Raising your kids to be strong, successful leaders is no easy feat. But it's a job that model, author, wife and mom Chrissy Teigen takes very seriously.
In a recent interview with Glamour UK, the 34-year-old talked about the progressive parenting style she and her husband, John Legend, have with their two young kids, Luna and Miles. She said that in addition to teaching her 4-year-old daughter about the importance of owning her body, she and her husband are also teaching their 2-year-old son about the importance of being a feminist.
"We're going to talk to [the kids] the best we can, whether that's sex, drugs…," she said. "We are going to talk to [Luna] in the same way we would have loved to hear it. We don't really censor ourselves in talking about bodies. We don't have that taboo that goes along with saying the word 'penis' or 'vagina,' it's silly. And you make sure your boy is the ultimate feminist, that he loves and respects women. You have to raise them to be feminists. That is our future."
In a 2017 interview with W Mag, Legend detailed how he and Teigen are careful about not placing specific gender norms on their kids. "You have to be mindful of not limiting [kids] based on gender," he said, while explaining that it's easy to get caught up in societal norms like dressing boys in blue and girls in pink.
At Variety's Power of Women luncheon in 2014, Teigen told The Huffington Post that she loves being labeled a "feminist" and that her husband, Legend, is a proud feminist as well. "He's a bigger feminist than I am," she said. "He actually teaches me a lot about the way women should be perceived."
For example, Teigen says, when she and Legend first started dating over a decade ago, she experienced a lot of self-doubt when she would hang around Legend and his accomplished female friends. "I was so intimidated just at how brilliant and driven they were," she said. "I felt like such an idiot."
But, after group dinners when Teigen would get down on herself, she said John "would always explain to me that there are so many different ways to be a strong woman."
Teigen and Legend aren't the only influential leaders who have spoken out about the importance of raising their kids to be proud feminists. In an op-ed penned for Glamour in 2016, former president Barack Obama also spoke about how he and Michelle are raising their daughters to be young leaders who "speak up when they see a double standard or feel unfairly judged based on their gender or race—or when they notice that happening to someone else."
"As a parent, helping your kids to rise above these constraints is a constant learning process," he wrote. But "it's important for them to see role models out in the world who climb to the highest levels of whatever field they choose. And yes, it's important that their dad is a feminist, because now that's what they expect of all men."
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