Chelsea Handler isn’t joking when she says she doesn’t want kids, and it’s time to stop asking her (and anyone else!) if they have changed their minds.
The 47-year-old comedian has been vocal in the past about her choice to be child-free. In an appearance on The View this week, she said she still gets asked if she’s “sure” about this decision.
“I’m sure,” she said.
Hopefully for the last time.
As her co-hosts talked about older celebrities who have had kids, Whoopi Goldberg jumped in to say, “Chelsea Handler doesn’t want any kids, and why are you making it your business? Ask her how she is. Ask her how her dogs are. Don’t ask her if she wants kids. The answer is NO.”
Handler talks candidly about this decision in her new Netflix special, Revolution, saying it’s important to know if you don’t have the skills to raise a baby. For instance, Handler has said that patience “isn’t her strong suit”—a pretty key part of parenting. But it’s ok to embrace your shortcomings, she said.
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“Instead of shaming people we should say, ‘Oh good, good for you for knowing that you shouldn’t have a baby!’” Handler said in Revolution.
Handler spoke on TODAY this week and said she wants to see more representation for “people in this world that just want to be living their lives, and live out loud, and loving hard without a family and without that kind of societal construct.”
Having a baby shouldn’t be considered the “next step” and something people have to do, she said. Instead, she encourages them to take this decision seriously and remember that they are “not defined by the children they bring into the world.”
“People need to really want to become a mom. Honestly, it should be hard to become a parent,” Handler reportedly told Gwyneth Paltrow at the In Goop Health Summit in 2018.
Naysayers may believe that Handler must simply not like kids, but she told TODAY that she loves being an aunt and that she “crushes” that role.
“I’m texting with them all the time,” she said. “I’m teaching them about consent. I’m on it — and that’s my bandwidth.”
She’s not only there for children in her family, but also for those she does not (and likely will not) know. In a September 2022 episode of her podcast, Dear Chelsea, she said she is able to give so much to children around the world because she isn’t a mom.
“I’m able to send strangers to college. I’m able to support kids that I’ll never meet, in countries that I’ll never even visit. But I’m able to give so much because I don’t have my own family. And to me, that is my purpose. I would be a sh*tty mother. I would be selfish. I would want everything to be great for my kid and forget about all the other kids in the world.”
And that should be that. Well, really, that should have been that from the beginning. Handler is “sick” of the questions, just like all people who decide to be child-free must be.
“The feedback from women has been great because apparently I’m not the only person who feels this way” she said.
Not by a long shot. A 2021 study by the Pew Research Center shows that 23% of childless adults in the United States say it is not likely that they will have children, and of those, 56% say they “just don’t want to.”
So there’s your answer. There’s no longer (and never has been) a reason to ask Handler — or anyone else.
These childfree celebs have been open about why they don’t want kids.
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