Elise Hu Says Motherhood Didn’t Shrink Her World—It Blew It Wide Open

The journalist, author, and host of the podcast Raising Us talks about the cultural pressures that shaped her parenting, why she had to let go of the idea that her kids would be anything like her, and the interview trick she borrowed from Ira Glass.

Elise Hu has spent her career asking other people questions—as an NPR correspondent, as the host of TED Talks Daily, and now as the voice behind the parenting podcast Raising Us. But when she found out she was pregnant at 29, in the thick of Washington, D.C.’s lean-in, girl boss hustle culture, she wasn’t sure motherhood would leave room for the life she’d imagined. Instead, it blew her world wide open. She moved her toddler, her 17-year-old beagle, and her growing belly to Seoul to open NPR’s first-ever bureau there—and went on to write a critically acclaimed book about beauty culture, launch multiple podcasts, and raise three daughters who keep her honest (and humble) every single day. In a candid conversation on The Motherly Podcast, Hu opens up about the cultural pressures that shaped her early fears of motherhood, the tough conversations she’s navigating with her girls about beauty and achievement, and the interview trick she borrowed from Ira Glass that actually works on kids.

Meet the expert: Elise Hu is an award-winning journalist, podcast host, and author based in Los Angeles. She spent more than a decade at NPR as a correspondent and host, including opening the network’s first-ever Seoul bureau in 2015. Her time in South Korea inspired her debut book, Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital, named one of the Best Books of 2023 by Vox and a recipient of Porchlight’s Best Business Book Award. Today, she’s the host of TED Talks Daily—one of the world’s most listened-to podcasts—and co-host of Forever 35, a show about the ways we take care of ourselves. Her newest project is Raising Us, a parenting podcast from A Kids Co. that helps grown-ups navigate the big questions kids are already asking. She lives in L.A. with her partner Rob and her three daughters, ages 8, 10, and 13.

Liz: What surprised you about motherhood?

Elise Hu: There’s two different stages of motherhood that I feel like I’ve been in. I’ve been in the little, little—five and under—and now I’m in this totally different stage in which I have a teenager, and it’s so cognitively and emotionally taxing. I guess what surprised me the most is how expansive it was.

I was really scared when I first got pregnant. I was 29 when I first got pregnant. I had my first at 30, and I really was scared that it was going to constrain my life and make my life smaller and more limited. And instead it opened up so much for me creatively—it’s been generative. It opened up my world in a lot of ways. It challenged me really deeply, and so my biggest surprise is just how expansive the experience of motherhood has been for me.

Liz: Why do you think you had that idea about what motherhood would be like, and then how did you have your mind blown by what it actually was?

Elise Hu: Part of it was totally the context that we were in in the early 2010s. Because it was the hustle culture, lean in, girl boss era of being a millennial. And you and I were both in Washington, D.C. around that time, which is land of Type A people who were all in the top 10% of their graduating class. So you would not believe the kind of achievement culture that I was starting my life as a mother in.

There were debates when I was pregnant. The summer I was pregnant with my first was when Marissa Mayer didn’t take any maternity leave. It was also around the time that the “Women Still Can’t Have It All” piece came out in The Atlantic. And then Sheryl Sandberg was selling a book based on a lie, because it turns out she had a whole army of support. All of these things were being fed to us.

I really think a lot of my fear was driven by the context we were in, and that if I really listened to my quieter voice inside, I would’ve known on some level that it would be very enriching for my soul to step into motherhood and really embrace it.

Liz: Can you tell us a story about that expansion—was there a moment you’re like, oh, this is not doors shutting, these are different doors opening?

Elise Hu: Ever since I became a journalist, I had wanted to go abroad and report while supported by a news organization—where they would handle a lot of the logistics, where I was officially credentialed, and I still had my 401(k) and my health insurance. And at the time, an opportunity came up. I had a 2-year-old and had just found out that I was pregnant with my second.

I remember moving my husband, my elderly beagle who was 17 years old, my two cats, and a toddler abroad—to a place I had never lived, never even set foot in—while five or six months pregnant. That’s when I was like, I’m able to do this and we’re gonna figure it out. The confidence that I got from that and the support I felt from the news organization, my husband, and my loved ones—the village—really was a boost in my sense of possibility.

Liz: You have a parenting podcast, Raising Us. What was important to you in this show?

Elise Hu: I have so much to learn. I remember seeing a Michelle Obama interview and she was like, don’t ask moms of little kids about parenting advice. Go ask somebody who has raised somebody from a kid to a full adult. Because we are constantly learning. That’s a reminder that we’re constantly having to raise ourselves as we’re raising our young ones, which is the premise of this show.

I am not hosting Raising Us because I am some sort of parenting expert. I’m hosting it because I have so much to learn and am just a curious observer and have lots of questions to ask. And every conversation I have had for this new podcast, I have taken something away and thought, oh yeah, okay, I should do that.

A concrete example: Susan Dominus, a reporter at The New York Times, came out with her first book this year called The Family Dynamic. It’s about siblings and how parents actually have less impact on our kids than we think. It’s a very liberating and encouraging book for me as a parent—because they’re kind of how they’re gonna be. They sort of come out and they’re just gonna be the way they are, and we can instill some overall values and be influential on the margins. Her big takeaway was about one-on-one trips, because you form so many memories. And I was like, oh, that’s an actionable thing I need to actually try and make happen in our very busy lives.

On travel sports and the pressures of modern childhood

Elise Hu: I wanted my kids to play team sports because of the aspect of team and really finding people and learning how to be a good teammate and being part of a community and contributing to it, but also because of the opportunity for resilience and grit—because they lose. Inevitably one team loses, and I think losing is such an important experience to have. The more you lose, the braver you get.

What I don’t like about it is that it can be too competitive, especially when parents are very competitive and they used to be athletes themselves. And then it’s so costly—so many of the club organizations now in America have been taken over by private equity. I worry about the gentrification of youth sports, which should be participatory and open and available to all. And now there’s this haves and have-nots when it comes to sports and sporting culture.

Liz: It definitely is wrapped in all the challenges of the modern world. So much of it is adult-driven rather than child-driven. My dad grew up literally just going outside and organizing a baseball game. And now my son is in the parent-organized travel baseball league that the parents are texting each other about. It’s like a perfect encapsulation of the paradigm shift generation to generation.

Liz: How do you think about asking questions at work, and then do you see yourself using that skill in your parenting?

Elise Hu: I feel like the best kind of question is the kind that doesn’t have a long windup. Just ask the question. Just pitch the ball. Ultimately these are conversations, and so I don’t try to over-engineer them. So many interviews, the best parts are the follow-up, and you don’t ask a good follow-up unless you’re really paying attention.

I learned from FBI negotiator Chris Voss—he wrote Never Split the Difference—to start your questions with a “how” or a “what,” and that helps open things up. And what I learned from my time at NPR was about arcs for conversations—to have a North Star of what you want to get at, and then design an arc that ramps up to it.

For parenting, I learned something from Ira Glass. He talked about how sometimes as an interview tactic he’ll throw out a theory—just make a claim—and then the other person pushes back. That works really well with my kids. I can be like, Ava, I can tell you have a crush on Finley. And she’ll be aghast, but it’s almost a way to invite the pushback. And in defending their position, you’re hearing a lot from them—stuff you might not get if you were just like, how was your day?

Liz: Do you think every generation of parents has been raising themselves while raising kids, or is there something going on differently with this generation?

Elise Hu: So many of us millennials were raised by boomers or Xers, and those generations are famously not wanting to work on themselves. I think there is something very earnest about millennials in particular. We straddle these technological ages—the pre-internet and the post-internet—and the availability of all this information and the democratization of information so that we could start looking things up on our own and become more self-helpy.

There’s a big difference in the way I think we are raising our kids versus the way that we were raised, because so many millennials were latchkey kids and our parents were more free range. I do love the aspect of this generation that seems to be really searching and striving and wanting to get better.

Liz: What’s the hardest conversation that you’ve had to have with your kids?

Elise Hu: I have hard conversations with them constantly. Early on, when my eldest was starting to act—she’s a working actor, she does some commercials here and there—I had to have some tough conversations with her about rejection and the way that other adults are going to be talking to her and choosing her or not choosing her based on factors that are out of her control.

And then with my middle, we have had difficult conversations about body acceptance and beauty culture. When we say to our kids, “Oh, your looks don’t matter, you’re beautiful at any size,” they feel as though we’re kind of gaslighting them, because they go out into the world and they see pretty privilege and they see the stigma of not fitting into conventional beauty standards.

I’ve had to wrestle with my own demons when it comes to appearance culture. I had a mom who was very image-conscious, who was constantly critiquing herself and then critiquing me and framing looks as a matter of personal responsibility. To the best of my own ability, I am trying to do the opposite in my own home. They have never seen their mom step on a scale and worry about her weight. They’ve never seen me linger in front of a mirror too long or criticize my appearance in any way.

I am really trying to emphasize that our bodies are just bodies and that we should celebrate our bodies for what they can do and what they can feel. Our appearance has no bearing on our worthiness. Our worthiness does not have to be earned. It’s nothing that you have to achieve—we just matter because we matter.

Liz: What have you had to let go of to not add that pressure to your children?

Elise Hu: I had to let go of the idea that my kids were anything like me. I really wanted them to be readers—like, all I want if I have a free afternoon is just to spend time with a really absorbing book. Not a single one of my girls is running little libraries under their beds, as I did when I was in third and fourth grade. And then none of them became musicians. I wanted to have something that we shared—a sport, a hobby, an instrument—and we’re just very different people, and I really had to let go of that.

I know it’s a fallacy to even think that these completely different humans coming up in a completely different era, just because they came out of your body, might have your interests. But I really wanted them to share something with me, and I had to give that up. I still struggle with it.

Liz: I deeply relate to that. I’m actually kind of grieving them not being like me, if I’m honest. And then I realized once I named that I was sad about it, I could look at how amazing they each are in their own unique way. And that made space for me to be there with them in that.

Elise Hu: I really needed to hear that, and thank you for giving me the space and the license to grieve as well. Because there is a real benefit—then you can see more clearly and more vividly all your child’s unique talents that are totally different than ours.

Liz: At Motherly, we believe that motherhood unlocks our superpowers. What do you see as your superpower?

Elise Hu: My kids would say that my superpower is having no shame and being willing to just show up however I look at anything and being goofy. My daughter actually said to me, “You’re not that chopped today.”

But I think my superpower is that I am inherently a deeply curious person, and it helps me know and really see my kids and meet them where they’re at and not worry about them too much. I know they’re gonna be okay. I trust in their inherent magic, and I think just trusting that they have it and that they will be all right means that I can kind of let them go a little bit and just have a long leash.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Listen to the full episode on The Motherly Podcast.

source https://www.mother.ly/podcasts/elise-hu-the-motherly-podcast/