Here's Why Mary J. Blige And Some Other Famous Women Haven't Had Kids

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Mary J. Blige is one of the many women who feel content with the lives they’ve crafted for themselves sans having children.

In a recent interview, the Good Morning Gorgeous singer shared that becoming a mother isn’t a likely scenario she sees happening in her future because she enjoys her freedom too much to give it up.

“I have nieces and nephews forever and I’m always watching how people are scrambling around for babysitters. I don’t want to go through that,” the talented multi-hyphenate said with a laugh on E! News’ Daily Pop. “I like my freedom. I like being able to get up and go and move and do what I want to do. I don’t want to have to tend to someone all the time.”

“Right now that’s where I’m at — I don’t think it’s gonna happen,” she expressed on the possibility of her having kids.

Especially for women like Blige who are successful and well-off, backlash and difficult conversations with family members can be a regular occurrence if they’ve decided to be happy and childless. 

Whether it be because of a medical condition, wanting to put one’s career first, not wanting to impact a child with unhealed drama from one’s past, or prioritizing one’s “freedom” as Blige chose, women who never have children are often and wrongly deemed “selfish.”

What powerful women like Blige highlight, however, is that just because a woman doesn’t have kids biologically doesn’t inherently mean she doesn’t mother young people around her. 

In addition to helping serve as a part of the village that raises each and every youth, childless women often recognize that choosing not to have children so they can pursue their true wants, goals, and needs is more selfless than having and possibly resenting a child their not 100% dedicated to. 

We respect any woman’s right to have a child or not, and we know sometimes people’s feelings on the subject change. 

Read about four other famous women who’ve passed on having kids down below.

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Tracee Ellis Ross

Tracee Ellis Ross has been candid about her childlessness in several past interviews.

“I’m constantly asking myself questions, reminding myself, ‘Are you making that decision for you or someone else?’ 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,” Ross told UK-based outlet The Times in 2018.

RELATED CONTENT: “This Auntie-Niece Moment Proves Tracee Ellis Ross Is In The Pantheon Of Aunties”

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Oprah Winfrey

Although Oprah Winfrey birthed a son when she was 14 due to sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of a family member, the child passed away around two weeks after his delivery.

After growing into one of the most successful and influential women in the world, Winfrey said in a 2013 interview with The Hollywood Reporter: “If I had kids, my kids would hate me. 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.”

In a more recent interview with PEOPLE in 2019, the veteran reporter said that the possibility of having children ran across her mind after she and her longtime love Stedman Graham got engaged in 1986. 

While the couple ultimately chose to not get married or have children, Winfrey said, “…I also believe that part of the reason why I don’t have regrets is because I got [fufillment] in the way that was best for me: the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa.” 

“Those girls fill that maternal fold that I perhaps would have had. In fact, they overfill — I’m overflowed with maternal,” she added.

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Aisha Tyler

Back in 2014, actress and comedienne Aisha Tyler shared her feeling that women who choose “work over family” should know their decision is “a completely valid choice” and something “no one should ever feel embarrassed or regretful about.”

Tyler explained that she never wanted kids, but she put herself through rigorous IVF treatments when she and her ex-husband Jeff Tietjens decided to try for a child.

“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,” Tyler told HuffPost Live at the time. “I wanted people to feel—men and women—it’s okay to say, ‘I love my marriage, I love my life, I choose not to have children.'”