap is “actually really great” because they are “buddies.”

“Their bond was so sweet right away,” she said. “It helped me overcome that [guilt] because I saw that he was old enough to [understand].”

One trick Duff learned was to make sure she scheduled time with her son in easily understandable terms.

“If I could give him a finite, ‘Hey, I have to do this for the next 35 minutes, and then it’s going to be your time with me,’ he could wrap his head around that,” she explained.

Duff made headlines last December when she shared a video of her son crying after paparazzi followed them, Insider reported. A few months later, on Feb. 22, the actress then confronted a paparazzo who was photographing her son’s football game, asking him “human to human” to stop taking pictures.

“If you don’t know anyone here, can you please stop taking pictures of our children playing football this morning?” she said, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Duff's son Luca is the product of her first marriage to Mike Comrie. She shares 1-year-old daughter Banks with her current husband, Koma.