20 Celebrities Reveal The Reasons They Preferred Not To Have Children

Some celebrities get asked the same personal question over and over, and for many of them, the answer never changes. They simply do not want children, and they are tired of being treated like that choice needs defending.

This story rounds up 20 well-known names who have spoken openly about staying child-free, whether because of timing, lifestyle, health, or just plain preference. The reactions around them show how quickly people turn a private decision into public debate.

Here are the celebrities, and the reasons they gave for not having kids.

1. Dolly Patron

"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."People Country

2. Jennifer Aniston

"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."

That pressure shows up fast when people start talking about women and motherhood.

3. 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."the Hollywood Reporter

4. Miley Cyrus

“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.”Elle

5. Betty White

“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.”CBS Sunday Morning

6. Nick Offerman & Megan Mullally

“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.”

For some couples, the decision is personal, and the outcome is just part of the story.

7. Hellen Mirren

“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!'”

Jennifer Aniston’s “procreated or you failed” pressure echoes the cousin drama in a family reunion pregnancy announcement debate.

8. Chelsea Handler

“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.”US Department of Education flickr account

9. Tracee Ellis Ross

“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.”Erik Melvin

10. Christopher Walken

“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.”Pierre Vogel

11. Alison Brie

“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!”Cameron Yee

12. Stevie Nicks

“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.”Ralph Arvesen

13. Sarah Silverman

"As a comic always working & on the road I have had to decide between motherhood & living my fullest life & I chose the latter. Men don’t have to do that. I’d so love to be a fun dad, coming home from the road & being my best fun dad self."Ali Shaker/VOA

14. Anjelica Houston

“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.”Cinema

15. Aisha Tyler

According to her, it's okay to choose work over family, and that no one should ever feel embarrassed about it.

“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.”Gage Skidmore

16. 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.’ 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.” Karon Liu

17. Lily Tomlin

“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.”Metro Weekly

18. Ashley Judd

“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.” All That Is Bitter and Sweet

19. Jennifer Lawrence

“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!”E!

20. Renée Zellweger

"I've always been kind of open to whatever may be, curious to see what's next. I've never been that deliberate about my life and the things that I would require in order to be happy.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."Siebbi

To have or not to have children shouldn't define you as a woman. Your sole purpose in life isn't to make babies.

It's sad that some people have children out of will just to fit in, but that mentality has to change. It's not okay to have children because of the pressure you receive from others.

These celebs decided not to have kids, and they don't regret it. About time we put our foot down and punch stereotypes right in the face.

And that debate is not going away anytime soon.

Talk about pressure, read why someone with infertility refused to host a baby shower.