No, she does not believe the Victorians had the right idea about child labour
Julia Fox – actress, model, muse, future author of a masterpiece – has now pivoted to momfluencing!
OK, not quite, but she did take to TikTok on Monday to share some tips on parenting. Speaking to her 244,000 followers in a video dissecting the “concept of childhood”, Fox offered an insight into how she is raising her one-year-old son, Valentino.
“I think that the idea of childhood was invented as a way to just get parents to spend a lot of money on shit [...]”, Fox said. “It’s not really teaching your kid anything, you just end up raising a kid that’s, like, helpless and doesn’t know what to do.”
“I’ve found that my son doesn’t care for his toys and he’s actually more interested in, like, what I’m doing. So I suggest everyone buy their kid a little mini mop, a mini broom, and start teaching them those life skills really young so that when they enter the real world, they don’t have to outsource [...] everything, and they know how to do things for themselves. I just think that’s really important.”
Naturally, people seized the chance to go for Julia’s jugular. Some TikTok users commented on Fox’s video to mock her, writing snide remarks like “I make my toddler file my taxes” and “My baby carried his own bags home from the hospital after I gave birth”. Elsewhere on the internet, publications fired out inflammatory headlines like “Julia Fox Thinks Children Should Be Working” and “Julia Fox Wants Your Kids to Get Their Fucking Asses Up and Work”.
Obviously, this is not what she meant. To clarify the statements in her initial video, Fox posted a follow-up explaining her point in more depth. “People are really acting like I said kids need to be working. That’s not what I said,” she said in a new TikTok posted on Tuesday. “I said that kids need to learn skills.”
She mentioned “sewing, building things, [and] growing food” as important skills which kids should learn but schools don’t teach. Basically, she was promoting the Montessori method of education, a popular and progressive approach to learning which prioritises hands-on learning and developing real-world skills.
She added that this was especially important to her given the fact she has a son. “Because I have a son, specifically, I don’t want him to expect that women are just going to clean up after him and do everything for him,” she said. “I saw that my whole life, even in my own family, and that stops with me.”
She is right and she should say it! After all, who among us has not encountered a man who doesn’t know how to load a dishwasher or use a can opener? Really, we should all be saying thank you to Julia Fox for doing her best to raise a man who can actually look after himself. No choice but to stan a queen who breaks the cycle of misogynistic intergenerational patterns.
She then went on to share a snap of her son in a playground on Instagram, captioning the photo “now here’s a cute pic of my son at the labor camp he works at”. Adorable.