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20 min read
From Anna Kendrick to Tracee Ellis Ross, here are 32 of the best quotes from women in the public eye on being child-free.
When coupling up, getting married and having a baby is seen as the norm, a life that deviates from that can feel radical. Women who, whether by choice or circumstance, don’t become mothers can feel like they’re having to forge their own path forward, navigating a boatload of pressure and stepping over questions like ‘Won’t you be lonely?’ and ‘Don’t you think you’ll change your mind when you get older?’
The truth is that this path is well-trodden, and if you look for them, there are models of what a life without children can look like. It’s just that this way of living isn’t represented quite as much as the traditional one. Think about it: from fairy tales to romcoms, how often have you heard a character proclaim that they’re planning to have the happily ever after without the baby in the baby carriage? It’s still a rarity in our media – so no wonder child-free women can feel like they’re going it alone.
But here’s your reassurance that you’re certainly not the only one. Along with a massive community of child-free women out there to meet and chat with, there are celebrities in the public eye who have spoken up about not being parents. Here are 32 quotes from famous women on life without kids.
Child-free celebrities’ quotes on not having children
Anna Kendrick
“I will always feel children aren’t for me,” wrote Kendrick in her 2016 memoir, Scrappy Little Nobody. In 2024, after JD Vance made comments about childless cat ladies, Kendrick told The Guardian: “I don’t ever think about having kids, so I guess I spend just as little time thinking about weaponising that.
“Here’s the best argument for why I don’t have kids,” she added. “I thought: ‘I’d have an easier time falling asleep with the weight of a cat on me. But I’m not responsible enough to own a cat. Someone should really make a robot cat that does all the purring and the kneading.’ And then I was like: wait, I’m not even up to the ‘cat lady’ part! Why would anyone trust me with a kid?”
More recently, during an interview with Flow Space, the actor spoke about the common refrain of ‘maybe one day’.
“I was thinking recently about a phrase I’ve heard men say about their desire to have children in the future, and it occurred to me: I don’t think I’ve ever heard a woman say that,” Kendrick said. “And the thing they’ll say is, ‘Yeah, maybe one day – a couple of kids running around.’ I don’t think I’ve ever heard a woman say that. Because it paints a certain visual, yes? That you come home at the end of your workday, and you put down your proverbial briefcase, and you’re making yourself a cocktail, and a woman in a Laura Ashley dress is out in the yard, and there’s a couple of kids – in white! – running around. Um, where are you in that, sir?
“I don’t know, there’s something about that phrase that really starts to rub me the wrong way. It’s like when I hear husbands say they want to ‘help out’ with the kids. And it’s two working parents! And I always want to kind of say something, and then I’m just like, ‘Well, I’m the childless cat lady. I’m not gonna say shit.’”
Marisa Tomei
“I don’t know why women need to have children to be seen as complete human beings,” Tomei told Manhattan magazine in 2009.
Oprah Winfrey
Winfrey told Good Housekeeping: “When people were pressuring me to get married and have children, I knew I was not going to be a person that ever regretted not having them, because I feel like I am a mother to the world’s children. I didn’t want babies. I wouldn’t have been a good mom for babies. I don’t have the patience. I have the patience for puppies, but that’s a quick stage!”
Alison Brie
“I don’t really want to have kids,” Brie told The Sunday Times Magazine. “It’s great because I don’t worry about when I should get pregnant – between seasons, while we’re shooting the show – I don’t think about it every day. 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!”
Helen Mirren
“I never felt the need for a child and never felt the loss of it,” Mirren told AARP. “I’d always put my work before anything.”
In another interview, the actor shared: “[Motherhood] 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. And whenever they went, ‘What? No children? Well, you’d better get on with it, old girl,’ I’d say ‘No! Fuck off!’”
Kim Cattrall
In an interview with Woman’s Hour, the Sex And The City actor railed against the term ‘childless’, stating: “It’s the ‘less’ that is offensive. Childless – it sounds like you’re less because you haven’t had a child. The thing that I find questionable about being childless and child-free – 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.
“I am not a biological parent, but I am a parent. I have young actors and actresses that I mentor; I have nieces and nephews that I am very close to. I didn’t change nappies, which is OK with me, but I did help my niece get through medical school. I did sit down with my nephew when he was [going through] a very tough time to join the army. And those are very motherly things to do, very nurturing things to do. So I feel I am a mother of sorts. I am not completely child-free, because I care about the next generation. I just believe and have always believed since my 40s especially that there are many different ways to be a mum in the world.”
She went on to explain why she hasn’t become a biological parent. “I have been married and I enjoy very much being married, but we never really got to the point where it seemed a natural progression in our relationship that we would become parents,” said Cattrall. “So for me, I think timing-wise, it was never right.”
Kelly Brook
“I’ve sat down and asked myself: ‘Do I really want to have children? Is this something I really want to do?’” Brook told Fabulous magazine. “And I’ve realised that actually it’s not something I’ve always wanted, and I’m fine with it. I think there’s a stigma attached [to being child-free], and it can be really unkind. It’s not anyone else’s business how you live your life.”
Dolly Parton
Speaking to Exceptional magazine, Dolly Parton said: “When you’re a young couple, you think you’re going to have kids, but it just wasn’t one of those burning things for me. I had my career and my music, and I was travelling. If I’d had kids, I’d have stayed home with them, I’m sure, and worried myself to death about them. With everything that’s going on, I’d hate to be bringing a child into this world right now.”
The icon also told The Guardian that she and her husband are “glad” they don’t have children: “It wasn’t meant to be. I would have been a great mother, I think. I would probably have given up everything else. Because I would’ve felt guilty about that, if I’d have left them [to work, to tour]. Everything would have changed. I probably wouldn’t have been a star.”
Tracee Ellis Ross
Black-ish actor Tracee Ellis Ross spoke about being child-free in her 50s on Glennon Doyle’s We Can Do Hard Things podcast. “My ability to have a child is leaving me, but, like, I don’t agree that that’s what ‘fertile’ means,” she said “I don’t agree that that’s what ‘woman’ means.”
When all the ’childless cat lady’ stuff about Kamala Harris was being chucked around, Ellis Ross spoke up in her defence, addressing both the vice president and Oprah Winfrey when she commented: “I would like to say to you two women, ‘Thank you for what you represent.’ Because as a 52-year-old, childless woman, I wanna say to the people who think that a woman’s worth is measured in her baby count – I mean, shoutout to all the amazing mothers – but childless women have been mothering the world and elevating the world as aunties, godmothers, teachers, mentors, sisters and friends. The list goes on. You do not have to push out a baby to help push humanity forward.”
Chelsea Handler
“I always just wanted to have a great big fun life,” Handler told Capsule. “I’m so happy that I know myself so well that I knew enough to not have children and that I can I have tons of children in my life, but I don’t want to be a parent. That’s a buzzkill for me – like, that doesn’t sound fun for me.
“I know who I am. So I’m not worried that I’m, like, making the wrong decision. I’m like, ‘Oh good for you for knowing your truth.’ And I think women also should get a lot more credit for knowing that they are not cut out to be parents instead of just becoming a shitty one.”
Miley Cyrus
Miley Cyrus isn’t sure if she wants children or not – and she’s fine with that. “I’m 31 now, and I still don’t know if I want kids or not,” she told W magazine. “I feel like my fans kind of are my kids in some way. I’ve heard Dolly say that too, because she didn’t have kids.”
Ava DuVernay
In an interview with InStyle, the filmmaker spoke about how being child-free has given her the freedom to focus on her career and friendships. “I didn’t have kids by choice, and I’m not married by choice,” said DuVernay. “I was able to embrace my career later in life, in my 30s. So I’m going to do what feels good to me, and I’m going to have fun.”
Winona Ryder
Speaking to The Telegraph back in 2014, Winona Ryder commented: 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.’ 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.”
Lily Tomlin
“Sometimes I think it would be nice to have somebody who looks like a replica of you in some fashion, but I don’t think it ever was an aspiration of mine,” the Grace And Frankie actor told The Guardian. “In retrospect, we say every day, ‘I’m so glad we didn’t have any children.’ When I think of the world now, I don’t want to even deal with having to raise a child.”
And speaking to Metro Weekly she added: “I’m glad I don’t have any children. 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. 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.”
Stevie Nicks
Stevie Nicks has frequently spoken about her belief that Fleetwood Mac couldn’t have been as successful if she had chosen to have children. “I couldn’t have really done both,” she said in 2001. “Now, many women can do both. I’m not saying it can’t be done. For me, I knew that if I had a baby, I would have to take care of that baby, and I wouldn’t have been happy with a nanny taking care of my baby and walking into the room and having my child run across the room to another woman.
“I am very jealous, and I would have hated that. So under those circumstances, if I couldn’t be a great mom, then I decided it would be better not to and to go ahead and do what I do: write my songs and try to help people that way.”
Allison Janney
“I would rather regret not having kids than have kids and regret that,” Janney told Drew Barrymore on her talk show.
Christina Hendricks
“I mean, they [children] are a lot of work,” Mad Men actor Christina Hendricks told the Observer. I know plenty of people who don’t have children. And I also get a lot of people who say, ‘Thank you for speaking out, my family don’t understand why I don’t want kids.’”
When Hendricks adopted a puppy, she said this was her version of starting a family.
Megan Mullally
Megan Mullally has a great answer to the ‘Why don’t you have kids?’ question: she simply never had “an organic burning desire”.
Speaking on the podcast Juicy Scoop With Heather McDonald, Mullally noted that she met her husband, Nick Offerman, when she was 41, and felt “it was a little late in the day for me to have kids”. She added that she and Offerman did try, but “it just wasn’t meant to be”.
Patricia Clarkson
Patricia Clarkson said she knew she didn’t want to have children from an early age. “I have so many sisters who have beautiful children, and they now have beautiful children,” the actor said on the Table For Two podcast. “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.
“You have to really be committed to having children. You have to be a great parent, and I was afraid I couldn’t be. I’m fine failing as an actor. I didn’t want to fail at being a parent.
“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.”
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. 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. 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.”
Jennifer Westfeldt
“I’ve thought about this a lot lately,” Westfeldt told New York Magazine. “I never thought I’d be this age and not have kids. But my life has also gone in a million ways I never anticipated. I kept feeling like I’d wake up with absolute clarity, and I haven’t. And we have a pretty great life together. The chance that we’ll regret it doesn’t seem like a compelling enough reason to do it.”
Ashley Judd
In her memoir, All That Is Bitter And Sweet, Judd wrote: “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.”
Margaret Cho
“I have no maternal instincts whatsoever,” Cho said in her comedy special Revolution. “I am barren. I am bone-dry. When I see children, I feel nothing. I ovulate sand.”
Renée Zellweger
“Motherhood has never been an ambition,” Zellweger told People. “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.”
Jennifer Aniston
“It is such an issue of, like, ‘Are you married yet? Are you going to have your babies yet?’,” Aniston told Carson Daly. “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 and my value as a woman because I haven’t birthed a child. I’ve birthed a lot of things, and I feel like I’ve mothered many things. And I don’t feel like it’s fair to put that pressure on people.”
Gloria Steinem
Asked by Elizabeth Day on the How To Fail podcast if she ever regretted not having children, Gloria Steinem replied: “Not for a millisecond, no.” She continued: “People assume I must be unhappy or unfulfilled. Not everyone but some people I think assume that… in a way that they wouldn’t assume about a man.”
Speaking on Chelsea Lately back in 2013, the activist told viewers: “I’m completely happy not having children. I mean, everybody does not have to live in the same way. 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.’”
Elizabeth Gilbert
“I have come to believe there are three sorts of women, when it comes to questions of maternity,” the Eat, Pray, Love author wrote on her blog. “There are women who are born to be mothers, women who are born to be aunties, and women who should not be allowed within 10 feet of a child. It’s really important to know which category you belong to.
“It can be a tragic situation (personally, for a family, and for the community at large) when a woman ends up in the wrong category, based on her true nature. Women who long for children but cannot have babies suffer enormously, as we well know, and my heart aches for their loss. But children who are born to inadequate or unprepared mothers also suffer enormously (and their mothers suffer, too – trapped in a responsibility that they can neither meet or enjoy.)
“Those of us who are natural-born aunties are luckier. We love children, we enjoy children, but we know in our deepest heart that we are not supposed to have children of our own. And that is absolutely fine, as not every woman in history needs to be a mother, or would be good at it. Now, listen – if you put a baby in front of me, rest assured: that baby is going to get cuddled, spoiled and adored. But even as I’m loving on that beautiful infant, I know in my heart: This is not my destiny. It never was. And there is a curious rush of joy that I feel, knowing this to be true – for it is every bit as important in life to understand who you are NOT, as to understand who you ARE.
“Me, I’m just not a mom. I bow before all good and loving mothers, but I think it’s better for everyone if I create and nurture in other ways – in ways that are more suited to my talents and my heart. Having reached a contented and productive middle age, I can say without a blink of hesitation that wouldn’t trade my choices for anything.”
Elizabeth Day
Elizabeth Day has been vocal about her fertility struggles and her eventual acceptance of not becoming a parent. “I experimented with the idea of giving myself permission not to do more fertility treatment,” the podcaster and author told The Times. “How would that feel in my body? And it felt amazing.”
And in You magazine, she added: “Too often, we women who find ourselves without children for whatever reason are wrongly painted as semi-tragic figures. We are childless, with the emphasis very much on the ‘less’. In truth, we have much to offer. And although, in my case, my fertility issues have been the cause of sadness, I am not a sad person. I have learned a lot about myself and experienced life in a different way precisely because I am not yet a mother.”
Day was one of many women who responded to the criticism of Kamala Harris for not having biological children, stating on Virgin Radio that she found it “deeply offensive”. “I have been really open about my own struggles with fertility, and I don’t have children, but you best believe I really feel like my life has purpose, and I do care about the future,” said Day. “And it’s why I want to put good work out into the world.
“The older I get, the more I realise that my friends are my chosen family. I do podcasts and I write books, and, actually, I’ve found great communities there too. The fluidity of family can be so all-encompassing, and it doesn’t have to be a blood relative.”
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?” the actor told Out magazine. “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. I’ve never been happier than I am right now.”
Candace Bushnell
Sex And The City writer Candace Bushnell wrote on X: “As a matter of fact, I don’t regret not having children. I celebrate it and encourage other women to do the same!”
Diane Morgan
“I never wanted them,” Morgan told The Guardian. “Couldn’t see any advantage to having them. I just can’t, and I’ve always felt the same way. When I was younger, I thought, maybe I’ll change when I get older, but I haven’t. Occasionally, people come up to me with kids and they’ll say, ‘Seriously, don’t have them. They ruin your life.’ But even if they didn’t say that, I’ve made my mind up now, and I’m with someone who doesn’t want kids as well, which is glorious. It’s really good luck. I never fancied it. Aside from all the pain, they just sponge off you for the rest of your life then, don’t they?”
Tracy Emin
“People don’t understand that someone could be happy not having children,” Emin told Time Out. “But I’m triumphantly going, ‘Brilliant! I can buy an apartment in New York because I don’t have to pay school fees!’”
In another interview, the artist said: “It upsets me when people go on about women who are childless as if they are worthless. I think a lot of women who decide they don’t want to have children find it quite irritating if they are put on the spot about it. I don’t go around saying to women, ‘Why did you have children?’ I know why they had children. People are quite rude about a woman who has no kids and they presume you are gay and that you hate men. They make presumptions that just aren’t true.”
Images: Getty; Adobe
Topics
Child-free
Motherhood
Anna Kendrick
Ava DuVernay
Tracee Ellis Ross
Oprah Winfrey
Tracey Emin
Helen Mirren
Dolly Parton
Alison Brie
Kim Cattrall
Kelly Brook
Chelsea Handler
Miley Cyrus
Winona Ryder
Lily Tomlin
Allison Janney
Christina Hendricks
Megan Mullally
Dita Von Teese
Ashley Judd
Renee Zellweger
Jennifer Aniston
Gloria Steinem
Elizabeth Gilbert
Elizabeth Day
Portia De Rossi
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