Charlize Theron reveals she is raising adopted son Jackson as a girl: Who they want to be is not for me to decide
Charlize Theron is not the kind of person who would follow the crowd. The actress has always been known for doing things differently, and she's applying the same logic towards raising her son Jackson, as a girl. The seven-year-old was adopted by the actress and introduced to the world as a boy, but now rumors have swirled that Charlize has, in fact, been raising Jackson as a girl.
After numerous photographs emerged of Jackson dressed up in dresses and skirts, Hollywood gossips started to wonder what exactly was going on with the star child. But when Charlize was asked about the same recently, she admitted in a matter-of-fact way that not only is she raising Jackson as a girl, Jackson is also embracing herself as a girl just like her three-year-old sister, August.
"Yes, I thought she was a boy, too," Charlize agreed in a conversation with the Daily Mail. "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."
Charlize also made it clear that she is not the kind of person to confine her children in any manner whatsoever. "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. My job as a parent is to celebrate them and to love them and to make sure that they have everything they need in order to be what they want to be. And I will do everything in my power for my kids to have that right and to be protected within that."
As for who she got the idea of raising Jackson as a girl, Charlize admitted that her mom is to blame for all of it.
She laughingly shared, "You can blame my mom for the fact I don't know any better! You know, 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. 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."
Charlize has had her life drama quite well-documented since she and her mom Gerda were heavily tormented by an alcoholic and abusive father who would regularly and viciously beat up Charlize's mom. Things escalated to such a horrific scale that when Charlize was 15, her father, Charles, who ran a construction business, returned home in a rage, carrying a gun and threatening to kill both Charlize and Gerda.
However, in what was later ruled as an act of self-defense, Gerda shot down Charles in front of Charlize's eyes, ending the duo's suffering once and for all. Therefore, it is not too much of a surprise that the actress stays far from any form of conformity and considers her mother the ultimate role model and heroine for herself.
"I think that having a very close relationship to at least one parent is a real blessing," she said. "Growing up as a young girl, I had this great representation in front of me of what you could be as a woman. In everything she did in life, my mom did what she had to do and there were no two ways about it. When she got up at six in the morning to milk the cows, she didn't cry about it: she just did it."
The actress continued, "When my father passed away and, all of a sudden, we had a huge debt of money that we owed, and every bank was after her, she took care of it. It didn't happen overnight — it took her five years — but she did do it." After Charles' death, Charlize's mom took over the running of his construction firm.
"The greatest gift my mom ever gave me was the sight of her putting on her heels and her power suit and going into a board meeting with eight guys and just running the show. I'd just look at her with my mouth open. I was thinking: 'All right. I want to be like that, too!' I never had any fears about being a woman. It wasn't until I was out on my own and in my early 20s that I even realized that women are not respected in every field."
