Donna Kelce says working while raising kids was a ‘daunting task’

• In an interview with Glamor , Donna Kelce said that being a mother was probably the “hardest thing” she’s ever done.
• Travis and Jason Kelce’s mother was once a bank executive and the family’s main breadwinner.
• She said she enjoys Clair Huxtable, the TV mom on “The Cosby Show.”

Although she is known as “Mama Kelce” to football stars Travis and Jason, Donna Kelce was once a bank executive and a major family supporter.

In an interview with Glamor published Thursday, Kelce sat down with fellow celebrity moms Tina Knowles, Maggie Baird and Mandy Teefey to discuss motherhood.

“Being a mother is probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Kelce, 71, said.

“It’s so much easier to go to work, but raising children, when they are totally dependent on you and you’re trying to do the best you can with the limited resources you have, is the most daunting task I’ve had to do” ever,” she added.

She later said in the interview that Jason and Travis weren’t mean or bad kids, adding, “They were just very agitated.”

She reflected on her younger days as a merchant banker. “I wanted to get ahead. I worked very, very hard. I was a major breadwinner,” she said.

Although she felt it was important for her children to see that “a woman can do anything she wants to do,” she “stood still” for several years when she delayed her divorce from Ed Kelce, she said.

Still, there’s one TV mom she looks up to: Clair Huxtable of “The Cosby Show.”

“She was a lawyer. She was a mother of five, she was a wife and she could do everything. And I’m like, ‘That’s what I want to be,'” she said.

Being a breadwinner

A 2023 Pew Research Center report based on data from the US Census Bureau found that while female breadwinners are still in the minority, the share of marriages in which the wife is either the sole or primary breadwinner family increased from 5% in 1972 to 16% in 2023

The report says the primary breadwinner is a spouse who earns more than 60% of the couple’s combined earnings, while the sole breadwinner is the half of the couple who has earnings while the other has no earnings.

Ellen Yin, who runs a social media marketing agency and is the main supporter of her relationship, said it can be stressful at times. She added that honest communication with her partner helps.

“It’s been helpful to be married to someone who sees our marriage as a partnership and isn’t intimidated or egotistical about the financial side of it,” she previously told Business Insider.

Similarly, Andrea Mac, a growth strategist and her family’s sole breadwinner, previously told BI that she must resist the urge to “have it all” or “do it all.”

She advised women not to worry about other people’s perceptions or opinions.

“You’re showing other women that it’s okay to be the main or sole breadwinner, and you’re showing men that it’s okay for their career to take a back seat to their partner’s,” she said.

Kelce did not immediately respond to an after-hours request for comment from BI.