As mom to two children, Reese Witherspoon admits parenting isn’t what she expected.

“I thought you make little people in your image. But they are just nothing like me or their father. They are their own individuals,” Reese, 35, reveals in Vogue’s May issue.

And with one daughter on the verge of becoming a teen – Ava, 11½ – Reese is more pleased with her daughter’s maturity than overprotective of her surroundings.

“She’s on the precipice of having her love affairs and her life,” Reese says. “She is curious and artistic and very smart. She really surprises me.”

Reese – also mom to Deacon, 7½ – adds: “I know it’s corny, but being a parent to me is such a great privilege; that I get to chaperone these beautiful little souls through life. They astound me with their knowledge and their humor.”

So, she’s got the whole parenting thing under control. But, what about Reese’s love life?

Well, she knew she found a good man in new hubby Jim Toth when her fellow southerners gave her the OK.

“Over the holidays I was at a department store in L.A. with my friends, and these three women from Oklahoma came up to me, and they said” – laying on a thick Southern drawl – “‘Reese. We are so happy for yeeew. We liiike this guy for yew,’” the Louisiana-born actress said.

“And I said, ‘You do?!’ ‘Yes, ma’am. We think he is a niiice man. We think he is going to treat you well and be good to yeeew.’ I was like, ‘Really?’ So sweet! And I told them my mother likes him very much, too.”