'You've been tricked!' Raising boys who smash stereotypes with Lauren Currie

0:00Lauren Currie:Hello, hello. Welcome back to another episode of Where Did I Go? So I've got a question for you. Any of you boy mums out there, how are you coping with the challenge of raising kind, thoughtful boys in a world that still tells them they have to be tough? What happens when we realise the systems we grew up in, the ones that are shaping our families and shaping our futures, don't actually serve any of us anymore, our children included? We're going to be looking at some of those questions and more with this week's episode, where I'm sitting down with the absolutely stonkingly brilliant Lauren Curry OBE, who's an author, advocate and founder of Upfront, which is an organisation on a mission to change confidence, visibility and power for 10 million women.

0:42Lauren Currie:Lauren's work has supported thousands of women in over 50 countries, and her clients include global names like Nike and the British Red Cross. She's also the former chair of Pregnant and Screwed, a keynote speaker, and was awarded an OBE for services to design and diversity. Oh, and she's also a mum to a five-year-old son. Lauren's new children's book, Taylor Meets the Trick, is a powerful and playful way to help kids and the grown-ups who love them spot unfairness and talk about big feelings. In this conversation, we'll talk about what it means to raise boys with empathy, how to challenge harmful norms in everyday family life, and why the language we use with our kids matter so much.

1:19Lauren Currie:Lauren also shares what she's unlearning as a parent and how we can all start doing the same gently and unintentionally. So whether you're a parent, a caregiver or someone who just wants to build a fairer, softer future for boys and girls, this conversation is definitely for you. Let's dive in.

1:43Lauren Currie:Well hello, thank you so much for joining me today Lauren, how are you doing? I am so well thank you so much for having me Dani I'm happy to be here such a pleasure honestly like I've totally been fangirling you online so this is a bit of a like what is going on moment I'm really really really grateful that you're here today and I've just kind of on so many different topics been um just so grateful for the kind of voice that you've given to so many topics that are like kind of thorny a bit spicy and you do it in a way that is just so unapologetic and it's given me a lot of confidence to kind of show up in some of the conversations that I think I've sort of sat with quietly internally so anyway moment here just to say thank you um for all of the work you've been doing over the last years but for anybody who doesn't know you can you give a bit of a summary of who you are and what your journeys look like over the last however long you feel like it makes sense to share of course and thank you so much for sharing And that's really fills my heart to hear that, you know, because I think I spend so many hours just throwing stories and ideas into the ether.

2:58So it's really nice to hear that they've touched you somehow. So my name is Lauren Curry and I am an entrepreneur. I've been an entrepreneur since I left university nearly 15 years ago. So I am a mum. My son is seven. I'm from Scotland, as you can probably already tell. And I have lived in Sweden for the last five years. I know that's something we have in common, Danny, that we left the UK for Scandinavia. And I run my business, which is called Upfront. We are on a mission to upskill 10 million women with confidence, leadership and visibility. and I'm an author so I've written a children's book which I know we are going to talk about in this conversation which comes out in September and I've just finished writing my very first non-fiction book which comes out in January.

3:56Lauren Currie:Oh very exciting so we're going to be talking about your children's book today I'm really excited to dive into that can you share any more about the non-fiction uh is it is it an adult non-fiction book that yes okay is uh and hot off the press has not been announced yet okay i have yeah written a book that is a cup bringing together everything that i have learned about confidence over the last 15 years of entrepreneurship in the last five years of building this global movement that we call a confidence revolution it's called be up front confidence is not what you think it is and the premise behind it is we are taking 27 old rules of confidence and burning them to the ground and creating new rules oh my goodness it sounds that I want to read it immediately I feel like I don't know why it's the case but there is such a crisis of confidence in certainly women of this generation it's almost like we're trying to find our place in in the order of things you know we had a place when there was the traditional kind of nuclear family housewife era where you knew exactly where you stood in the hierarchy of things we've moved we're pushing and pushing and pushing ourselves to the front of the line if you like saying you know we refuse to to not have the jobs that we want not have the lives that we want but there is still this sort of gap of okay how does your that internal compass you have how does that catch up with the that that message of like we want to be doing the things we want to be doing but still we're conditioned to have a sense of like insecurity about ourselves and that that loud voice um so that's I mean the book sounds incredible yeah I think you're I think you're spot on and you know the reality is that so much of how women are showing up in the world in a way that's very very new right it's like we forget that building businesses building lives as artists as creatives as writers as podcast hosts is very very new you know it was our mum's generation could not open a bank account yeah without a man's permission you know that wasn't that long ago so I think we forget how new it is because the algorithm makes us think that well this is just ordinary and normal and all the women around us are showing up this way um and the fact that it's new means that it's radical and it means it's difficult and it's uncomfortable but it's also amazing and and for me I feel like it's compulsory like I don't have any other choice than to show up the way that I Yeah.

6:52I'm really on a journey of sort of like my brain catching up with so much.

6:58Lauren Currie:I don't know, like you say, we think that our reality is normal. But the idea that in our mother's lifetime, so many of the things that we take for granted weren't possible is there is a process of trying to align all of that mentally. I just watched this amazing documentary actually a couple of days ago about the Ms magazine by Gloria Steinem, which was the first kind of feminist publication in the 70s when it was really like a radical effort for women to say anything that wasn't, you know, normal for a housewife. and you know listening to that documentary really reminded me that it wasn't that long ago that women weren't able to have their own money or uh you know they had to ask their their husband's permission for something as simple as a magazine subscription and their husbands could just as easily take away that little lifeline to other women as they could give it and this sense of I don't know it was infuriating to watch and um really made me realize we've come a long way but actually a lot of the feminist issues that they were discussing in that magazine were absolutely still relevant today things about reproductive rights and you know equality in terms of pay and just I mean everything basically especially when you start looking at like other intersectional needs like the experience of being a black woman and everything basically could have been written today and so it made me remind myself not to be complacent as well because even though stuff feels normal there is still so much work to do of course and we're in a time where our rights are being yeah but that's a whole other whole other yes so anyway that sounds amazing I'm very very excited to hear more about the book as and when it makes sense to share okay so let's let's switch gears then and let's talk about your work as a children's author so tell me a bit more about it what's it called what's the premise let's start from the beginning of course So Taylor Meets the Trick is my children's book, but it's really for grownups too.

9:02And it's about helping children and the grownups around them understand the patriarchy in a way that is very simple and engaging and hopeful. And so the story follows Taylor, who is inspired by my son, because he has long blonde hair and is often mistaken for a girl. and so at first Taylor doesn't understand why this is happening and why his hair being long or short matters so much to people

9:35Lauren Currie:and then he starts to notice there's lots of invisible rules about who gets to wear pink and who gets to wear blue and who gets to play with dinosaurs and who gets to play with dolls and then he meets the trick which is a little black squiggly creature that sits on our shoulders, sneaks into our tummies, sneaks into our hearts. And the trick is shorthand for the patriarchy. And it is the made up rules that we're all told we must follow. And that there are rules for boys and there are rules for girls. So in the book, we understand that once you see the trick, you can choose not to listen to it and you can challenge it and make it go away.

10:18and I wrote this book because I think children experience the patriarchy and the consequences of it from a very very young age like they notice the double standards they notice the rules they notice the way that grown-ups react when they don't fit into the mold up until now children haven't had a way to name it to challenge it yeah and grown-ups also adults mums mums like us mums and dads around the world don't have language that's really simple and easy and clear for children to understand to help have these conversations so that's why I've written this book to give children and families a way to talk about the patriarchy in a way that feels

11:09Lauren Currie:accessible and light and action solution focused oh i can i'm just thinking so much about my own experience with my son and the ways that some of those um that conditioning shows up in in the things that he says and does like we so often have conversations or try to have conversations at least about why when he says this is only for boys or he calls his dad to do a certain activity because it's uh you know something for for men rather than something for women for example like fixing something he'll always call his dad and be like mommy's not very good at that and it's not like it's it's weird that those things creep in he's only four and a half um and we really have struggled with how to have that conversation as you say in a way that they can actually make sense of because it's so difficult to introduce some of these ideas to a very very innocent mind like it's not it's not a malicious thing to say something that can sometimes be perceived as a bit hurtful as a mum um but we haven't really had the language to have a conversation that is suitable for him so I feel this is um yeah game-changing like is is there any I guess there's I haven't come across any other work like this are you aware of is this pretty new or pretty novel I I believe so.

12:28I mean, so the concept of the trick I actually learned about in Robert Webb's book, How Not to Be a Boy, the comedian. And it's a few sentences in his book where he talks about his daughter being, she's like six and couldn't say the patriarchy. So she called it the trick instead. Actually, you're right. It is a trick. It's tricking us. and I kind of took that and really ran with it and have built this whole identity and brand around it and I have reached out to Robert but I've had no reply but the scenario that you just described is such a perfect example of when the trick becomes really powerful and really useful because in those moments it removes any shame it removes any I've said the wrong thing and it

13:21Lauren Currie:becomes that ah you've been tricked you were yeah because mummies can fix things too and it and it goes all the other ways right my son is constantly catching me out for being tricked and this is my job you know I'm thinking about this stuff all day every day and he still brings me novel insights and moments where I'm like wow you saw that and I didn't because I think the power of it is making it feel playful but still powerful um and you know I hope that the families will finish reading the book and then it becomes where did you see the trick at school today you know when we watch a movie we have a debrief after it's like where did you see the trick and my son will say well all the people who were riding helicopters were men oh my gosh that's amazing oh that's so amazing he started watching uh a new show which is like professional tag where they're like playing tag and he's really complicated assault come and see this new you know he's excited to show me and show me the players and of course I immediately stand and watch for a few minutes and say, I don't know if I like this because it's full of the trick.

14:42And he goes, oh, there's no women playing.

14:46Lauren Currie:And it just takes those. And we also have a fun thing where we, you know, sometimes it doesn't happen very often in Sweden, but sometimes, you know, a man might walk past in a really brightly coloured suit and he'll say, look at him, he's beating the trick. so he can also see that and he's even more excited in his proclaiming that he'll never ever cut his hair I mean I'm sure one day he will never ever ever cut it because that's his way of beating the trick and he almost feels like a pride around I know about this and I'm going to tell all my friends and you know he's seven now so it is starting to get there's situations arising you know some of his friends are playing violent video games that we would never allow and that just makes that conversation much easier because I can say to him look that game is full of the trick you can't watch it you can't play it and he just gets it he understands and he's frustrated but he's more like how can I get the boy who's playing it to see the trick rather than being upset at me for saying that he can't play the game absolutely unreal actually like I'd say the biggest thing that I that preoccupies me as a mum of two little boys is how to raise them to be different kinds of men and to be totally unconscious about the ways that they are different you know like in the sense of to just see the world through the eyes of being in that very like privileged position of being white men um how amazing that you are you're not starting to you have already done the really hard work of raising a son who is is an ally like who is an advocate for fairer experiences for both men and women as well because that's what i think is really lovely is how he's he's not seeing this as something of like i need to do something for women it's more I need to be conscious of my own behaviors and other boys behaviors and that's really powerful yeah and it's also important I think to recognize that it's not being hard like this is not I started talking to him about the trick when he was three and a very gentle just peppering it into conversations talking about it with his dad in front of them I mean children's books especially young children's books like toddler books you know the animals at the farm and these types of books they're all boys that's like a really easy like okay we're going to change some of these animals to be girls to try and beat the trick and I think it's important to share that because I don't want folks listening to think oh I don't have time for this or this feels too hard or you know my son's 12 or eight or 15 and I've missed the boat I think you can have these conversations at any time what age is this is your book specifically targeted towards so the book is for young children for like three three to eight and the intention is that we are building out a series of trick books taking you know very typical gender stereotypes in each story so the next trick book is all about a young girl called olivia who has a dad that's been tricked because she wants to play football and her dad keeps telling her that girls don't play football and taylor meets the trick taylor's teacher was tricked because she thought taylor was a girl when he came to the school because he had long hair so in each story we'll see a stereotype and an adult tricked and one of the really precious pieces of feedback we've had from a friend of mine when he's two young daughters read the book and when she asked her like what was the one thing you learned she said that grown-ups make mistakes too wow that's a really it's a really important part of raising children who are conscious to injustice and unfairness and do something about it is that they challenge authority yeah and you know I've been reading this has obviously become even more important right now in the context of the world that we are living in on how do we how do we raise children to to stand up for themselves and stand up for others and one of the biggest pieces of that is teaching them to to challenge authority which is interesting because i know for me personally you know it's one of my core values is non-conformity so i think that's also the power of it is teaching children that grown-ups don't have all the answers grown-ups are not walking through the world not being tricked grown-ups all the time every day in ways that we can't even see or notice yeah yeah um it seems like the book almost makes the child the teacher of of being able to spot the trick in ways that that adults will be blind to because we're not thinking about the trick right we're not looking for it and so this idea that children can be the ones to say hey mummy or hey daddy you've just been tricked is an amazing shift of that power dynamic as you say because we're all learning all the time right like like you say there are still moments where you get in situation that you're like oh I didn't see that and yeah now you've pointed it out obviously I've been tricked and then this idea that adults aren't like all seeing all knowing beings that are just always right is such a powerful and important thing to teach children early on that they're like their voice their opinion it matters um so that's really very cool what uh you just sort of touched upon this in just now but what are some of the ways since you've been your mind has shifted into this gear what are some of the more subtle ways that you see the patriarchy show up in sort of everyday parenting that people might not even be aware of beyond the obvious stuff i think as you say it shows up everywhere right it's so insidious and so part of our everyday and i think the first place we see it is in the language that we use in the stories we tell where we're telling boys to be big and brave and strong but not be sad and scared it's when we're praising girls for being helpful, praising boys for leading.

21:42And it's also what they witness in the grown-ups around them. Who interrupts who at the dinner table? Who tidies up? Who reads the stories with the most attention at bedtime? Like, it was really interesting to me. Last summer, we took part in a midsummer celebration, which is a big annual celebration here in Sweden, where they have songs and dancing. and you know it's a bit like the Christmas day in the UK lots of food preparation lots of people and I was probably one of the older people there I would say the average age was kind of mid-twenties and at the end of the meal the men went for cigarettes and played computer games and the women cleared the table and i had to kind of shout to the room and say yeah what's happening what we do and it it didn't go down exceptionally well you know there was particularly from the other women which is an interesting part of this conversation that i think we all don't talk about enough is the kind of internalized misogyny the way that we internalize these ideas um um but coming back to children i think a big part of how it shows up with children is how we compliment children the trick loves to hide and compliments so things like saying to a young girl she's mature for her age um always commenting on what she's wearing or what she looks like first and then the narrative around boys of he's a heartbreaker he's a charmer he's going to steal hearts win hearts um the fact that when a little boy and a little girl play together that's somehow romanticized or sexualized you know it's like oh they're they fancy each other or they're going to be boyfriend girlfriend like these things seem innocent in the moment but they're actually reinforcing really quite harmful narrow scripts and they end up reinforcing this idea that we are building a world where we expect boys to be powerful and lead and we expect girls to keep the peace and please and then there it's also about what the children see in their parents right we have so many conversations in the bonds which i should should mention so up front we do our work through our flagship product which is called the bond a bond is a collective noun for a group of women every cohort that goes through our confidence program is its very own bond and we've had 50 15 ,000 women from 24 time zones are now bonders all over the world, changing how they parent and lead.

24:29And so a lot of women come to the bond because they have young children or they've recently become a mother. And they're saying to me, I want to raise confident children and I want to break this cycle. I don't want to raise a daughter that's constantly apologizing and constantly deleting photographs of herself and constantly underselling herself. and they're asking me how to do that where do I start what should I do and the answer is is so simple and that it's role modeling because they are watching you spread yourself too thin they are watching you constantly feel guilty they're watching you being so harassed that you don't go pee when you need to pee yeah oh my gosh yeah they're watching their dad be praised and appreciated because he does one school run.

25:26You know, they're watching the dads go and spend their whole weekend cycling, golfing and the mum never goes anywhere by herself. You know, they're watching the mum plan every birthday party, plan every school costume. They're watching a dad who doesn't really have many close friends. You know, that is the trick. isolating men putting too much pressure on women building these dynamics that for many many families not all of course but for many go unquestioned and unnoticed and so that's I believe the power of this book will be the noticing it's like when you know what the trick is you start to notice once you see it you see and hear it everywhere and then you can say I'm going to choose something different yeah our family's going to do something different and I think the consequences of that will be extraordinary if we can scale that which I have every intention of doing so you know we want to partner with schools we want to partner with big institutions and charities that can get this book into the hands of as many families as possible around the world I think it I think it

26:39Lauren Currie:can really change things yeah I think you're completely right um that noticing and having a language to talk about something in a child appropriate way is is I mean it's where it all begins right being able to name something and talk about it stories are the beginning of everything um I was just as you were talking reflecting a bit on my experience with our older son who is um constantly kind of saying and so he's four and a half and ever since he was quite young he's always been I think quite aware of a tension between what he should like and what he does actually like like so give him free reign right he would 100 % pick the pinkest glitteriest um most colorful thing he can find and we've really tried to be completely open to that like sometimes honestly it goes around looking so unhinged but it's like whatever you you pick you do you right like we're it's whatever you feel confident in wear it however as time's gone on he's been much more aware of like boys don't wear pink or boys don't do this I should get my blue t-shirt or whatever rather than the sparkly one or whatever.

27:56Lauren Currie:And it's been really hard already to instill in him the confidence to show up exactly as he is and that it's just clothes. It doesn't mean anything. Like I can wear a blue t-shirt just as much as you can and you can wear a pink t-shirt just as much as I can. And it's been, I think for us to have been able to have called that something, hey, you're being tricked right now when you say I'm not supposed to wear this. That would have been a really nice way of taking the thought process to the next step. of making it actionable and giving it a bit of language to sort of really make him understand that it's okay yes absolutely and also make him feel not alone in that feeling so it's like okay let's go into the store and what do we notice all the clothes over there are really dark colors yeah blues grays all the clothes over here are sparkly and bright why do we think that is and it's also a conversation with your partner with his dad it's like it's he won't be noticing that his dad is not wearing glitter and pink shirts yeah whatever it might be and so then there's a there's a real opportunity there for his dad to talk to him about why that is you know so it's just like a constant cycle of moments of being being together in it you know it's it brings as this is something that we are all in together yeah something that where there's a hierarchy no and it's not like you know men are bad women are victims or whatever it's like everyone benefits when we start to to notice this stuff because there are so many men who as you say are isolated or living in a uh like a facade or whatever that they don't feel comfortable in just because that's what they've been told they're supposed to do um for a lot of men it would be so freeing to be able to assume a totally different role but it's almost as you say unquestioned um so you did you've just touched upon it a little bit but I'd love to dive more into um what's the plan like how you want to get this into as many children's hands and families hands as possible you've touched upon potentially partnering with schools and charities like what does that future look like what's the So the plan is to make the trick a mainstream language, you know, that everybody is aware of and has heard of.

30:23I'm going to just get a copy and then I can show the screens for people who are watching. So here it is. So we've got Taylor on the front and then the story. And then at the back, there's a whole bunch of resources for parents, for families. So the hope is that, of course, it becomes a book where when somebody experiences or reads it, they then buy it for the other families, the other grownups in their life. Whenever there's a newborn baby arrives, the trick book always goes in the baby bag with the gift. And for schools and institutions, you know, I think there's huge opportunity. And, you know, if anybody is listening who has relationships or connections or partnerships to any brands or organisations that would be interested in helping us scale this, I would love to hear from them.

31:21Lauren Currie:yeah I can really see it I can see this being like a you know core part of a um social and health type part of the curriculum where we're just as standard teaching boys and girls from as soon as they're old enough to kind of take this in that they should be aware of this in their lives and in schools and in their friendship groups and I mean so much of this I think has to happen within the family unit but there is a massive I don't know I'm a bit worried if I'm honest about the kind of exposure my sons will have within the school environment you know we're so like we're always hearing about the manosphere and about toxic masculinity that is just even among parents who are trying to raise their children to be I don't know not affected by that kind of narrative that it's just become so pervasive and it does worry me if we aren't having sort of conversations that are integrated into into curriculums and into learning that there is so much vulnerability within the school for some of these things to become to flourish into big problems yeah absolutely and I think anyone listening who has older children um will tell you that things change very dramatically when they start to move through school and start moving into higher education and I think technology, social media, the internet, our relationship with mobile phones, algorithms, all of that stuff starts to become really important and you know I know there's incredible work being done by people like Laura Bates who's just released her new book around the sexism around ai and it is very scary i think we're right scared and worried and concerned and all we can do is keep having these conversations and keep challenging ourselves and each other and stay awake like stay alert and um just on that actually is is so this is obviously in english is there a plan for this to be translated into other languages at the initial launch not at the initial launch I think we're going to wait and see yeah yeah see how many copies we sell and if the demand is there then we will absolutely translate it we've already had people volunteer to translate it in Spanish and we would really love we'd really love to do that because the reason actually I asked that was because um obviously there's so much culture at play in how the trick shows up so how the trick shows up in the UK will be very different like I'm um Italian and totally different version of masculinity in Italy to the UK and again different in Denmark to uh the UK or wherever so it's like within the ways the trick shows up is so many manifest in so many different ways so well I am just really inspired and excited about all of this and definitely definitely definitely want to read about the trick with my two boys what do you hope if if we sort of look to the next 12 months books out what what's your biggest hopes for what comes next so we've self-published this first book we've already written the second one so I would love to have publishers knocking on our door to publish the second one because if we have a publisher we were it's more likely that we would reach more people not always but probably i hope that people are starting to spot the trick everywhere like i think i hope it becomes normal to hear children shouting like that's the trick in the middle of the cinema and in the middle of a theme park i hope families are talking about the trick around their dinner table and I hope it starts to really normalize this idea like we you don't need a PhD to have these conversations you don't need fancy vocabulary you don't need to know the history of every wave of feminism you don't need to be an expert in diversity and inclusion inequality like you just need courage to notice things and language to name it yeah and that's enough like that's that's where we that's where we start so I hope there's many more people and families starting and trying well I think I'm certainly very hopeful that this is a extremely important step to making all of that a reality um where can people go to find out more to purchase the book or just generally to connect with you so I am very active on both Instagram and LinkedIn so please please come and find me say hi send me a message tell me what you think about the trick what you've thought about this conversation you know danny and i are here for you and i've come together to have this conversation for you so i would it always makes me so happy to hear from people who listen um if you go to weareupfront.com you can find out more about the bonds you can join our free visibility bond of professional visibility is something that you would like more of and yeah all of the links to the book will be on all of those places and it's called Taylor Meets the Trick and can't wait to yeah can't wait for it to be out in the world it's been a really it's been a long labor of love so I can imagine well thank you so much and it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you today thank you so much it's been really great thank you for having me

37:16Thank you.