Celebrities Who Don't Want Kids — Why
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There are plenty of reasons not to have kids, all of them valid — but as we know well, men are sent that kind of message a lot more often than women are. So when women like Jennifer Aniston and Oprah Winfrey get loud and proud about why they don’t want kids, we can’t help but cheer that they’re helping the stigma around being childless fade away.
Far too often, women are interrogated and shamed about their family planning choices — no matter what those choices may be. These quotes from happily childless celebs confirm that it’s possible to have it all with or without having kids. And apparently, that’s a message our society still desperately needs to hear.
The sad truth is, the pressure to have kids can creep in at every level, from relatives and friends to co-workers and overly nosy strangers. For celebrities, that goes a step further, to the point where it’s rare for a female celebrity over the age of 23 to get through an interview without being asked if she’s planning to have kids (if she isn’t a mom already).
Of course, there’s the flip side: Many celebs are excited to talk about their growing families, and feel passionately about their identities as mothers. But for women who have never planned to have kids, these questions can be deflating. So, for women everywhere who are sick of the idea that having kids is the only way to live a complete life, check out these inspirational quotes from famous women who feel the same way.
A version of this article was originally published in January 2020.
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Jay & Mavis Leno
When speaking to the Washington Post in 2014, Jay said, “It’s perfectly obvious the women are the ones trapped. I remember telling my mother when I was 7 or 8 that I was never going to get married or have children. To me, this is the way women get caught.”
Christopher Walken
Christopher Walken previously told the Guardian, “I’m sure many of the kids I knew as a child would have continued in show business, but they had kids of their own, had to do something dependable. I didn’t, so I could get by even in periods of unemployment.”
Ina Garten
Ina Garten once said to The Cut: “I really appreciate that other people do, and we will always have friends that have children that we are close to, but it was a choice I made very early. I really felt – I feel – that I would have never been able to have the life I’ve had. And so it’s a choice, and that was the choice I made.”
Patricia Clarkson
Patricia Clarkson said to iHeartPodcast’s Table for Two with Bruce Bozzi “I love being an aunt, I love it more than— probably more than acting, which is odd. They’re on par. But I’m telling you, these are gorgeous children, but that doesn’t have to define every woman.”
She added, “I made a big choice, but I knew it when I was young… You have to be a great parent, and I was afraid I couldn’t be. My mother said, ‘Patty, I just don’t want you to wake up at 50 and be unhappy.’ I woke up at 50 in stilettos and a thong. I’ve had a great sexy-ass life.”
Leonardo DiCaprio
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Leonardo DiCaprio said he doesn’t want to bring a child “into a world like this.” He said, “Do you mean do I want to bring children into a world like this? If it happens, it happens. I’d prefer not to get into specifics about it, just because then it becomes something that is misquoted.”
Seth Rogen
Seth Rogen and his wife Lauren Miller have no plans on bringing children into the world. “I would say she wants kids less than I do. I could probably be talked into it; she’s like no.”
In the same interview on the Howard Stern Show that if he had kids, he wouldn’t be able to make his career his priority. “I wouldn’t be able to do all this work that I like. People are always like — it’s something I think I was uncomfortable answering this before — but they were like, ‘How do you do so much?’ The answer is I don’t have kids. … I have nothing else to do.”
Jared Leto
Jared Leto set the record straight back in 2017 with ES Magazine that his priorities aren’t on being a parent right now. “I think it’s really important to be present if you have children. I have a lot of…things to take care of.”
Ricky Gervais
In a previous interview with Metro back in 2009, Ricky Gervais said he flat-out doesn’t want kids because he’s a worrier. “I didn’t have a work ethic for such a long time. Imagine if I had a child like me? I didn’t start earning until I was 36. I’m the sort of person who has to check three times that I’ve shut the door, so I’d probably stare at a kid all day to check it was breathing.”
Katie Thurston
While most Bachelor and Bachelorette contestants over the years have ascribed to “traditional family values” with near-alarming homogeneity: nine out of ten times, the lead and any contestants with a hope of continuing are looking to settle down with a spouse, a couple kids, and a nice church-going family. Katie Thurston, however, is shaking things up from the gate by admitting on the Bachelorette premiere that kids aren’t a must-have part of her future — and perhaps hinting that this season will have less of a “is this the man I want to raise my children” bent as Katie considers other relevant criteria.
“For me, I definitely want kids in some way I think,” Katie told one contestant who opened up about his own child from a previous relationship. “Whether it’s someone who already has a child, that’s something I’m fine with. If someone doesn’t want children, I think I’m also fine with that. Really, I’m just open to all scenarios.”
When a fan tweeted out her support for the statement, Katie shared it on Twitter and added: “It’s ok to be a woman and possibly not want children or to be unsure at the current stage of your life.”
Issa Rae
During her interview with Self, Insecure writer, star, and creator Issa Rae opened up about her thoughts on having kids after tying the knot in July 2021. “I like my life, I like this selfishness, and I know that I have a window,” the actress and writer told the outlet.
“I’ve always felt that way, that women, Black women especially — unless you’re Viola Davis or Angela Bassett — you have a window when people are going to want to continue to see you and see what you can do. Then there are so many limitations placed upon you, and that does keep me up. I want to do as much as I can while I still can. I know it’s not the proper mentality to think that kids will slow you down, but I do feel that way.”
Jennifer Aniston
“I don’t have this sort of checklist of things that have to be done and if they’re not checked then I’ve failed some part of my feminism or my being a woman or my worth or my value as a woman,” Jennifer Aniston said on the Today show in 2014 (and we couldn’t agree more).
“Y’know, I’ve birthed a lot of things…I feel like I’ve mothered many things,” she continued. “And I don’t think it’s fair to put that pressure on people.”
Jennifer Westfeldt
Back in 2012, when she was still together with ex Jon Hamm, Jennifer Westfeldt discussed her reasoning for not having children. “The chance that we’ll regret it doesn’t seem like a compelling enough reason to do it,” she shared with The New York Times.
“I may wake up tomorrow with that lighting bolt, and I’ll have to scramble to make it happen. You were wondering how we make it work. One way is we’re really mobile. No one’s had to give up an opportunity they really wanted.”
Allison Janney
“I think if I would have found the right guy at the right time who wanted to have kids, I probably would have with the right partner because I wasn’t ever really confident that I wanted to have kids,” Allison Janney said on The Drew Barrymore Show.
“I would rather regret not having kids than have kids and regret that. I’m OK with it,” she added. “I really am this time in my life getting to know who I am and what I want,” she said. “I’d love to eventually find someone to share my life with, but if it doesn’t happen, I’ll be just fine.”
Oprah Winfrey
“If I had kids, my kids would hate me,” Oprah Winfrey told The Hollywood Reporter in 2013. “They would have ended up on the equivalent of the Oprah show talking about me; because something [in my life] would have had to suffer and it would’ve probably been them.”
Renée Zellweger
“Motherhood has never been an ambition. I don’t think like that,” Renée Zellweger told the London Times in 2008. Next question?
Ashley Judd
“The fact is that I have chosen not to have children because I believe the children who are already here are really mine, too,” Ashley Judd wrote in her 2006 memoir All That Is Bitter and Sweet. “I do not need to go making ‘my own’ babies when there are so many orphaned or abandoned children who need love, attention, time, and care.”
“I have felt this way since I was at least eighteen and I had an argument about it with a childhood friend,” Judd continued. “I figured it was selfish for us to pour our resources into making our ‘own’ babies when those very resources and energy could not only help children already here, but through advocacy and service transform the world into a place where no child ever needs to be born into poverty and abuse again. My belief has not changed. It is a big part of who I am.”
Helen Mirren
“[Having children] was not my destiny, I kept thinking it would be, waiting for it to happen, but it never did, and I didn’t care what people thought,” Helen Mirren told Vogue UK in 2013. “It was only boring old men [who would ask me]. And whenever they went, ‘What? No children? Well, you’d better get on with it, old girl,’ I’d say ‘No! F*** off!’”
Ellen DeGeneres
“Honestly, we’d probably be great parents,” TV host Ellen DeGeneres told People of herself and wife Portia de Rossi in 2013. “But it’s a human being, and unless you think you have excellent skills and have a drive or yearning in you to do that, the amount of work that that is and responsibility — I wouldn’t want to screw them up! We love our animals.”
Portia de Rossi
“There comes some pressure in your mid-30s, and you think, ‘Am I going to have kids so I don’t miss out on something that other people really seem to love? Or is it that I really genuinely want to do this with my whole heart?'” Portia de Rossi told Out in 2013. “I didn’t feel that my response was ‘yes’ to the latter. You have to really want to have kids, and neither of us did.”
“So it’s just going to be me and Ellen and no babies – but we’re the best of friends and married life is blissful, it really is,” de Rossi continued. “I’ve never been happier than I am right now.”
Margaret Cho
“I don’t know if I could stand that kind of commitment, or if I am really honest, I don’t think that I could handle being that vulnerable to someone else,” comedian Margaret Cho wrote on her blog in 2012. “My child would have my heart completely, and having never truly given that over, in all my relationships in my life, starting with myself, I don’t even know where to begin.”
Alison Brie
“It’s great because I don’t worry about when I should get pregnant—between seasons, while we’re shooting the show [GLOW]—I don’t think about it every day,” Alison Brie told The Times of London in 2018. “It would be nice, but I think of all the things that would be so stressful. I think about how much we’re involved in our cats’ lives. Oh my God, if it was a child!”
Sarah Paulson
“I love kids, but I’m very impulsive, and I was afraid that I would have children and then regret it,” American Horror Story‘s Sarah Paulson told The Sunday Times Style in 2018.
Betty White
“I’m so compulsive about stuff. I know that if I had ever gotten pregnant, of course, that would’ve been my whole focus,” Betty White said on CBS Sunday Morning in 2011. “But I didn’t choose to have children because I’m focused on my career and I don’t think as compulsive as I am that I could manage both.”
Sarah Silverman
“I want to have kids when there’s nothing else I want more,” comedian Sarah Silverman told The Daily Beast in 2010. Fair enough!
Tracee Ellis Ross
“I’m constantly asking myself questions, reminding myself, ‘Are you making that decision for you or someone else?'” Black-ish star Tracee Ellis Ross told The Times in 2018. “The husband and the babies are the expectation of what’s supposed to happen at a certain point, and people fall back on, ‘Well, that’s the point of the human species, procreation.'”
“And I’m, like, ‘I think there are a lot of babies, isn’t that part of what’s going wrong, there’s too many?'” Ross continued. “Some people could be working on the world being a better place, or just being happy.”
Miley Cyrus
“We’re getting handed a piece-of-sh*t planet, and I refuse to hand that down to my child,” former Disney Channel star Miley Cyrus told Elle in 2019. “Until I feel like my kid would live on an earth with fish in the water, I’m not bringing in another person to deal with that.”
“We’re expected to keep the planet populated. And when that isn’t a part of our plan or our purpose, there is so much judgment and anger that they try to make and change laws to force it upon you — even if you become pregnant in a violent situation,” she continued. “If you don’t want children, people feel sorry for you, like you’re a cold, heartless bitch who’s not capable of love … Why are we trained that love means putting yourself second and those you love first? If you love yourself, then what? You come first.”
Marisa Tomei
“I don’t know why women need to have children to be seen as complete human beings,” My Cousin Vinny star Marisa Tomei told Manhattan Magazine in 2009. Amen to that!
Kim Cattrall
“When I was 5, my fantasy was to have a hundred dogs and a hundred kids,” Sex and the City star Kim Catrall told O, The Oprah Magazine in 2003. “I realized that so much of the pressure I was feeling was from outside sources, and I knew I wasn’t ready to take that step into motherhood. Being a biological mother just isn’t part of my experience this time around,”
Balmain Ready To Wear Spring 2024 – Front Row
Kim Cattrall at Balmain Ready To Wear Spring 2024 held at Palais de Chaillot on September 27, 2023 in Paris, France.
Aisha Tyler
“I wanted families [and] couples to know that it was a valid choice not to get on this crazy merry-go-round of IVF and tens and tens of thousands of dollars,” Aisha Tyler said on Huff Post Live in 2014, explaining that she’d tried and failed to conceive.
“I wanted people to feel—men and women—it’s okay to say, ‘I love my marriage, I love my life, I choose not to have children.'”
US-Ireland Alliance 18th Annual Oscar Wild Awards
Aisha Tyler at arrivals for US-Ireland Alliance 18th Annual Oscar Wild Awards, Bad Robot, Los Angeles, CA, March 07, 2024. Photo By: Elizabeth Goodenough/Everett Collection
Winona Ryder
“This is a little personal but I’m 42 and… Well, I was talking to my dad last year and saying, ‘What if I can’t have a kid?’ and he said, ‘There are other ways to have children in your life,'” Stranger Things star Winona Ryder told The Telegraph in 2014. “That’s true — and I get these amazing doses with my brother’s kids. But I’ve got to stop listening to other people. It’s crazy the stuff women will tell you.”
at arrivals for STRANGER THINGS Season 4 Premiere in NYC, Netflix Studios Brooklyn, Brooklyn, NY May 14, 2022. Photo By: Kristin Callahan/Everett Collection
Winona Ryder at arrivals for STRANGER THINGS Season 4 Premiere in NYC, Netflix Studios Brooklyn, Brooklyn, NY May 14, 2022. Photo By: Kristin Callahan/Everett Collection
Anjelica Huston
“There have been times when I wanted children and other times I’ve been grateful not to have them,” Anjelica Huston told Cinema.com in 2011. “I am a mess if I have to say goodbye to my dog for longer than five days. I don’t know how I would deal with kissing my children as I left for work. I know there are women who are able to do that. I don’t know if I could.”
at arrivals for 2021 LACMA ART + FILM GALA – Part 2, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA November 6, 2021. Photo By: Elizabeth Goodenough/Everett Collection
Anjelica Huston at arrivals for 2021 LACMA ART + FILM GALA – Part 2, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA November 6, 2021. Photo By: Elizabeth Goodenough/Everett Collection
Megan Mullally
“I never had a burning desire to have children…But then I met Nick [Offerman], and I thought, ‘This is the only person I’d do this with,’ Megan Mullally told GQ in 2017, in a joint interview with husband Offerman.
“So we tried, but I was a little long in the tooth for that sort of thing. But we didn’t turn it into a soap opera,” Mullally added “We tried for about a year or so, and it didn’t happen, and took that to mean it wasn’t meant to be.”
at arrivals for PARTY DOWN Season 3 Premiere, Regency Bruin Theatre, Los Angeles, CA February 22, 2023. Photo By: Elizabeth Goodenough/Everett Collection
Megan Mullally at arrivals for PARTY DOWN Season 3 Premiere, Regency Bruin Theatre, Los Angeles, CA February 22, 2023. Photo By: Elizabeth Goodenough/Everett Collection
Lily Tomlin
“At that time I didn’t want to — and I’m glad I don’t — have any children,” actress Lily Tomlin told Metro Weekly in 2006. “God only knows what I would have done with them, poor things.”
“I really do like kids, but there wouldn’t have been room in my life to raise children,” she continued. “I was so involved with my career and I would have had to give up the career in large part because I could not possibly have shortchanged the child…It’s hard to raise children and to do right by them. There are too many kids anyway. There’s too many people.”
at arrivals for 80 FOR BRADY Premiere, Regency Village Theatre, Los Angeles, CA January 31, 2023. Photo By: Priscilla Grant/Everett Collection
Lily Tomlin at arrivals for 80 FOR BRADY Premiere, Regency Village Theatre, Los Angeles, CA January 31, 2023. Photo By: Priscilla Grant/Everett Collection
Liza Minnelli
“Nowadays, why get married? Nobody else does. It’s not like I want to have children, I tried that, didn’t work unfortunately,” Cabaret star Liza Minnelli said on Access Hollywood Live in 2012. “It helped me because now I work with all kinds of children all over the world. Brain damaged children and I work with kids with AIDS.”
“That’s how I’ve rationalized [not having kids],” Minnelli explained. “I was meant to do something else.”
Dolly Parton
“I grew up in a big old family with eight kids younger than me and several of my brothers and sisters came to live with me early on in my life,” country star Dolly Parton told People Country in 2014. “I’ve loved their kids just like they’re my grandkids, and now I’ve got great-grand-kids!”
“They call me ‘Aunt Granny,’ Parton shared. “Now I’m GeeGee, which is great-granny. I often think, it just wasn’t meant for me to have kids so everybody’s kids can be mine.”
Rachael Ray
“For me personally, I would need more time to feel like I’d be a good mom to my own child. I feel like a borderline good mom to my dog,” celebrity cook and TV host Rachael Ray told Salon in 2009. “So I can’t imagine if it was a human baby… I feel like it would be unfair, not only to the child but to the people I work with.”
Condoleezza Rice
“I won’t have kids, but I may still get married. But I would have lived a very fulfilled life if I had gotten married and had kids, too,” former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the Ladies Home Journal in 2010. “But I’m very religious and I at some very deep level believe that things are going to work out as they’re supposed to.”
“The key is to be open to that and to appreciate the life that you’ve been given,” Rice added.
Chelsea Handler
“I definitely don’t want to have kids … I don’t think I’d be a great mother,” Chelsea Handler said during The Conversation with Amanda de Cadenet in 2013. “I’m a great aunt or friend of a mother … I don’t want to spend that kind of time. I don’t want to have a kid and have it raised by a nanny. I don’t have time to raise a child.”
Fiona Apple
“I have a thing about, like, wanting to learn about parenting myself. I don’t want to have kids, but I tend to buy a lot of books about parenting,” singer-songwriter Fiona Apple said on a 2012 NPR interview. “So I think that if there’s something like, I have a problem with a work ethic, say, and maybe if I read a book about the new way to teach your kid about how to form a good work ethic, maybe I can do that to myself and maybe it’ll work, you know?”
Candace Bushnell
“There are a lot of women writers who never get married and don’t have kids,” Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell told SavvyMiss.com in 2003. “I am married, but I didn’t marry until I was 43. I knew when I was young that if I had to make a choice between being married and being a writer, I would have chosen to be a writer.”
“I think it’s a career where you have to put the career first,” Bushnell explained. “I don’t have kids but—and luckily everyone isn’t like this — I think if you have that passion, in a way, your career is your child.”
Kylie Minogue
“Of course I wonder what [having kids] would be like but, your destiny is your destiny and I can’t imagine, if by some miracle I got pregnant…at this point in my life, I wonder, could I even manage that?” Kylie Minogue told the Sunday Times in 2018. “It would be a lie to say there’s not a bit of sadness there, but I don’t get caught up in it.”
Stevie Nicks
“It’s like, ‘Do you want to be an artist and a writer, or a wife and a lover?'” Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks said in InStyle in 2002. “With kids, your focus changes. I don’t want to go to PTA meetings.”
Dita Von Teese
“My sisters have children. I love children but at this stage of my life…I was married to someone who was not cut-out to be a father,” Dita von Teese told The Independent in 2007. “He could hardly take care of himself, let alone a child, so I changed my views, adapted accordingly, thought: ‘It’s OK not to have children.'”
“Now I’m just going to watch how my life unfolds and see what happens,” she continued. “I’m not going to be less of a person if I don’t have children. It will work out the way it is supposed to.”
Gloria Steinem
“I’m completely happy not having children. I mean, everybody does not have to live in the same way,” feminist icon Gloria Steinem said on Chelsea Lately in 2011. “And as somebody said, ‘Everybody with a womb doesn’t have to have a child any more than everybody with vocal cords has to be an opera singer.'”
Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Hepburn is quoted as saying the following in A. Scott Berg’s biography Kate Remembered: “I would have been a terrible mother because I’m basically a very selfish human being. Not that that has stopped most people going off and having children.”
