On more than one occasion, “Pitch Perfect” actor Anna Kendrick has said that she’s fine with not having kids.
“Motherhood isn’t for me,” she wrote in her 2016 memoir, Scrappy Little Nobody.
In an interview with the magazine Flow Space published earlier this week, Kendrick, 39, was asked if she still holds that stance ― and she smartly redirected the conversation. Instead of saying “No, I’m still good on that,” she discussed the double standard that exists between child-free men and child-free women.
“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. “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!” she told the magazine. “Because it paints a certain visual, yes? That you [as a man] 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.”
Painting this very Don Draper scene, Kendrick said she wonders: “Where are you in that [equation], sir?”
“It’s like when I hear husbands say they want to ‘help out’ with the kids,” she continued. “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.’” (The latter comment is, of course, a reference to Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance’s comments about “miserable” “childless cat ladies” having too much influence in the country.)
Kendrick’s remarks perfectly capture the casualness with which men are able to envision ― or not envision ― having kids, which is markedly different from how seriously women are expected to take the question.
Men talk about raising children with a certain “que sera, sera” attitude ― maybe there’ll be a few kids running around here someday, as if the men are mere passersby, and not active participants in the events of their own lives.
Of course, some of this conversation hinges on a woman’s biological clock. While women’s reproductive years have increased, 35 is often treated as the “fertility cliff” for potential mothers, and some people’s anxieties stem from that. Fathers of newborns are getting older, too. A Stanford University School of Medicine 2018 study found that 10% of infants are born to fathers over the age of 40, whereas four decades prior it was only 4%. The belief is that men can afford to be a little more lax in their decisions ― though there’s a variety of increased risks at birth for both older mothers and older fathers.
Younger people are increasingly forgoing parenthood, but the judgment toward women is more pointed.
According to a report from the Pew Research Center, 37% of childless adults don’t want kids and aren’t planning on having any. Demographers and sociologists say we’re in the early stages of a baby bust.
For myriad reasons, the inclination to have kids just isn’t as widespread as it used to be ― for women and men. (For one thing, many people just can’t afford to do it.) But the people who are anxious about declining birth rates mainly direct their disapproval, and their hostility, toward women.
Meanwhile, men are allowed to display a certain insouciance when it comes to discussions about pursuing parenthood. Kendrick gets asked if she’s changed her mind in interviews, whereas a childless male actor like Seth Rogen, 42, gets praised for his decision to opt out.
“We have so much fun,” Rogen told Howard Stern in 2021 after the shock jock applauded his choice to not be a dad.
“I don’t know anyone who gets as much happiness out of their kids as we get out of our non-kids,” he said, noting that if he and his wife, actor Lauren Miller Rogen, did have children, they wouldn’t have as much time to write, make pottery or get high and watch movies in bed all day.
We’re not faulting Rogen here ― in fact, that all sounds perfectly lovely ― but when a woman forgoes motherhood, people second-guess her decision. Jennifer Aniston faced years of will-she-or-won’t-she speculation about having a baby, before she finally wrote an essay on this site asking people to stop. (She later shared that she’d struggled with IVF treatments and fertility issues, in an illustration of how seldom people really know about what’s going on behind closed doors.)
There’s no limit to the invasive questions and comments childless women have to field. “Are you sure?” “You might change your mind someday!”
She may be viewed as selfish, maybe even unloving. Or socially irresponsible, if you’re asking a pro-natalist like Vance.
Social media has created a larger community for women who are opting out of parenthood and tired of being judged for it. For example, author and activist Rachel Cargle runs a popular Instagram account, Rich Auntie Supreme, where child-free women validate and celebrate that choice.
But the fact that the online child-free community is mostly populated by women is a reflection of the pressure women feel culturally and from family, said Dane Reid, a child-free writer from Atlanta.
“I think the child-free movement is really an expression of women’s frustrations,” said Reid, the author of “Forget Having Kids. I’m Having Fun: 1000 Random Reasons I Chose to Be #ChildFree.”
The single women Reid talk to say that others still treat having a partner and child as the end goal, regardless of what else they achieve in life. For single men, they’re more like complementary add-ons to their “real” lives.
“I still have to challenge my male friends to think of women and children as more than puzzle pieces in their lives,” Reid said. “I’ve heard men say that a woman’s ‘one job in life is to have a baby and they can’t even do that.’ The range of comments vacillate between ignorant to harassing to entitled and back to ignorant again.”
Women have every reason to be wary of motherhood, especially working women, said Tiffany Dyba, a child-free writer in New York City.
She points to the “motherhood penalty” in the workplace. Research shows that mothers face disadvantages when it comes to hiring, salaries and perceived competence, while working fathers largely benefit from being parents.
“I always think back on a New York Times article from a few years back that said, ‘One of the worst career moves a woman can make is to have children,’” Dyba said. “So of course women have so much more to consider, while men look at it as just an extension of their life.”
Ultimately, Dyba feels that women can’t win either way.
“If we decide not to have kids, then we appear selfish, and not active participants in society,” she said. “In JD Vance’s view, our votes shouldn’t count as much.”
On the other hand, if a woman chooses motherhood, she has to do it to the hilt, embodying June Cleaver — but June Cleaver with a job, because it’s increasingly impossible for a family to get by without a dual income.
“I see moms who have to do it all without fault, because if not, then they’re looked upon as a failure and their relationships suffer,” Dyba said. “Oftentimes, it feels like we’re backed into a corner, feeling like no decision will really support us.”
Many child-free women like Dyba say they just wish they were extended the same room to breathe as the Seth Rogens of the world. It’s your one life ― choose to live it as you’d like.