Jennifer Garner gave a few quotes to Yahoo! Parenting to promote her new crafts line with JoAnn Fabrics called We Made It. It includes products that will help kids and parents craft together. $75,000 from the proceeds will go to the Save The Children foundation, which Garner supports. She’s still going to make bank with this, but she seems really committed to offering things that are lasting and help spur creativity and interaction between families. In her introductory video on JoAnn Fabric’s site, Garner talks about learning to sew and embroider and how special it was to see her mom sewing with her daughters. My mom is a quilter and she does projects with my son, so I could relate to some of her stories.

Garner’s interview with Yahoo! was somewhat short but she said several notable things. She said that she and her husband Ben Affleck work to teach their children that they’re not above anyone, which is an important lesson for children of celebrities. She also said, in a roundabout way, that marriage is work and you have to be patient. We’ve heard that from her before and from Ben too, at the Oscars.

In the past, you’ve been outspoken about the concept of “post-baby bikini bodies” — how can new moms avoid pressure to achieve one?
Take [pressure] off yourself. Nobody can take it off for you. And don’t be on [social media]. You don’t see me on Instagram. I have an official Facebook page but I’m not reading what all my friends say on Facebook about how great their lives are because it makes you feel bad. I want to talk to my actual friends on the phone. I love seeing pictures and occasionally I will go through and look at all [my friend’s] Instagram photos but if you are not in a fantastic place — if you’ve just had a baby — don’t look at your friend’s hot beach picture…just don’t do it.

What’s the hardest part about being a parent in Hollywood?
It was the paparazzi, and that, Halle Berry lifted from my shoulders [with Senate Bill 606] and she is an angel. No Kids Policy. [The paparazzi] were so aggressive…but it’s no longer an issue. The hardest part is other kids talking to my children when we aren’t around. Like, ‘It’s so cool your dad’s being Batman’ and trying to control how much that inflates the idea that one person is more important than another. [My husband I] really work to manage that idea — that just because people react a certain way to us, it doesn’t mean we’re more important than anyone else. And [the kids] are pretty quick to cut us back down to size.

How does having a baby change marriage?
You just go on a ride together because you don’t know who you’re going to be when you first have a baby and you don’t know who [your partner] is going to be. You have to just hang in there while you figure it out — and have a lot of patience for each other.

[From Yahoo!]

I don’t use Facebook for my personal life, which is mostly because I just set it up for Celebitchy from the beginning. Occasionally, when I’m hanging out with a group of people, they’ll all be on their phones scrolling through Facebook and I find it somewhat maddening. I understand checking email or texts occasionally when you’re out for hours socially, but not Facebook! Anyway I related to what Garner said about social media. Celebrities would probably want to avoid that kind of toxic environment on Instagram and Twitter too.

I’ve seen some of the videos of the paparazzi around Garner and Affleck’s children back in the day and they were absolutely swarmed. While I don’t doubt that they use it to their advantage sometimes PR-wise, the passage of the No Kids Policy surely helped them a lot. Kids don’t deserve to be yelled out and followed wherever they go. I wouldn’t call Halle Berry an angel though.

Photo credit: WENN.com and JoAnn Fabrics