20 Famous People Shared The Reasons They Decided Not To Have Kids, And I Need Everyone To Listen Up

"I don't wanna have a kid and have it raised by a nanny, and I don't have the time to raise a child."

1. Dolly Parton

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For Dolly, having kids and grandkids in her life doesn't necessarily mean she has to be a mother herself. In an interview with People Country, she said, “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. I’ve loved their kids just like they’re my grandkids, and now I’ve got great-grand-kids! ... I often think, it just wasn’t meant for me to have kids, so everybody’s kids can be mine.”

2. Jennifer Aniston

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In a 2014 interview with Allure, Jennifer addressed the criticism of her being too much of a workaholic to be a mother. "I don't like [the pressure] that people put on me, on women — that you've failed yourself as a female because you haven't procreated. I don't think it's fair. You may not have a child come out of your vagina, but that doesn't mean you aren't mothering — dogs, friends, friends' children."

3. Oprah Winfrey

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In 2013, Oprah told the Hollywood Reporter that she doesn't have kids because if she did, they would "hate" her. “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.”

4. Miley Cyrus

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In an interview with Elle, Miley explained that her reason for not wanting kids was largely environmental. "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. 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."

5. Betty White

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When asked in a CBS Sunday Morning interview if she regretted not having kids, Betty responded, "No, I've never regretted it. I'm so compulsive about stuff; I know if I had ever gotten pregnant, of course, that would have been my whole focus. But I didn't choose to have children because I'm focused on my career. And I just don't think as compulsive as I am, that I could manage both."

6. Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman

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When asked in a GQ interview if not having kids was strategic, Megan explained, "I never had a burning desire to have children. But then I met Nick, and I thought, This is the only person I’d do this with. 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. We tried for about a year or so, and it didn’t happen, and took that to mean it wasn’t meant to be."

7. Helen Mirren

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Dame Helen Mirren had perhaps the best response to being asked ~the baby question~ in an interview with British Vogue. "It 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... 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! Fuck off!'"

8. Chelsea Handler

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Chelsea doesn't have kids for an incredibly valid reason: She just didn't want them. In a conversation with Amanda de Cadenet, she said, "I definitely don't want to have kids, because I don't like them...I don't think I'd be a great mother. I'm a great aunt or like friend of a mother. I don't wanna have a kid and have it raised by a nanny, and I don't have the time to raise a child."

9. Tracee Ellis Ross

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In a 2018 interview with the Times, Tracee discussed how she asks herself if she's making life decisions for herself or for other people. "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?' Some people could be working on the world being a better place, or just being happy."

10. Christopher Walken

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Christopher explained to the Guardian that his career probably wouldn't have been possible had he had children. "I'm sure many of the kids I knew as a child would have continued in showbusiness, 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."

11. Alison Brie

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Alison told the Times, "I don't really want to have kids. 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. 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!"

12. Stevie Nicks

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In a 2002 interview with In Style, Stevie explains how she viewed the choice. "It's like, do you want to be an artist and a writer, or a wife and a lover? With kids, your focus changes. I don't want to go to PTA meetings." 

13. Sarah Silverman

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In 2017, Sarah tweeted about how her career as a comic on the road made her choose between being a mother and living her life to the fullest. She explained that while she chose the latter, men don't have to make the same choice, and she'd love to be a fun dad "coming home from the road and being [her] best dad self."

14. Anjelica Huston

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Anjelica explained to Cinema that her decision not to have kids came down to struggling with the idea of balancing them and the life she was already living. She said, "There have been times when I wanted children and other times I've been grateful not to have them. 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."

15. Aisha Tyler

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Aisha told HuffPost Live that choosing "work over family" was “a completely valid choice, and no one should ever feel embarrassed or regretful about that.” Aisha has also spoken about her struggles with infertility in the past, and why she decided to stop trying. “When we found out that [getting pregnant] was going to be difficult to impossible, it really was a choice to stop...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.”

16. Winona Ryder

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For Winona, having kids in her life doesn't mean having to be a mother too. In 2014 she told the Telegraph, "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." 

17. Lily Tomlin

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Lily wanted to give one thing her all, and for her that meant having a career or having a child. In 2006, she told Metro Weekly, "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."

18. Ashley Judd

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In her memoir, All That Is Bitter and Sweet, Ashley shared that she chose not to have kids because she feels a responsibility for those who are already here. She explained, "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." Rather, she says she focused her resources and energy on using "advocacy and service" in an effort to "transform the world into a place where no child ever needs to be born into poverty and abuse."

19. Jennifer Lawrence

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In an interview with E!, Jennifer Lawrence shared that as she got older, she felt less of a desire to have kids. "When I was 21 or 22 I was like, 'I can't wait to be a mother. Now I'm like...[shocked face]. They are actually getting less and less as I get older, which is starting to worry me. I don't think that's how it's supposed to work!"

20. Cameron Diaz

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When it was pointed out that Cameron didn't have children in a 2014 Esquire interview, she went on to explain, “It’s so much more work to have children. To have lives besides your own that you are responsible for — I didn’t take that on. That did make things easier for me. A baby — that’s all day, every day for 18 years... Not having a baby might really make things easier, but that doesn’t make it an easy decision. I like protecting people, but I was never drawn to being a mother."