Oscar winning actress Helen Mirren has always had to deal with the 'having no children' question, and in a recent interview with Vogue, she remarks that it wasn't women who bugged her about it, but that “it was only boring old men. And whenever they went; 'What? No children? Well, you’d better get on with it, old girl,’ I’d say 'No! F--- off!’”
Previously, Mirren (67) has remarked brusquely on the subject saying, “I have no maternal instinct whatsoever,” stating that, “motherhood holds no interest for me.” However, in this latest interview, Mirren, who has been married for 15 years, says in reality she always presumed she would be a mother, saying “It 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.”
In Ireland, the census figures show that there are 460,287 single women in Ireland who have not had children, with almost 100,000 women are over 40, single and have never given birth. It is estimated that one in five young Irish women will not have children. Of married couples in Ireland, there are 344,944 on the census listed as not having children.
There are many factors influencing this shift in the traditional family set up, and yet the need to question women on their reasons still remains, which isn't always fair.
