Parenting

Kim Cattrall doesn’t like being called childless: “It sounds like you’re less, because you haven’t had a child”

I am not a biological parent, but I am a parent...
Cameron Diaz, George Clooney, Helen Mirran, Kylie Minogue

For years Kim Cattrall has been pretty open about how having children wasn’t a path she wanted to go down but the actress says she’s got a bit of a beef with being labelled “childless”.

“It’s the ‘less’ that is offensive, isn’t it?” Kim asked while speaking with BBC Radio Four’s Women’s Hour Takeover. “Child-less. It sounds like you’re less, because you haven’t had a child.”

The former Sex and The City star, who has been thrice married, was frank about the judgement women without kids face.

“I’m so glad that I’m not in a political job, because I would be judged even more harshly. It would be, if I had children, could I do the job efficiently? And if I didn’t have children, I was a selfish b___h.”

And while she may not have given birth Kim says that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have any sense of what it’s like to be a parent.

“I am not a biological parent, but I am a parent,” she told BBC 4 Woman’s Hour. “I have young actors and actresses that I mentor, I have nieces and nephews that I am very close to.”

“I think the thing that I find questionable about being childless or childfree — (is) are you really? I mean, there is a way to become a mother in this day and age that doesn’t include your name on the child’s birth certificate. You can express that maternal side of you, very clearly, very strongly…It feels very satisfying.”

We say bravo Kim! It’s 2015 and having kids is a choice. You don’t have to be a mother or even be maternal to be considered a whole woman.

Kim isn’t the only star who hasn’t had a child. There are plenty of Hollywood A-listers who seem to be doing just fine without any offspring.

For years Kim Cattrall has been pretty open about how having children wasn’t a path she wanted to go down but the actress says she’s got a bit of a beef with being labelled “childless”.

Kylie admits she might not have kids.

“If I had kids, my kids would hate me,” says Oprah Winfrey. “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.”

Late-night talk show host Jay Leno and wife, Mavis have been together for over 30 years but both have said that they never planned on having children. “I had made up my mind when I was little that I would never get married or have children, so I had no agenda,” Mavis told the LA Times in 2009. Though the pair did marry in 1980 they have not had kids.

Funny girl Janeane Garofalo says she made a choice that kids weren’t for her but not was shocked at some people’s reaction about her decision. “I thought that I did. Now I realise that I don’t. People think that you are a nasty, selfish person if you don’t want to have children,” the comedian said.

Cameron Diaz told Parade magazine in 2009: “I have an unbelievable life. In some ways, I have the life that I have because I don’t have children… I don’t think it’s a compromise to have children. I don’t think it’s a compromise not to. I think it’s just a different choice.”

Renee Zellweger has been frank about her lack of desire to have kids. “Motherhood has never been an ambition. I don’t think like that. I never have expectations like ‘when I’m 19 I’m going to do this, and by the time I’ve hit 25 I’m going to do that’. I just take things as they come, each day at a time, and if things happen, all well and good. I just want to be independent and be able to take care of myself. Anything else is just gravy.”

Rickey Gervais says he and partner Jane Fallon weren’t ever interested in adding children into their home. “We never wanted to be parents, with all that entails: the loss of freedom, total dependency,” the British comedian has said. “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.”

George Clooney is well-known on his stance on marriage and children. “I’ve always known fatherhood wasn’t for me. Raising kids is a huge commitment and has to be your top priority. For me, that priority is my work. That’s why I’ll never get married again,” Clooney told Australia’s Daily Telegraph. But he he did a 180 on marriage so… who knows.

Talk show host Chelsea Handler is sure she doesn’t want children. “I definitely don’t want to have kids. I don’t think I’d be a great mother,” Handler has admitted. “I don’t want to have a kid and have it raised by a nanny. I don’t have the time to raise a child myself.”

Dame Helen Mirren told British Vogue that she has no regrets about not having a child. “It was not my destiny. I kept thinking it would be, waiting for it to happen, but I never did, and I didn’t care what people thought.”

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