Julia Louis-Dreyfus talks about her struggles of being a working mom

Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the American actress and comedian, recently shared her thoughts about being a working mom and how she hopes her two children are feminists.

On Wednesday, May 29, 2024, the 63-year-old appeared in an episode of her podcast Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Julia also had a guest, Gloria Steinem, 90, as she spoke about being a mother to two sons, Henry and Charlie, now 30 and 26, respectively. The actress said:

"For example, I’m married and I have two children. Two sons, who I hope to Jesus I’ve raised to be good feminists. I think that I have. But I worked. When they were both born, I was working full-time and that was a huge struggle for me. That was a hard thing for me to reconcile, the going back and forth."

Louis-Dreyfus shares her children with her longtime husband, Brad Hall.

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Julia Louis-Dreyfus says she had to remind herself that being a working mom was 'good' for her sons to 'witness'

Julia Louis-Dreyfus is the first actress to win Emmy Awards for three different series: Seinfeld, The New Adventures of Old Christine, and Veep. She gained the most popularity in her role as Elaine Benes in the iconic television series Seinfeld.

On Wednesday, Julia Louis-Dreyfus talked about her life as a working mother and how she felt conflicted about having an acting career while raising two children. She began by telling her guest Gloria Steinem in her Lemonada Media podcast:

"You know it’s funny because I was thinking about how even in my own life, the patriarchal culture that we live in has sort of crept into my own life in a way that I almost didn’t realize until I was sort of living it."

The actress first met comedian Brad Hall as a student at Northwestern University in the 1980s. They got married in 1987. Their older son, Henry Hall, works as a singer-songwriter who has given a performance on The Tonight Show. Charlie Hall, their younger child, is an actor.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus revealed that she hoped she raised the pair to be feminists, and talked about her life as a working mother, saying,

"And I had to intellectually remind myself that working, being a mother who worked outside of the house was good for them to witness. But it was a struggle for me."

A month ago, in another episode of the podcast, the actress invited the guest Ina Garten. Julia Louis-Dreyfus talked about an uncomfortable experience she had while giving birth to her son Henry. The comedian said she knows she appears on television, but fans feel a sense of familiarity because the actors are "in their home". She said that they often think of her as a friend rather than a stranger. Talking about the incident, she recalled,

"I was giving birth and when you’re in labor, they put that monitor around your tummy. And I was in the bathroom and I was naked and I had the thing around my tummy and I was massive, by the way. I gained like 50 pounds when I was pregnant. And I was standing there, and my water broke, and all of a sudden a nurse came into the room and I went, ‘My water broke!’ Ok, reminding you — naked. And she goes, ‘Elaine!’ It was so awful. Isn’t that crazy?'"

Julia Louis-Dreyfus last worked on a comedy-drama film, You Hurt My Feelings. It was released in theatres on May 26, 2023.