For hundreds of years, women have been valued for our reproductive capabilities – and it’s easy to get caught up in the societal expectation of settling down and starting a family.
However, thanks to multiple waves of feminism and women’s movements, we know that the conventional path does not have to be taken.
While many stars say their lives felt incomplete before they started a family, other successful celebrities have decided not to have kids – and they couldn’t be happier.
Whether it’s because they couldn’t become mothers for reasons out of their control, or they never had any interest in having kids, these celebrities have spoken out about their decisions to remain child-free.
Jon Hamm
Jon Hamm
John admitted in 2012 to Us Weekly that he would “be a terrible father!”
“I see my friends who have children and I’m like, ‘Dude, how are you even upright, much less here at work at 6 a.m.?'” he joked.
Keanu Reeves
Keanu Reeves
The beloved actor who is now in his 50’s believed it was “too late” for him to settle down and have children. However, in 1999 his daughter Ava was tragically stillborn.
Marisa Tomei
Marisa Tomei
More commonly recognised lately for her role of Aunt May in Spider-Man, the actress has been open about her decision to not have children. In 2009, she told Manhattan Magazine: “I don’t know why women need to have children to be seen as complete human beings.”
Ricki-Lee Coulter
Ricki-Lee Coulter
The Australian Idol star has addressed her decision to remain childless on numerous occasions, lamenting the fact it needs to be justified in the first place.
“For me, it’s simply: I don’t want kids. People on the street ask me, ‘When are you and Rich having kids?’ Stop!” she previously told Stellar, adding that it’s a “personal decision” that can involve a lot of factors depending on the person.
“You can’t tell people how to live their lives. You don’t know what people are going through, if they can’t have kids, or are trying, or have lost a baby.”
Ricki-Lee also revealed that her unique upbringing led to her decision because she felt like she had already experienced enough child raising coming from a large family.
“I’m the eldest of like 30 grandchildren, my mum is one of like, fifty thousand kids. I was the eldest of all these grandkids and I was the one looking after them,” she explained.
“My mum had me when she was really young and so I was dumped with whoever – aunty or friend or cousin, who would take me while she went out partying, being an 18-year-old.”
Kylie Minogue
Kylie Minogue
Sadly, Kylie’s dreams of becoming a mother were destroyed when she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
“I was 36 when I had my diagnosis. Realistically, you’re getting to the late side of things,” the pop icon told Sunday Times Style in May 2019.
“Realistically, you’re getting to the late side of things [at 36]. While that wasn’t on my agenda at the time, it changed everything. I don’t want to dwell on it, obviously, but I wonder what that would have been like.”
Julia Gillard
Julia Gillard
The former Prime Minister of Australia has previously opened up about her choice to focus on her career instead of having children.
“I’m not sure I could have [balanced having children with my career]. There’s something in me that’s focused and single-minded and if I was going to do that, I’m not sure I could have done this,” she said.
Although she has no regrets about not becoming a mother, Julia has admitted she used to wonder what could have been. “
There was certainly a point in my life when I was conscious of getting past the point of no return,” she said.
Helen Mirren
Helen Mirren
The Oscar winning actress, who has been married to director Taylor Hackford for 25 years, says she never felt maternal urges despite her efforts.
“It’s not that I don’t love children, they are funny and I just love them, but I never wanted to have them. I really tried to want it at one point. I thought maybe I should. But I never convinced myself,” she told The News Review in 2011.
The Calendar Girls star added that her decision was beneficial to the world, as she believes it is overpopulated.
“I think some men and women just don’t have a deep urge to procreate. I think still it is very fine not to want children. There are far too many people in the world. It’s my contribution to ecology.”
Kim Cattrall
Kim Cattrall
“When I answered those questions regarding having children, I realised 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,” the Sex and the City star wrote on Oprah.com about her realisation she didn’t want to have children.
“Being a biological mother just isn’t part of my experience this time around.”
Miley Cyrus
Miley Cyrus
In an interview with ELLE US in July 2019, Miley revealed that the current state of climate change has affected her stance on having children.
“We’ve been doing the same thing to the earth that we do to women. We just take and take and expect it to keep producing. And it’s exhausted. It can’t produce. We’re getting handed a piece-of-shit planet, and I refuse to hand that down to my child,” the Wrecking Ball hitmaker said.
“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.”
Laura Byrne opens up about the realities of life with two young kids
Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey
The TV icon has always been candid about her disinterest in starting a family.
“If I had kids, my kids would hate me. 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,” she previously said.
Renee Zellweger
Renee Zellweger
The actress’ candour about not bowing to pressure to have kids has been empowering.
“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’,” she told The London Times in 2008.
“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.”
Jennifer Aniston
Jennifer Aniston
The Friends star is another actress to stick to her guns when it comes to not bowing to pressure to have kids.
“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… You know, I’ve birthed a lot of things. I feel like I’ve mothered many things. And I don’t think it’s fair to put that pressure on people,” she told The Today Show in 2014.
Betty White
Betty White
The late comedy icon was always frank about her lack of desire to start a family.
“No, I’ve never regretted it. I’m so compulsive about stuff. I know that if I had ever gotten pregnant, of course, that would’ve been my whole focus. 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,” she told CBS in 2011.
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