Charlize Theron has opened up about raising her seven-year-old son Jackson as a girl. The 43-year-old actress who has two adopted children – one was introduced to the world as a boy – has spoken about being a parent of a transgender child, admitting she didn’t even know she’d mixed up her son’s gender until the tot told her she was a girl at three-years-old.
Yes, I thought she was a boy, too. Until she looked at me when she was three years old and said: ‘I am not a boy!’ So there you go! I have two beautiful daughters who, just like any parent, I want to protect and I want to see thrive,” she told the Daily Mail.
“They were born who they are and exactly where in the world both of them get to find themselves as they grow up, and who they want to be, is not for me to decide.”
The Hollywood star said her job as a parent was to “celebrate” her children and make sure they have “everything they need in order to be what they want to be”.
“I will do everything in my power for my kids to have that right and to be protected within that,” she continued.
The now brunette beauty – who also has three-year-old adopted daughter August – “blames” her own mother Gerda Maritz for not knowing “any better”.
“I grew up in a country where people lived with half-truths and lies and whispers and nobody said anything outright, and I was raised very specifically not to be like that,” she explained.
“I was taught by my mom that you have to speak up; you have to be able to know that, when this life is over, you’ll have lived the truth you’re comfortable with, and that nothing negative can come from that.”
She also admitted she thinks having a “close relationship” with her children is a “blessing” because she recalls her mother being a strong figure in her own life.
Despite the star’s willingness to speak openly about her family, cruel trolls have taken to Charlize’s Instagram account to hit out at the mum and her children.
“Nothing like having a son that will be bullied,” one person wrote on Instagram.
“Sick,” another added.
Just as many fans however came to her support.
“You’re a wonderful mother!!! Thank you! Your kids are very lucky to have you and screw the haters and ignorant who have no idea of the struggle kids go through with gender issues,” one person commented.
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