‘Benevolent sexism': Laura Henshaw responds to misogyny debate and reveals the ‘quickie' that led to shock pregnancy
After years of uncertainty around her desire to have children, podcaster and Kic co-founder and CEO Laura Henshaw tells Stellar about the 'complete shock' of falling pregnant.
Stellar: Laura, you have just announced you're expecting your first baby. Can you tell us about the moment you found out you were pregnant?
Laura Henshaw: It was a very big shock. I'd been on a journey last year. I was feeling so overwhelmed by the thought of having children. I'd thought: By the time I'm 30, this light-bulb or switch will go off in my head and I'll feel maternal and know that I want kids. And between 30 and 32, I actually felt the opposite. The closer I got to the age I thought I should be having kids, the more I was questioning it. I used to think, what's wrong with me?
I had all these fears that I was going to lose myself and my career, and that I'd really struggle. So I went on this journey [and released the podcast Do I Want Kids?] to work through it. And [my husband Dalton and I] came out the end of it, and decided that we did want to have children. But we weren't 100 per cent sure when.
I was actually booked in for a laparoscopy [to investigate for endometriosis] in the middle of May. I was going to do the London Marathon, have the laparoscopy, and after that start thinking about kids.
Listen to the full interview with Laura Henshaw on the Stellar podcast, Something To Talk About:
Then, all of a sudden, I missed my period. We did a pregnancy test the next day. My husband was so funny. He was like, 'Laura, I think you're pregnant.' And I was like, 'We can't be.' We'd had sex once the month before – like, a morning quickie.
I thought, there's no way… [Then] we did the test… and we are pregnant. I'd seen so many videos on Instagram where people have found out they're pregnant. They're crying, their partner's crying. And it wasn't that I wasn't grateful or happy. I was in complete shock. I actually didn't get emotional at all until I told Steph [Claire Smith, Henshaw's business partner and co-founder of their health and wellness company Kic] about five days later. Her reaction was so beautiful. She was sobbing, and then it kind of hit me. I had a fear that I didn't know how I would feel. But I do feel really happy.
Stellar: As part of the parasocial relationship you have with your audience, you've had to deal with people repeatedly asking, 'Oh, are you pregnant?' Stellar has had a policy for six years now not to ask high-profile celebrities – male or female – whether they want to have kids. But it's a question that gets asked of women much more often than it's asked of men.
Laura Henshaw: In terms of the unsolicited stuff that comes through, people had said to me, 'Are you pregnant?' And that was actually to do with the way my body looked. I got a few messages saying, 'Oh, you've got a little pot belly and it just made me think, like, are you pregnant?' or, 'I probably shouldn't think this, but I wanted to send the message through...'
I think if you're ever going to write to someone, 'I probably shouldn't think this, but I just wanted to send it through', it's probably a time not to send that through.
It's a question we shouldn't ask women. We should never assume. You never know what anyone is going through behind the scenes.
Listen to the full interview with Laura Henshaw on the Stellar podcast, Something To Talk About:
Stellar: Your husband Dalton (né Graham, founder and CEO of Melbourne creative agency Bullfrog) took your surname when you got married in 2021. Have you had any discussions about what the family name will be for your baby?
Laura Henshaw: When we got married, I said to him, 'I don't really want to change my name. I've built my brand around my name, it means a lot to me. However, I don't expect you to change your name.' We had a really open conversation about it. There was no expectation that because I was female, I would change my name and because he was the man, I would take his. He said, 'Well, it makes sense for you to keep your name. And I want to have the same surname as our kids, so I'll change my name.' So that will mean our baby will have our shared surname: Henshaw.
Stellar: Last month, Australian podcaster Chris Griffin made headlines with his views on gender roles in relationships, saying, 'I don't want my partner working unless she wants to work', adding he would prefer to come home to 'calm, harmony, peace and love that a man that's got a busy life, that's chasing his dreams, needs when he's trying to wind down'. You responded to his comments, with your remarks going viral. Did you ever hesitate about speaking up and taking on the manosphere?
Laura Henshaw: I watched it and felt this combination of rage and also… what the heck is going on here? How is this content? In all the research I've done over the past few weeks, I've found that the 'manosphere' content is actually now mainstream. And that's really scary, but it hadn't hit my algorithm.
The first thing you feel is defeat. We've come so far; we're not an equal society in any way from a gender perspective, but we're making progress. So when you see content like that – especially from a 23-year-old male that isn't in a relationship talking to another male of a similar age that also isn't in a relationship, hasn't experienced having children – I just felt defeated. There were no comments pushing back, [they were all], 'Wow, you're amazing.' I thought, this is insane.
Laura Henshaw (continued): As someone who grew up in a household where my parents separated when I was 12 – my mum wasn't working full-time, she didn't have super, and then had to go out and find a full-time job and be a single mum – I have experienced first-hand what happens when you have these traditional gender roles at home and you don't have conversations about finances.
This [Griffin clip] was [filmed] in this beautifully lit studio, it had this violin music or piano behind it, and so it made it seem like it was motivational. Like: this is the life that you want to live, you need to follow this person. And I was like, you know what? That's it. I'm going to talk about this.
This limiting view of women is so dangerous that I ended up doing a miniseries on it that we released last week called Am I Equal? It was really important for me to do because I think in a heterosexual relationship, if the wife does want to stay home, that's absolutely fine. But they need to have all of the information. They need to have conversations with their partner. They need to have financial control together. Not
one person has financial control and then the other one is like, oh, it will be fine. Because you actually don't know if it's going to be fine.
Stellar: The #TradWife and #stayathomegirlfriend TikTok trends made the notion of opting out of paid employment seem very appealing to young women. Have the young women in your audience been receptive to the cautionary messages in your commentary and this new miniseries?
Laura Henshaw: TradWife content and stay-at-home girlfriends are trends I've struggled with so much. What's really scary with that content is it's so glamorised. It looks amazing. The thing with these content creators is, if you're creating content all day, you have a job, right? So they're showcasing that they don't work, but they really do. Because being a content creator
is a job in itself. But you only see 1 per cent of someone's life on social media.
This is why I wanted to call out [the Griffin clip], in terms of it being benevolent sexism. It's control disguised as care. They say they're doing it because it's loving, they want to look after you, they want you to 'be in your feminine' – whatever the heck that means – they want you to have freedom. There's no such thing as freedom if it's dictated how you need to be. That's not free.
Listen to the full interview with Laura Henshaw on the Stellar podcast, Something To Talk About:
Laura Henshaw (continued): The amount of women that reached out to me and said 'Thank you for sharing', or devastatingly, that they had been through [that experience] because their partner
said they cared about them and didn't want them to work, and now they're a single parent in a lot of debt, they're struggling, they're living on Centrelink and they wish they had known and had those conversations… That's been really nice to speak
to them, and for them to feel empowered by these conversations now being more mainstream.
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