Having children made us look differently at all these things that we take for granted, like taking your child to get a vaccine against measles or polio.
I agree with my mother that having children removes a layer of skin that you never grow back.
A lot of women feel apologetic or feel the need to make excuses for not having children but women don’t need to if they don’t want to.
Children are part of the natural pattern of life. For centuries people have been having children and going to work. You get on with it, that’s what life’s about.
I loved having children and started relatively late.
Having children is not for everyone, but I think it’s a beautiful lesson in it not being all about me anymore. It’s a relief, in a way. It’s like, this is her story now, and I’m her mom. It’s a nice shift.
Bizarrely, I’ve been called selfish for not having children. Surely it’s more selfish to have a child when you don’t really want a child?
Having children does become tied to a sense of identity and our value as humans.
I wasn’t interested in having children of my own. I know what would have happened – I’d have been left at home to look after the kids, and my career would have been over while my husband travelled the world.
In 2014, having children is complicated and daunting and fraught – as much as it’s always been, but now we’re talking about it. And the more we talk about it, the more of us will realize that we’re not going through it alone. Far from it.
I think part of maturity as an actress comes from their experience in getting married and having children.
That’s going to be the highlight of my life – having children and settling down.
After having children, life becomes about living beyond yourself; about being bigger and better.
I got married to Doug in 2005. I knew that we wanted to delay having children for a while, and I had tried pretty much every hormonal birth control method under the sun.
Having children truly ends adolescence. We are all either parents or children: responsibility-takers or those who demand from others.
I’m sorry, it’s true. Having children really changes your view on these things. We’re born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It’s been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much – if at all.
That’s one thing I find about having children – it does unlock a door that separates you from other women who’ve had children.
Having children has been one of the biggest things that has happened to me in my life.
Restaurants are like having children: it’s fun to make them, maybe, but then you have them for good and bad. You are going to have to raise them and if something goes wrong when they are 30 years old, they will still be your little boy.
Before having children, I think I probably approached work very differently, and you become much more economical and pragmatic about your relationship to it.
I have no regrets about not having children. I still wait for the pang of guilt, but I have none. I tune into the television show ‘Nanny 911’ occasionally which reminds me how much patience and love it take to be a good parent.
Having children, entering the realm of parents and parenthood, changes our relationship to the world in ways we could not have anticipated and might not have signed up for. Before I had children, for example, I believed strongly in the nobility of suffering.
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