Yahoo Lifestyle 18 Famous "Childless Cat Ladies" And Their Thoughtful Reasons For Never Having Kids
A resurfaced clip of JD Vance calling Kamala Harris a "childless cat lady" is going viral.
In the clip, he tells Tucker Carlson, "We are effectively run in this country...by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too. And it's just a basic fact."
So, because it's in the zeitgeist, let's look at famous women who have decided to be child-free and their childless cat lady reasons why.
1.Anjelica Huston
She famously told the Guardian about her decision to not have kids: "I would probably have been miserable."
She told British Vogue (via Vanity Fair), "[Motherhood] was not my destiny. I kept thinking it would be, waiting for it to happen, but it never did, and I didn’t care what people thought. ... It was only boring old men [who would ask me].”
Betty told CBS in 2012, "No, I've never regretted it. I'm so compulsive about stuff, I know if I had ever gotten pregnant, of course, that would have been my whole focus. But I didn't choose to have children because I'm focused on my career. And I just don't think, as compulsive as I am, that I could manage both."
4.Stevie Nicks
She told InStyle, "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."
5.Dolly Parton
She told Oprah via Today, "Since I had no kids and my husband was pretty independent, I had freedom. So I think a big part of my whole success is the fact that I was free to work."
She also told Saga Magazine last year, "If I’d had kids, I’d have stayed home with them, I’m sure, and worried myself to death about them. With everything that’s going on, I’d hate to be bringing a child into this world right now.”
6.Patricia Clarkson
Patricia told the Table For Two podcast, "Look, I have so many sisters who have beautiful children, and they now have beautiful children. I love being an aunt, I love it more than acting, which is odd — okay, they’re on par [with each other]. But I’m telling you, these are gorgeous children, but that doesn’t have to define every woman," she said.
"I'm just saying, I love being an aunt, I love being a sister, I love being a daughter, I love being a great best friend. I’m a very good friend, I think. It’s not what I wanted to define me because I didn’t want to fail."
7.Oprah Winfrey
She told People magazine: "I have not had one regret about that. I also believe that part of the reason why I don’t have regrets is because I got to fulfill it in the way that was best for me: the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa."
8.Lily Tomlin
Lily told Metro Weekly: "God only knows what I would have done with them, poor things. I really do like kids, but there wouldn’t have been room in my life to raise children."
9.Megan Mullally
Megan told GQ, "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."
10.Lucinda Williams
She wrote in her memoir, "When I was growing up, I never saw any families really enjoying their children. I remember thinking as a teenager, "Wow, nobody seems to like having kids. Nobody seems happy having kids. It's a burden, not a joy." It seemed like everybody would rather be partying and f---ing each other freely. Family obligations and responsibilities didn't seem to be the most important thing to anyone, so why should they have been important to me?"
11.Ina Garten
She told Katie Couric on her podcast (via ET): "I really felt — I feel — that I would have never been able to have the life I've had. And so it's a choice, and that was the choice I made."
12.Sandra Oh
She told Marie Claire, "I have an extremely fulfilling life as an aunt, not only to my nieces and nephews but also to a lot of my friends’ children."
13.Jennifer Coolidge
She told British GQ she would make a better stepmother: "I’m very, very immature. I think that has kept me from having children, because I’m sort of a child. Maybe if I had kids, I would’ve had to have grown up."
14.Allison Janney
She told Drew Barrymore (via Today), "I wasn't ever really confident that I wanted to have kids, and I would rather regret not having kids than have kids and regret it."
15.Marisa Tomei
She told Glamour UK that she “[doesn’t] know why women need to have children to be seen as complete human beings.”
16.Tracee Ellis Ross
She told Marie Claire, "Our society spoon-feeds it to you. I used to put myself to sleep dreaming of my wedding, and I would still love all of that, but what am I going to do, just sit around waiting? Shut up. I’ve got so many things to do.”
17.Rachael Ray
She told People magazine, "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 actually took the time to literally give birth to a kid right now and try and juggle everything I’m doing."
18.And lastly, Jennifer Aniston
She wrote for HuffPost, "We are complete with or without a mate, with or without a child. We get to decide for ourselves what is beautiful when it comes to our bodies. That decision is ours and ours alone."
