Jennifer Garner on parenting her three kids: 'I give it all I can'

NEW YORK, Sept. 30 (UPI) -- Jennifer Garner knows all about striving to find the perfect mom/career balance, but being there for your kids, she said, is paramount.

"They need you to focus, and they need your attention," she said in an interview with Today Parents. "I give it all I can."

"I try to be the best version of myself and to have faith that they're watching me as carefully when I do something right as they do when I roll through a stop sign," she said.

That philosophy, Garner said, helped her navigate through life following her divorce from Ben Affleck in 2015.

"You have to have faith that while your kids can seem to be selfish and concerned only about the word 'mine' sometimes, overall, they are watching you really carefully, and if you care about other people, they will too," she said.

Becoming a mom to Violet, 10, Seraphina, 7, and Samuel, 4, led Garner to donate her time to the Huggies No Baby Unhugged diaper drive, which donated 2.5 million diapers and 5 million wipes to babies in need.

"Once I had kids, I began asking myself, how do I want to spend my time? How do I want to make what little impact I can on the world?" Garner said. "And over and over again, I was wondering who was helping the kids like the kids I grew up with in West Virginia and rural America."

Garner, who gained fame on Alias and in the romantic comedy 13 Going on 30, recently starred alongside Christopher Walken and Kevin Spacey in Nine Lives and in Wakefield with Bryan Cranston.