Through the rose-coloured lens of social media, Bec Judd looks like she has it all.
But behind the scenes she admits motherhood is “chaotic” and far from the polished image many expect.
The Crown ambassador and wife of West Coast Eagles legend Chris Judd sat down with PerthNow ahead of Mother’s Day and left no stone unturned when divulging the reality of juggling four kids and a thriving career.
“Every day there’s something — someone’s in a bad mood, something’s broken, someone’s forgotten something … there’s always a bit of chaos,” she laughed.
Judd has a “roll with the punches” approach: “You can’t dwell on things that have happened, you can’t change it so problem solve and move forward.”
“There’s a massive sense of responsibility (as a parent) … how they grow into adults is really influenced by us.”
The Judds were thrown into parenthood in 2011 with their first born, Oscar, followed by daughter Billie in 2014 and identical boy twins Tom and Darcy in 2016 — the latter of which were on a school camp at the time of the PerthNow photo shoot.
With her eldest edging towards adulthood and her youngest firmly in the “tween energy” years, Judd said the intensity of early motherhood has shifted.
“I’ve been a mum for almost 15 years now, so it’s nice for them to get some independence,” she said. “You’re not as hands-on … you can kind of sit back and watch them grow into young adults.”
But that doesn’t mean life has slowed down for the Melbourne-based family.
Afternoons in the Judd household are a high-speed relay of school pick-ups, sports training and sibling rivalries.
“From 3.30pm until 7.30pm, we’re just in the car going from one thing to the next,” she revealed. “But I love it. My favourite thing to do is watch my kids play sport.”
As a competitive family, backyard games often come with tears and plenty of passion.
“This is what happens when two competitive people have kids,” she said. “There are fights because someone always loses. But it’s so much fun.”
It seems the couple have struck their perfect parenting routine. Chris, an early riser, is up every day at the crack of dawn preparing the kids’ breakfasts and school lunches before she takes the whirlwind afternoon shift.
“I’m lucky. At 7am I wake to the sound of my husband placing a cup of coffee next to our bed,” she said, joking Chris has “lived a life” before her eyes have even opened.
Their weekends are equally as jam-packed. From rushing between cricket fields and netball courts, there’s nothing the self-confessed sports mum enjoys more than to watch her offspring from the sidelines.
“I think my biggest pressure of having such a big family is giving them the attention that they need. When everyone’s fighting for it at the same time … I have four people saying ‘Mum, where’s this? Mum, I need this. Mum, look at my certificate. Mum, I did this great thing’. You’re kind of just scratching the surface and there’s not a lot of time to go really deep,” she said.
“I find that my best moments with the kids is when I have them one-on-one, often in the car driving to a sport game. Oscar and I have our best chats driving to cricket training.”
It’s those quiet windows of connection she values most, carving out time where she can amid the noise of everyday life in a busy household.
And like many parents, Judd admits navigating technology is one of the toughest parts of raising kids today. She and Chris are going to delay social media for them for as long as possible.
“It’s really hard to navigate and to stop them from accessing screens and apps sometimes,” she said.
“We hide tech in our house … we hide remotes, hide iPads and the big kids are good, they’re not on social media apps but it’s interesting, because most of their friends, like the whole year group, they’re all on the social apps.”
Social media is notably a huge part of Judd’s life with nearly 750,000 followers on Instagram. Alongside content creating and sponsored posts in the social realm, Judd is the co-founder of activewear brand Jaggad and co-host of the Vain-ish podcast with Jessie Roberts.
On the “brutally honest” LiSTNR podcast, Judd and Roberts pull back the curtain on beauty standards depicted online with experts, doctors and celebrity guests weighing in, alongside quintessential girly chit-chat.
It shot straight to the top of the Australian podcast charts within 24 hours of its launch in July 2025.
On a recent episode, Judd was candid about her experience at Coachella last month and its “bio-hazard” toilets which she referred to as “the most disgusting portaloos I have ever seen in my life”.
Judd told the PerthNow she’s enjoyed various artists’ sets, including Fat Boy Slim, David Guetta and Justin Bieber … once they figured out what he was doing with the laptop on stage.
Chris attended Coachella last year but skipped out this time around to instead take their children to Byron Bay on the school holidays.
Perhaps most striking is Judd’s honesty about the early days of parenting — a time she believes is often misrepresented.
“I think people expect it to be love and rainbows straight away,” she said. “But it might not be like that.
“You might be sore, sleep-deprived, and it might take a while to bond — and that’s OK. I wrote about this in my book (The Baby Bible) because it took Oscar and I a while to really get our groove, and I wasn’t expecting that. I was the first in our (friend) group to have a baby.”
It’s a message she now shares openly with first-time mothers.
“When I tell my friends that, they say, ‘Thank you — no one’s ever said that to us’.”
As for Mother’s Day itself, she doesn’t want anything extravagant.
“It’ll be football games all day and then a nice lunch,” she says. “That’s my perfect Mother’s Day.”
In a life that often looks polished from the outside, it’s a refreshingly simple answer.