Julia Fox on raising son Valentino, two, to be a ‘protector of women’: ‘I can’t have him becoming an abuser’

Julia Fox has opened up about the pressure she feels to raise her son Valentino not to be an “abuser”.

The actor and model shares two-year-old son with ex-husband Peter Artemiev, who she was married to from 2018 to 2020.

In a new interview with The New Yorker, Fox discussed her own “very working class” childhood, and how she hoped Valentino’s upbringing would be both similar and different to hers.

“I make sure that he knows how to do things for himself, even though he’s still just a baby,” Fox, 33, said. “I don’t want him to become super dependent on women. When I found out I was having a boy, I was a little disappointed – I’d wanted a girl. But I was also relieved, like, OK, I don’t have to warn her about all these things.”

The Uncut Gems star continued: “Then I realised that was the mistake parents make with boys, because there are a lot of things you do have to do. I can’t have him becoming an abuser in any type of way. I can’t have him becoming incompetent and eventually making a female counterpart pay for that.

“I have to make sure that he knows how to do things for himself, knows the value of things, and ultimately just keeps it in his pants. I want my son to really step up and be a protector of women, someone who allows women the space and agency to feel safe and taken care of.”

Earlier this year, Fox, who is next month releasing her memoir Down the Drain, posted a video tour around her “very underwhelming” New York apartment.

Following the response to the clip, in which Fox showed her followers around her lived-in home in an effort to give “maximum transparency”, the fashion muse explained that she wanted to give her son a “sense of normalcy” at home.

“This just happens to be the apartment that I took my son home from the hospital from,” she said. “It’s just home. It really is Valentino’s apartment. It’s like a sentimental thing.”

Fox explained that, while she “could probably afford a bigger place”, she hoped her current flat could give her child “a sense of normalcy”.

“I don’t want him to grow up and be like a f***ing prick,” Fox continued. “I want him to be in touch with the real world. Because I grew up in the real world, believe it or not. So I just want my son to have the same.”

In her forthcoming memoir, the actor speaks candidly about her childhood, career, and becoming a mother. While many of her relationships feature in the book, her brief fling with rapper Kanye West in late 2021 and early 2022 isn’t mentioned in length.

In a recent interview with The New York Times, Fox was asked why she didn’t go into depths about her sex life with West, despite sex featuring heavily in Down the Drain.

In response, Fox claimed that sex wasn’t a big part of her brief romance with the rapper, explaining: “Because there, like, wasn’t any. It wasn’t really about that.”

Down the Drain is released on 10 October.