For at least five years, singer and television presenter Ricki-Lee Coulter has been telling us she does not want kids.
Not even a little bit. Not today, not tomorrow, and not even next Friday.
In Sunday’s Stellar magazine, Coulter said, “People on the street ask me, ‘When are you and Rich having kids?’ Stop!”
Things people who don’t want kids always hear. Post continues below.
The public response to the Australia’s Got Talent host’s decision can be summed up as follows:
Excuse me dear but we’re all struggling to understand exactly what you’re trying to say. Your four word statement “I don’t want kids” leaves a lot of room for confusion. Do you mean that you certainly DO want children, but you suffered a malfunction of the mouth and it’s all just an embarrassing misunderstanding? Or have you just not decided YET that you’d like to have kids? That’s fine, you still have time. It’s just – and don’t panic – but you appear to have said something very strange about not actually wanting children which clearly isn’t what you meant so if you’d just like to have another go at answering that question we’d all be very interested in what you have to say! Good girl.
You see, a furrowed brow has emerged across the country. Something just isn’t adding up.
Namely, that a 33-year-old married woman doesn’t want kids.
A few months after Coulter first announced in 2014 she wouldn’t be having children of her own, she appeared on Kyle and Jackie O.
Jackie O was sure to clarify that Coulter and her partner Harrison were “still on the same page”, in the same way you ask a woman who’s seven months pregnant if they’ve, maybe, changed their mind (you… don’t).
When Coulter politely responded that they were, and explained how much she loved children, but just did not want any of her own, Jackie O became even more confused.
“Tell me if I’m prying too much, but I don’t understand, then, why you wouldn’t want to have kids? If you really love kids, what’s the reason for not?” she asked.
Coulter responded, patiently, “It’s hard for people to understand, especially women, because I think a lot of women feel like maybe it’s a shallow decision or that I haven’t thought about it enough or it’s something I’m taking lightly. But it’s just something that we don’t want and it’s a personal decision.”
I imagine that it’s sort of like how I quite enjoy potato, but I do not fancy sweet potato. Not today, not tomorrow, and likely not in 10 years. “But you like potato in all its incarnations how can you not like sweet potato fries,” some might wonder, to which I reply: I just don’t f*cking want sweet potato. Got it?
This weekend, singer Miley Cyrus told Elle that she and her husband Liam Hemsworth likely wouldn’t be having children either.
The pair, who married in December last year, said their decision was based on the current state of the planet.
“We don’t want to reproduce because we know that the earth can’t handle it,” she said.
“We’re getting handed a piece-of-shit planet, and I refuse to hand that down to my child. Until I feel like my kid would live on an earth with fish in the water, I’m not bringing in another person to deal with that,” Cyrus concluded.
Wil Anderson speaks on No Filter with Mia Freedman about why he doesn’t want kids. Post continues below.
The comments on one story about Cyrus’ decision read, “She’s got a few years yet in which to change her mind and then they can always adopt,” “She would have made a wonderful mother!” and, “I predict she’ll change her mind about having children in time. Never underestimate the power of biology.”
There were no comments, it must be said, that acknowledged the part of the interview where Cyrus said it was a joint decision she made with her husband.
The fact that Hemsworth doesn’t want to bring kids into this world either was left entirely out of it.
In one weekend, there has been a great deal of confusion around Ricki-Lee Coulter and Miley Cyrus, two married women who say they don’t want children.
Whatever could their comments mean?
After reviewing their statements with a microscope, we think we’ve finally gotten to the bottom of it.
With the same assurance as women who have decided they do want babies, Coulter and Cyrus have decided they absolutely do not.
And that’s the end of the discussion. Not the beginning of it.
Top Comments
My experience is that the male partner gets off a lot easier on this issue. My husband and I made the decision to remain childfree together, well before we got married. However, he’s been asked if he was really OK about not having kids when I wasn’t present. It’s happened half a dozen times that I am aware of. I find that so annoying they think perhaps it wasn’t his choice too. They don’t seem to notice how quickly he gets bored with their children and how often he complains about places where there are too many kids.
I think that's partly to do with the fact that women are largely the final arbiters regarding whether a couple has kids or not. If she's dead against the idea, it's not as though a man can get pregnant and bear kids himself. Conversely, an ambivalent man may be easier to convince, given that it's not his body having to go through pregnancy, birth and breast feeding, and it's still considered normal and acceptable that men make very little comparative career and lifestyle changes to accommodate parenthood.
“If she's dead against the idea, it's not as though a man can get pregnant and bear kids himself. Conversely, an ambivalent man may be easier to convince…”
But the male partner can choose to marry someone else who wants kids. He is the final arbitrator on who he marries and what sort of life he wants to have. An ambivalent man doesn’t need ‘convincing’ to be childfree. If he really wanted kids – he would probably have them. Still seems to be doubt that men can make these choices for themselves without being over ruled or convinced by a woman.
My point is that ambivalence towards parenthood in men is probably quite common, but a man choosing to acquiesce to a partner's desire to have children is also likely to be common, as doing so has little *comparative* negative bearing on his lifestyle, profession and bodily autonomy - it's an "easy" concession to make. As such, I believe a significant proportion of "ambivalent" men who would otherwise be child-free often end up as fathers regardless. I don't think you see the same proportion of "ambivalent" women (or those who ultimately want to remain child-free) ending up as mothers.