"I'm not that big a fan of marriage as an institution, and I don't know why women need to have children to be seen as complete human beings."

"I do like to work as much as I can because I don't have children, I don't have hobbies, I don't do anything else. And I'm glad that I don't have children. I have two brothers and they have plenty of children, they come to my house and I am always very glad when they leave. I have a wife, I've been married for thirty-five years, and I have some cats, but I can open the door and they go out, so it's quite nice."

"We're expected to keep the planet populated. And when that isn't a part of our plan or our purpose, there is so much judgment and anger that they try to make and change laws to force it upon you — even if you become pregnant in a violent situation," she said. "If you don't want children, people feel sorry for you, like you're a cold, heartless bitch who's not capable of love… Why are we trained that love means putting yourself second and those you love first? If you love yourself, then what? You come first."

"I don’t want that. That does not sound fun to me. There are enough kids out there. Do we need more people? Who looks at the planet right now and thinks ‘You know what we need right now? More f*****g people.’ That’s truly a confounding thing to me."

"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. Let’s make that decision for ourselves and for the young women in this world who look to us as examples. Let’s make that decision consciously, outside of the tabloid noise. We don’t need to be married or mothers to be complete. We get to determine our own 'happily ever after' for ourselves."

"It's not that I don't love children, they are funny and I just love them, but I never wanted to have them. I really tried to want it at one point. I thought maybe I should but I never convinced myself."

"I would have been a terrible mother because I'm basically a very selfish human being. Not that that has stopped most people going off and having 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!”

“I didn’t have a work ethic for such a long time. Imagine if I had a child like me? I didn’t start earning until I was 36. I’m the sort of person who has to check three times that I’ve shut the door, so I’d probably stare at a kid all day to check it was breathing.”

"This is a little personal but I'm 42 and… Well, I was talking to my dad last year and saying, 'What if I can't have a kid?' and he said, 'There are other ways to have children in your life'. That's true—and I get these amazing doses with my brother's kids. But I've got to stop listening to other people. It's crazy the stuff women will tell you."

"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."

"I love kids, but I’m very impulsive, and I was afraid that I would have children and then regret it."

"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."

"It was kind of a little of both. 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."

“I would probably have been miserable. When I talk about my mother and not wanting to echo that relationship, I think it would’ve probably been very much the same way. I would have been a stay-at-home mum, and he’d have been off, doing what he did. And that’s never really been me, either. I’m too noisy. I suck up too much air, myself.”

"I think it's really important to be present if you have children. I have a lot of... things to take care of."

"I love kids to an insane degree. Loving kids and having of your own are two different things. And the thought of having my own baby completely paralyzes me. How do people have kids so easily? It's such a huge decision." 

"That's perfectly fine for somebody who wants to. But at that time I didn't want to — and I'm glad I don't — have any children. 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. I was so involved with my career and I would have had to give up the career in large part because I could not possibly have shortchanged the child."

"It's hard work. It's hard work to balance the time I need to run myself correctly. It's hard work to be the best partner and husband I can be to my loving wife. It's hard to keep connections with those in my life that I love. And it's also hard to put in an honest day's work. This is just my perspective; I think just because you might be good at something, for me, is not strong enough reason to do that. You have to have a passion for it. You have to have a fuel for it. It's like saying to somebody, 'Man, you know, you are pretty good with your hands. You would be a great carpenter."

"I try not to listen to the shoulds or coulds, and try to get beyond expectations, peer pressure, or trying to please—and just listen. I believe all the answers are ultimately within us. When I answered those questions regarding having children, I realized that so much of the pressure I was feeling was from outside sources, and I knew I wasn't ready to take that step into motherhood."

"I think if I'd found the right guy at the right time and wanted to have kids, I probably would have with the right partner. Because 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."

"Do you mean do I want to bring children into a world like this? If it happens, it happens. I'd prefer not to get into specifics about it, just because then it becomes something that is misquoted."

"Of course I wonder what that would be like but, your destiny is your destiny and I can't imagine, if by some miracle I got pregnant… at this point in my life, I wonder, could I even manage that? It would be a lie to say there's not a bit of sadness there, but I don't get caught up in it."

"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,” she says. “Those girls fill that maternal fold that I perhaps would have had. In fact, they overfill — I’m overflowed with maternal."

"I went through that period, I’d say in my mid to late 30s into 40, where it was like, I make a great living and I could do this on my own, and I didn’t. 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."

"There comes some pressure in your mid-30s, and you think, 'Am I going to have kids so I don't miss out on something that other people really seem to love? Or is it that I really genuinely want to do this with my whole heart?' I didn't feel that my response was 'yes' to the latter. You have to really want to have kids, and neither of us did."

"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."

“I’ve always felt that way, that women, Black women especially - unless you’re Viola Davis or Angela Bassett - you have a window when people are going to want to continue to see you and see what you can do. Then there are so many limitations placed upon you, and that does keep me up. I want to do as much as I can while I still can. I know it’s not the proper mentality to think that kids will slow you down, but I do feel that way."

"I don’t know. I don’t think it’s necessarily an imperative. I’m not going to psychoanalyze myself here, but… well, never say never. I’ve got nieces and nephews and I’ve been a teacher. I’ve probably been around kids a lot more than all my friends."

"I really appreciate that other people do, and we will always have friends that have children that we are close to, but it was a choice I made very early," - Garten says. "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."

"I'm constantly asking myself questions, reminding myself, 'Are you making that decision for you or someone else?' The husband and the babies are the expectation of what's supposed to happen at a certain point, and people fall back on, 'Well, that's the point of the human species, procreation.' And I'm, like, 'I think there are a lot of babies, isn't that part of what's going wrong, there's too many?' Some people could be working on the world being a better place, or just being happy."

"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 was married to someone who was not cut-out to be a father. He could hardly take care of himself, let alone a child, so I changed my views, adapted accordingly, thought: It's okay not to have children. Now I'm just going to watch how my life unfolds and see what happens. I'm not going to be less of a person if I don't have children. It will work out the way it is supposed to."

"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!"

"I never thought like that about anything in my life, really," she said. "I've always been kind of open to whatever may be, curious to see what's next. I've never been that deliberate about my life and the things that I would require in order to be happy."

"People think that you're a nasty, selfish person if you don't want to have children," she says. She and her husband Brody Tate, consider their little furry friends their babies.

"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."

"I don’t know if I could stand that kind of commitment, or if I am really honest, I don’t think that I could handle being that vulnerable to someone else. My child would have my heart completely, and having never truly given that over, in all my relationships in my life, starting with myself, I don’t even know where to begin."

"I've thought about this a lot lately. I never thought I'd be this age and not have kids. But my life has also gone in a million ways I never anticipated. I kept feeling like I'd wake up with absolute clarity, and I haven't. And we have a pretty great life together. The chance that we'll regret it doesn't seem like a compelling enough reason to do it. I may wake up tomorrow with that lightning bolt, and I'll have to scramble to make it happen."