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Hilaria Baldwin has announced that she’s releasing a parenting book, weeks after once again sparking controversy over her Spanish heritage.
The 41-year-old yoga instructor — who shares seven children with husband Alec Baldwin — announced on Thursday (January 23) that she’s releasing a new book, Manual Not Included. While the book is now available for pre-order, it won’t officially hit shelves until May 6, 2025.
“Mothering, partnering, and life-ing is amazing—and can also be so hard—and there’s no one way to do it,” she wrote in the caption of her Instagram post, which featured a snap of the book cover. “I’m looking forward to sharing some of my stories with you—the ups, the downs and the realization that there is no manual for any of this! By finding our commonality, we can better deal with what comes our way.”
Her book’s cover features her and Baldwin who is wrapped in tape while sitting inside a cardboard box. The couple is also surrounded by their seven young children: Carmen, 11, Rafael, nine, Leonardo, eight, Romeo, six, Eduardo, four, María, three, and Ilaria, two.
The book announcement comes after Hilaria drew more criticism over her infamous penchant for Spanish. In a video obtained by the Daily Mail, Hilaria was seen in the kitchen with her friend cooking a Spanish dish for her family during the holidays.
At one point in the clip, she appeared to forget the English word for “onion.”
“My husband hates uhh…,” she said while speaking in a Spanish accent. Her friend chimed in to remind her it was onions.
Hilaria then claimed: “I forgot it, OK,” before saying the Spanish words for onions, “cebollas.” She continued to describe how she mixed cebollas with other ingredients in the dish.
People on X quickly mocked Baldwin, who was accused of faking her Spanish heritage in 2020, over the moment. Back then, she addressed the claims, noting that while she was born in the U.S., she spent her childhood in both Massachusetts and Spain.
“For context, her English is her first and native language. She has been pretending to be Spanish for years now. Gotta love the dedication to the bit,” one person responded to the recent cooking video on X.
“No cause I understand forgetting certain words if you speak multiple languages, even if English is your first language cause that happens to me too. But the accent? I can’t wrap my head around it. How do you sound like that when you’re from Boston?” another wrote.
Others defended Hilaria with one person arguing: “Anyone who speaks more than one language knows very well it’s extremely common to forget regular words in your own language, I’m not sure what we’re supposed to be laughing at here.”
In December 2020, there was a viral investigation into Hilaria’s ethnicity after an X user accused the entrepreneur of impersonating “a Spanish person.” Many people shared videos of Hilaria not knowing the English word for cucumber, while others pointed out that she claimed she was born in Spain in several interviews.
She later confirmed in a New York Times article that her given name is Hillary Hayward-Thomas and she was born in Boston. However, she traveled “back and forth” between her home in Massachusetts and Spain, where she said many of her family members lived and still reside.
In February 2021, she once again addressed the controversy around her heritage and apologized for not being “more clear” about her background.
When the promo for her and Alec’s new reality show about their family, The Baldwins, was released in July, a number of critics pointed out that Hilaria’s Spanish accent appeared to have been replaced by an American one.
