Celeb Confessions!Jennifer Aniston and More Stars Over 40 Reveal Why They Don’t Have Kids

Jennifer Aniston

"I don't like [the pressure] that people put on me, on women — that you've failed yourself as a female because you haven't procreated. I don't think it's fair. You may not have a child come out of your vagina, but that doesn't mean you aren't mothering — dogs, friends, friends' children. This continually is said about me: that I was so career-driven and focused on myself; that I don't want to be a mother, and how selfish that is." —In a 2014 Allure interview

Cameron Diaz

"It's so much more work to have children. To have lives besides your own that you are responsible for — I didn't take that on. That did make things easier for me. A baby — that's all day, every day for eighteen years… Not having a baby might really make things easier, but that doesn't make it an easy decision. I like protecting people, but I was never drawn to being a mother." —In a 2014 Esquire interview

Oprah Winfrey

"If I had kids, my kids would hate me. They would have ended up on the equivalent of The Oprah Show talking about me; because something [in my life] would have had to suffer and it would've probably been them." —In a 2013 The Hollywood Reporter interview

Portia de Rossi

"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 [Ellen DeGeneres nor I] did." —In a 2013 Out interview

Betty White

"No, I've never regretted [not having kids]. I'm so compulsive about stuff. I know that if I had ever gotten pregnant, of course, that would've been my whole focus. But I didn't choose to have children because I'm focused on my career and I don't think as compulsive as I am that I could manage both." —In a 2011 CBS Sunday Morning interview

Ashley Judd

"I figured it was selfish for us to pour our resources into making our 'own' babies when those very resources and energy could not only help children already here, but through advocacy and service transform the world into a place where no child ever needs to be born into poverty and abuse again. My belief has not changed. It is a big part of who I am." —In her 2011 book All That Is Bitter and Sweet: A Memoir

Kim Cattrall

"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." —In a 2002 O Magazine interview

Ellen DeGeneres

"[Portia de Rossi and I would] 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." —In a 2014 People essay

Lily Tomlin

"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." —In a 2006 Metro Weekly interview

Renée Zellweger

"Motherhood has never been an ambition. I don't think like that. I never have expectations like, 'When I'm 19 I'm going to do this, and by the time I've hit 25 I'm going to do that.' I just take things as they come, each day at a time, and if things happen, all well and good." —In a 2008 London Times interview

Rachael Ray

"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 took the time to literally give birth to a kid right now and try and juggle everything I'm doing." —In a 2007 People interview

Stevie Nicks

"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." —In a 2002 InStyle interview

Dolly Parton

"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-grandkids! Now I'm GeeGee, which is great-granny. I often think, it just wasn't meant for me to have kids so everybody's kids can be mine." —In a 2014 People Country interview

Helen Mirren

"It was not my destiny [to be a mother]. I kept thinking it would be, waiting for it to happen, but it never did, and I didn't care what people thought." —In a 2013 Vogue interview

Sarah Silverman

"I want to have kids when there's nothing else I want more, and I can make them my world. I figure, I'll be a super-young-grandma age when I have kids. Grandparents are way more laid-back anyway. I'll just go straight to grandmother-hood, like Diane Keaton." —In a 2010 Daily Beast interview

See these celebrities with their lookalike kids!