Lucy Liu opens up about motherhood, addresses criticism over having a surrogate
Lucy Liu wants everyone to know that there isn’t one right way to become a mother. She has teamed up with Tylenol for the #HowWeFamily campaign, which aims to bring awareness about the fluid concepts of family and motherhood. Her first course of action? Open up about her own family.
Last August, Lucy’s son Rockwell Lloyd was born. She shared with the world that he was “brought into the world via gestational carrier.” The negative feedback that followed was a total shock. It didn’t even occur to her that there could be people out there who would judge her so harshly for her choice of using a surrogate to give birth to her baby boy.
“I just went ahead and did it,” she told CBS News. “I didn’t realize there was criticism until after I sent out the information that I had my baby through a gestational carrier and my friends said, ‘Don’t listen to what some people are saying.’ I didn’t realize people were saying anything negative!”
How anyone could say anything critical about this face is beyond us. Isn’t he precious?!
Lucy is a single mom and this is her first child. She said watching so many single moms before her gave her the courage to do it herself. Now that she’s entered this stage in life, she wants to send the message to others that being a single mom is not necessarily synonymous with raising a child all alone.
“I have a lot of friends and a group of people who help me. It’s important to ask for help. If you can manage on your own, that’s fine, but people shouldn’t feel that they have to be alone while doing it,” she said.
This message is crucial in today’s world. It’s a subtle way to break down the taboo that often comes with being a single mom. Just because you’re a single mom doesn’t mean you’ve done something wrong, you desperately need help, or you’re not caring for your child properly. The number of single moms has raised significantly over the last few decades and women are choosing to have children later in life. It’s estimated that half of all children will live with a single mom before they reach the age of 18. It’s clearly not a fluke for many women.
Lucy is making a bold and necessary statement that some women choose to be single moms, and they become mothers in many different ways, whether it’s surrogacy, fertility treatments, or traditional heterosexual partnerships.
Lucy says, “People have different opinions on how it’s done, but Tylenol is encouraging other people to share their stories and say, ‘You don’t have to have a traditional family. It’s how you love your family.’”
Tylenol’s #HowWeFamily campaign video features Lucy along with several other mothers, each of which have their own unique story of motherhood. They speak about what family means to them.
In the video, one mother says, “The thing that we call motherhood… it’s… we all want the same things for our children.” Another mom, whose son is currently going through a gender transition, says, “Family is about love, and not about blood.”
Seriously, try not to shed a tear when you watch it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
Just in time for Mother’s Day!