Gwen Stefani feels ‘so guilty’ juggling her career and family

Gwen Stefani feels ‘so guilty’ juggling her career and family

Annie Leibovitz/Vogue

Gwen Stefani graces the January cover of Vogue.

It may seem as though she has everything under control, but Gwen Stefani is constantly facing a struggle of juggling her life as a rock star and her life as a mother.

The No Doubt front woman, 43, opens up in the January issue of Vogue and reveals the difficulties she often faces with her many responsibilities, including why it took 11 years to reunite with her band mates to record new material for their September album “Push and Shove.”

"Getting to the studio and not being able to make it happen, but missing out on being at home, missing out on putting the kids down. What's more important? I felt so guilty," she tells the magazine. "'I am letting everyone down in the studio right now; I'm letting down my kids; I'm letting down myself.' Because time was so precious."

Adding more stress to the situation, Stefani’s husband of 10 years, Gavin Rossdale, reunited with his own band, Bush, and recently spent a year touring the world to promote their first album in a decade. For the first time since having children, Stefani found herself on her own.

“I mean, he was there for me mentally, but physically? These boys are physical,” Stefani says of the couple’s sons Kingston, 6, and Zuma , 4. “They wake up and they start punching each other!”

“One thing we’ve had in our relationship the whole time is that we can have it both ways: together, not together, and it’s fine. But when you have kids? It’s not so great. They need him. Once you have a family, it’s just so obvious how everyone needs each other. So it’s really nice to have him back.”

The bleached-blond singer admits there have been rocky moments during her marriage with Rossdale, but she feels “pride” they’ve had staying power.

“You feel proud,” she tells Vogue. “There are just so many rewards that come with it. You have to work at it. But, actually, it’s fun to get to this point. Because you learn so much about somebody. It’s like these wars that go on and then you kind of get through it to the other side, and it’s like, Wow. And obviously, you get stronger.

“And then having kids takes the whole relationship to another place. It is the ultimate collaboration. Both of us have such strong opinions about how it should be, and it’s really fun to do it together.”

Motherhood has been quite the adventure for the fashion mogul, who launched her L.A.M.B. fashion line 10 years ago.

"It's super fun being a mom, but it's not what you think it's going to be. And it's really gradual,” she explains. “At first, your life is totally the same. You have this cute little thing that you get to drive around everywhere and you're so proud and it's amazing. And as they grow older, it really does start to change your life. Like, 'Oh, my God, they have school, they have to get through first grade, they have to learn to read.'"

She adds, "It starts getting so serious, and you're like, 'Aaaaaaah!' And to do all that while sustaining this insane childhood of my own. . . . I've never had to grow up in a way. When you think about it, (No Doubt was) in college together, and then we made our first record, and then we just took off and stayed in this bubble. Time kind of stops when you're in a band. It's this suspended childhood, and it's really awesome, that part of it. But then when you have a family of your own, it forces you to go into the adult world a little bit more."