Drew Barrymore cries as she reflects on how her troubled childhood impacted her as a mom: 'Boundaries is a triggering word for me'

Drew Barrymore became emotional while discussing how her trouble childhood impacted her as a mother.

On Friday, the 46-year-old actress broke down in tears during a conversation about boundaries on  Dear Media's Raising Good Humans podcast.

'Boundaries is a triggering word for me,' Drew told host Dr. Aliza Pressman.

'Tell us more,' Pressman asked. 

'I'm really vulnerable,' the 50 First Dates star continued. 'God, it's really emotional for me.' 

Drew then began to choke up as she said, 'I have...since my kids were born, other parents, schools and society have brought up the word 'boundaries' and every single time I heard that word, I felt bad because I did not grow up with them.'

Through her tears, the talk show host explained, 'So I had no resources or experiences to pull for what that even is, let alone how to execute it and be confident about it. 

'And it just– it's a word that's thrown around with such confidence and at times, arrogance and a lot of the times, the way in which people say it tonally, as if it's something you are already supposed to know,' she concluded. 

Drew shares daughters Olive, nine, and Frankie, seven, with her ex-husband Will Kopelman, 43. 

During a promo clip from her talk show that she shared in a recent appearance on CBS Mornings, the California native cried while discussing the challenges of dating as a single mom with Queer Eye star Bobby Berk.

In November 2021,  the star told The Mail on Sunday that she believed her chaotic upbringing in a fractured family has made her a better mother to her two daughters.

In an interview in The Mail on Sunday’s You magazine today, the Charlie's Angels actress also revealed how her 2016 divorce from Will triggered fears that history was repeating itself.

‘Divorce was my worst fear,’ she says. ‘It was something I never wanted to put my own children through. I felt broken. Truly, honestly broken.’

Drew’s parents divorced when she was nine. Her father, actor John Drew Barrymore, was a violent alcoholic who was barely in her life. Her mother Jaid, an aspiring actress, ‘wasn’t prepared’ for motherhood, Drew says.

A star at age seven thanks to Steven Spielberg’s ET, Drew went on to have alcohol and drug problems and her mother placed her in a psychiatric institution at 13. She spent 18 months there and, at 14, Drew legally divorced her parents.

‘My mum put me there because she couldn’t cope with me any more but it was the best thing that happened to me,’ she admits. ‘It taught me boundaries. Until that point, I had none.’  

‘I didn’t have parents, I was the parent to them. It was all totally upside-down,’ she says. ‘So I didn’t know what I was doing. When people would talk to me about parenting I felt like an outcast. 

'It took years for me to pluck up the courage to say, “Can you speak to me as someone who is desperately trying to learn? Can you teach me?”

‘There is so much pressure in life, particularly on mothers, to get it right, to get it perfect. It confuses me when people get so righteous about parenting. It makes me feel defensive and small.

‘I’ve got love and humour but we’re all learning on the job. I don’t want to be my kids’ friend – I am their parent.’