Like many people, celebrities often have to put their family lives aside in order to become really successful in their fields. Deciding whether to get married and/or have kids or pursue a career full force is often a huge decision for people, and sometimes it requires trade-offs. That said, there are also a number of celebrities who have simply decided that having kids isn't for them, and have instead found fulfillment elsewhere. Really, there are so many reasons not to have kids, whether you're famous or not.
But celebrities are constantly in the spotlight and there is always someone there to put the pressure on them and ask super personal and sometimes difficult questions. Honestly, it seems like it would kind of suck. But most of the time, celebs handle it with grace and patience.
Deciding to become a parent is a huge, life-changing move, and it's not for everyone. Some celebrities have been open about that; others have struggled with infertility and in the end decided the stress wasn't worth it. Others chose not to have children because they weren't into the lifestyle change. Read on to see which of your fave celebs have openly talked about why they don't want to have kids.
Oprah Winfrey
For decades, people marveled at the fact that TV mogul Oprah Winfrey chose never to get married or have children. She once told [The Hollywood Reporter] that she never really dreamed of having kids, and that she doesn't regret it. "If I had kids, my kids would hate me," she said. "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."
Chelsea Handler
Gwyneth Paltrow once asked comedian Chelsea Handler why she didn't have kids, and she said she's not interested. "Well, I just don't think it's the best use of my time," she replied. "Becoming a mother is something that I take so seriously. People need to really want to become a mom. Honestly, it should be hard to become a parent."
Jennifer Aniston
People have long wondered why Jennifer Aniston hasn't had kids, and whether it was some sad story, but according to her, it's really not. She once penned an essay for HuffPost saying, "Yes, I may become a mother some day, and since I'm laying it all out there, if I ever do, I will be the first to let you know. But I'm not in pursuit of motherhood because I feel incomplete in some way, as our celebrity news culture would lead us all to believe."
Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton didn't have kids because she wanted to be everyone's mom. "I didn't have children because I believed that God didn't mean for me to have kids so everybody's kids could be mine, so I could do things like Imagination Library because if I hadn't had the freedom to work, I wouldn't have done all the things I've done," the iconic singer told Today in 2017.
Jon Hamm
Not only has handsome Mad Men star Jon Hamm never been married, but he also consciously chose not to have children, even though at one point he was in a long-term relationship with fellow actor Jennifer Westfeldt. "I'd be a terrible father!" he told Us Weekly. "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 said.
Tracee Ellis Ross
"It's one of the reasons I feel so strongly about telling the stories that I tell," Black-ish actor Tracee Ellis Ross told Porter. "I wish I had known there were other choices, not just about how I could be living, but how I could feel about the way my life was. I was raised by society to dream of my wedding, but I wish I had been dreaming of my life. There are so many ways to curate happiness, find love, and create a family, and we don't talk about them. It creates so much shame and judgment."
Betty White
The legendary Betty White doesn't regret not having children, either. "No, I've never regretted [not having kids]. 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. I just don't think, as compulsive as I am, that I could manage both," she once explained on CBS News, according to Distractify.
Ellen DeGeneres
TV personality Ellen DeGeneres has apparently never been up for the commitment involved with kids. "I think I would [like to have kids], but that's not enough to have a kid," she once told Matt Lauer. "It seems long-term," she said. "It seems like a commitment that you have to stick with." Yup, it definitely is.
Megan Mullally
Megan Mullally and her husband, Nick Offerman, tried to have kids for a while, but after some time, they realized it wasn't that important to them. "I never had a burning desire to have children," the Will & Grace star once told GQ. She went on to add that Nick is the only person she would have wanted to have kids with, but that they decided "it wasn’t meant to be."
Sarah Silverman
Though Sarah Silverman has admitted to adoring children, she doesn't want to give up her independent lifestyle. "God, I'm really gonna do it, you guys. I'm really gonna have no kids," the comedian once joked on the Hilarity for Charity Netflix special. "I'm baby crazy! That's what's insane about it. I love kids. The only thing I love more than kids is doing anything I want at all times," she went on.
Miley Cyrus
Music star Miley Cyrus doesn't think this world is good enough for her to bring kids into. "We're getting handed a piece-of-s—- planet, and I refuse to hand that down to my child," she told Elle. "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."
Renée Zellweger
While some people feel a very strong pull to become a parent, Renée Zellweger isn't one of them. "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," the Bridget Jones's Diary star told People.
Seth Rogen
Comedian Seth Rogen has a whole slew of reasons for not wanting kids, mostly to do with not wanting to give up his freedom — and his wife agrees. "I don't know anyone who gets as much happiness out of their kids as we get out of our non-kids," Seth told People. "Like, we're [expletive] psyched all the time! We're laying in bed on Saturday mornings smoking weed, watching movies naked. If we had kids, we could not be [expletive] doing this."
Leonardo DiCaprio
Leonardo DiCaprio is on the fence, but like Miley Cyrus, he feels uncertain about bringing children into the world as it is. "Do you mean do I want to bring children into a world like this?" Leo questioned in a Rolling Stone interview. "If it happens, it happens. I'd prefer not to get into specifics about it, just because then it becomes something that is misquoted. But, yeah, I don't know. To articulate how I feel about it is just gonna be misunderstood."
Helen Mirren
English actor Helen Mirren has had an incredible career, and she knows that having kids might have had a major impact on that. "I never felt the need for a child and never felt the loss of it," she told AARP magazine. "I'd always put my work before anything." Although when she was younger, she wasn't big on marriage, either, but she did eventually get married in 1997.
Rachael Ray
Although it's been years since Rachael Ray has said much about having kids, in the past she's chalked it up to time. "I work too much to be an appropriate parent. I feel like a bad mom to my dog some days because I'm not here enough. I just feel like I would do a bad job if I actually took the time to literally give birth to a kid right now and try and juggle everything I'm doing," she told People in 2007.
Alison Brie
GLOW star Alison Brie just doesn't have any interest in having a family. "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 — I don't think about it every day," she told Harper's Bazaar in 2019. Her husband, Dave Franco, is onboard too. "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!" she added.
