19 Stars Who Are Happy Being Childless

"The fact is that I have chosen not to have children because I believe the children who are already here are really mine, too. 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. I have felt this way since I was at least eighteen and I had an argument about it with a childhood friend…I figured it was selfish for us to pour our resources into making our 'own' babies when those very resources and energy could not only help children already here, but through advocacy and service transform the world into a place where no child ever needs to be born into poverty and abuse again. My belief has not changed. It is a big part of who I am." — All That Is Bitter and Sweet: A Memoir, 2011

"I definitely don't want to have kids. I don't think I'd be a great mother, 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." — The Conversation, April 2013

"We never wanted to be parents, with all that entails: the loss of freedom, total dependency. I didn't have a work ethic for such a long time. Imagine if I had a child like me? I didn't start earning until I was 36. I'm the sort of person who has to check three times that I've shut the door, so I'd probably stare at a kid all day to check it was breathing." — Metro, September 2009

"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." — New York Daily News, April 2008

"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." — The Hollywood Reporter, December 2013

"I've always known fatherhood wasn't for me. Raising kids is a huge commitment and has to be your top priority. For me, that priority is my work." — The Daily Telegraph, December 2011

"I never felt the need for a child and never felt the loss of it. I'd always put my work before anything." — AARP Magazine, June/July 2014

"I believe all the answers are ultimately within us. When I answered those questions regarding having children, I realized 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." — O: The Oprah Magazine, March 2003

"As much as I enjoy other people's children, my dogs have always been for me and my boyfriend our babies. I mean, we're those types of people that people probably loathe if they overheard us the way we are with our dogs . . . But we both are very certain that not having married when we were younger and having children when we were younger was the right thing to do." — Middle Mojo, March 2011

"I'd be a terrible father! I see my friends who have children and I'm like, 'Dude, how are you even upright, much less here at work at 6 am?'" — Us Weekly, March 2012

"My sisters have children. I love children but at this stage of my life ... I was married to someone who was not cut-out to be a father. He could hardly take care of himself, let alone a child, so I changed my views, adapted accordingly, thought: 'It's OK not to have children.' Now I'm just going to watch how my life unfolds and see what happens. I'm not going to be less of a person if I don't have children. It will work out the way it is supposed to." — The Independent, July 2007

"I had the full princess fantasy: the white horse, the whole being saved from my life, which is ridiculous. What do I want to be saved from? My life's great! But it's just this weird thing that's been hammered into my head culturally: that's the only way to succeed, that's the only thing that counts for a woman. I'm happy, but the fact that I'm not married and don't have kids — it's taken me a long time to get to a place where I actually am OK with that, where I actually don't feel like I'm some sort of loser." — The Guardian, February 2014

"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, May 2014

"For me personally, I would need more time to feel like I'd be a good mom to my own child. I feel like a borderline good mom to my dog. So I can't imagine if it was a human baby . . . I feel like it would be unfair, not only to the child but to the people I work with." — Nightline, March 2009

"There comes some pressure in your mid-30s, and you think, Am I going to have kids so I don't miss out on something that other people really seem to love? Or is it that I really genuinely want to do this with my whole heart? I didn't feel that my response was 'yes' to the latter. You have to really want to have kids, and neither of us did. So it's just going to be me and Ellen [DeGeneres] and no babies — but we're the best of friends and married life is blissful, it really is. I've never been happier than I am right now." — Out, April 2011

"I don't know if I could stand that kind of commitment, or if I am really honest, I don't think that I could handle being that vulnerable to someone else. My child would have my heart completely, and having never truly given that over, in all my relationships in my life, starting with myself, I don't even know where to begin." — MargaretCho.com, September 2012

"I knew that [late husband Anthony Radziwill] couldn't have kids, and that wasn't in any way a deal-breaker for me. I just wasn't that girl who dreamed about getting married and having children. Those weren't the priorities for me. Now, looking back, I think it would have been nice to have a child. But I'm not going to sit around and mope about it." — The Daily Mail, August 2013

"We live in a society where everyone has kids, so they want other people to have kids. There is this culture that says celebrities are supposed to be just like us, so people think, 'I have children — why doesn't she?' But I'm not going to do something because it's expected. If a family happens, then it happens. If children come to me, then I would do that, but I'm not someone who feels like she has to do something because it's expected." — Marie Claire, November 2014

"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 or my value as a woman. I've birthed a lot of things, and I feel like I've mothered many things. And I don't think it's fair to put that pressure on people." — The Today Show, August 2014