These Stars Have All Decided To Skip Parenthood

Having children isn’t for everyone. While some people dream of marriage, babies, and a white picket fence, for others, it couldn’t be further from their ideal. And lately, an increasing amount of both couples and individuals are deciding that children just aren’t for them.

Even celebrities are choosing to opt out of becoming parents, whether it’s due to an incredibly busy schedule, medical issues, or because they simply don’t want to. Stars like Seth Rogen, Alison Brie, and Ellen DeGeneres have all gotten candid about their views on parenthood – and they’re all completely content with their decision.

Find out which celebs have decided not to have children…

1. Seth Rogen

Seth Rogen and his wife Lauren have been married for almost a decade but have decided that they won’t be welcoming any children in the future. The couple explained that without children, they are able to live life on their own terms and get more work-related goals accomplished. While Seth used to be uncomfortable discussing the topic, he says he’s now open about it.

“We have so much fun. I don’t know anyone who gets as much happiness out of their kids as we get out of our non-kids…We’re f—— psyched all the time. We’re lying in bed Saturday morning, smoking weed, watching movies naked — if we had kids we could not be doing this. There is no one’s child who is giving them as much joy as we are right now getting because we don’t have a kid,” Seth said on “The Howard Stern Show.”

2. Alison Brie & Dave Franco

Alison Brie and her husband Dave Franco have decided that they don’t want children and it’s taken a lot of stress out of their lives. The couple say that they’re happy just being parents to their pet cats.

“They’re our children…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. 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!” Alison told The Sunday Times.

3. Jennifer Aniston

Jennifer Aniston has been open about how she’s been affected by the speculation about why she doesn’t have children, explaining that she is complete “with or without a child.” Although she isn’t completely ruling out becoming a mother if it happens somehow, she says she’s not actively in pursuit of it.

“The sheer amount of resources being spent right now by press trying to simply uncover whether or not I am pregnant points to the perpetuation of this notion that women are somehow incomplete, unsuccessful, or unhappy if they’re not married with children…We get to decide for ourselves what is beautiful when it comes to our bodies. That decision is ours and ours alone…Yes, I may become a mother some day…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,” Jennifer penned in a candid essay.

4. Chelsea Handler

Chelsea Handler doesn’t have any plans to have welcome children in the future. She once said that she doesn’t think she would be a great mother and wouldn’t want the child to have to be raised by a nanny.

“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,” Chelsea admitted on “The Conversation with Amanda De Cadenet.”

5. Ellen DeGeneres & Portia de Rossi

Ellen DeGeneres and her wife Portia de Rossi have both decided that they don’t want to welcome children, simply because they don’t have the desire to put in the amount of work it takes to raise a child.

“We’d probably be great parents. But it’s a human being and unless you think you have excellent skills and have a drive or yearning in you to do that, the amount of work that that is and responsibility — I wouldn’t want to screw them up! We love our animals,” she said to People.

6. Dolly Parton

Dolly Parton and her husband Carl Thomas Dean never welcomed children and have shared that it had to do with both medical issues and Dolly’s career goals. Even though she never had children, Dolly believes it’s been her purpose to help raise her sibling’s children.

“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! They call me ‘Aunt Granny.’ Now I’m ‘GeeGee,’ which is great-granny. I often think, it just wasn’t meant for me to have kids so everybody’s kids can be mine,” Dolly told People.

7. Nick Offerman & Megan Mullally

Megan Mullally says she never had a desire to have children but became open to the idea after marrying her husband Nick Offerman. The couple gave it a shot for about a year and when it didn’t happen in that time frame, they decided it wasn’t for them.

“I never had a burning desire to have children. But then I met Nick, and I thought This is the only person I’d do this with. So we tried, but I was a little long in the tooth for that sort of thing. But we didn’t turn it into a soap opera. We tried for about a year or so, and it didn’t happen, and took that to mean it wasn’t meant to be,” Megan GQ.

8. Stevie Nicks

Stevie Nicks made the choice not to have children as she says her career goals took precedence over the desire to have kids and a family.

“It’s like, Do you want to be an artist and a writer, or a wife and a lover? With kids, your focus changes. I don’t want to go to PTA meetings,” Stevie once told InStyle.

9. Christopher Walken

Christopher Walken and his wife Georgianne have been married for over 50 years but never welcomed children. He says the decision allowed him to progress in career and his success would not have been otherwise possible, as evidenced by some of the other child actors he knew that decided to start families.

“I’m sure many of the kids I knew as a child would have continued in showbusiness, but they had kids of their own, had to do something dependable. I didn’t, so I could get by even in periods of unemployment,” Christopher told The Guardian.

10. Betty White

Betty White decided not to have children during her life and looking back, she says she has no regrets about the choice.

“No, I’ve never regretted it. I’m so compulsive about stuff. I know that if I had ever gotten pregnant, of course, that would’ve been my whole focus. But I didn’t choose to have children because I’m focused on my career and I don’t think as compulsive as I am that I could manage both,” Betty told CBS.

11. Aisha Tyler

Aisha Tyler says she never really had a desire to have children but after being married to her ex Jeff Tietjens for many years, the couple decided they should give it a shot. When things didn’t work out, they tried IVF but eventually called it quits, explaining that they were content without children.

“I never wanted kids. I loved what I did. I was really passionate about it. And then my husband and I got to a place where we were like, well we’re going to run out of road soon, if we want to do it we should try it now. And we started to get into it and when we found out that it was going to be difficult to impossible, really it was a choice to stop. I feel like 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…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,'” Aisha said on HuffPost Live.

12. Rachael Ray

Rachael Ray and her husband John Cusimano have ruled out having children, simply because they don’t think they’d have enough time to dedicate to raising a family.

“I don’t have time. I work too much to be an appropriate parent. I feel like a bad mom to my dog some days because I’m just not here enough. I just feel like I would do a bad job if I took the time to literally give birth to a kid right now and try and juggle everything I’m doing,” Rachael told People.