Womb watching is a favourite activity for those interested in whether a woman of a certain age is interested in having children.
And that appears to be everybody, since at some point in their lives most women will be asked about the “maternal clock” that is allegedly a roaring, all-encompassing noise in the ear of any woman in possession of a womb.
Women are asked if they want to have children and judged as missing something, as being selfish or “careerist” (apparently that is an insult) if they make the perfectly valid decision that having children is simply not for them. It’s not for everybody, after-all.
Womb watching is a particularly vigorous sport among those interested in the lives of celebrities. Famous women are constantly asked in interviews whether they want to have children, when their male counterparts – who not only earn more and get to stay in the ‘love interest’ game for much longer – never are.
As actress Zoey Deschanel said in response to the question of whether having children is on her priority list,
“I’m not going to answer that question. I’m not mad at you for asking that question, but I’ve said it before: I don’t think people ask men those questions,” Deschanel told Marie Claire in September.
A perennial favourite to be asked about her thoughts on children is Jennifer Aniston, who for a long time was pitied by the press for being single after the end of her marriage to Brad Pitt. Now that Aniston is engaged to she’s had enough of the judgement of child-free status.
Aniston recently covered Allure magazine to promote her new film, Cake (which is earning Aniston praise and Oscar buzz) and slammed criticism of her choices, and that of other women,
“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,”she said.
“This continually is said about me: that I was so career-driven and focused on myself; that I don’t want to be a mother, and how selfish that is.”
Asked whether the accusations roll off her back after hearing them for so long, Aniston was firm,
“No. Even saying it gets me a little tight in my throat.”
It’s not the first time that Aniston has spoken about how she is so often thought of being less than for not being a mother. She told Carson Daly on his show in August,
“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.”
We can imagine there’s a lot of women with nosy family members, friends and colleagues sending Jennifer Aniston a fist bump her way.
Click through for some more thoughts on choosing to be childless.
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.”
Cameron Diaz: “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. I have it much easier than any of them. That’s just what it is. Doesn’t mean life isn’t sometimes hard. I’m just what I am. I work on what I am. Right now, I think, things are good for me. I’ve done a lot. And I don’t care anymore,” she told Esquire magazine.
Talk show host Chelsea Handler, 39, is sure she doesn’t want children. “I definitely don’t want to have kids. I don’t think I’d be a great mother,” Handler has admitted. “I don’t want to have a kid and have it raised by a nanny. I don’t have the time to raise a child myself.”
Dame Helen Mirren, 68, told British Vogue that she has no regrets about not having a child. “It was not my destiny. I kept thinking it would be, waiting for it to happen, but I never did, and I didn’t care what people thought.”
At 57, Sex and the City star Kim Catrell is comfortable without kids. “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,” Catrall 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,” she added.
“If I had kids, my kids would hate me,” says Oprah Winfrey, 60. “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.”
Renee Zellweger, 44, has been frank about her lack of desire to have kids. “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.”
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