Zooey Deschanel Among Women Putting Motherhood on Hold
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Kevin Winter/Getty Images(NEW YORK) — Zooey Deschanel says she has no plans to become a mother. The New Girl star told Marie Claire in a recent interview that children are simply not her priority right now.
“That’s never been my focus,” Deschanel told the magazine. “My sister was always very motherly, babysitting and stuff. I like kids, and I like being around kids, but it was never an ambition, something, like, I need….I like working. That’s what I like doing. I like to work.”
Deschanel filed for divorce from her husband, Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard, in January. Deschanel and Gibbard were married for a little more than three years, and Deschanel said that, along with babies, dating is not a priority either right now.
“Honestly, I am just going through a divorce, so I don’t really think that’s something I want to get into now,” she said about boyfriends and dating. “I don’t have time to date. I literally — don’t have time.”
The career-versus-stay-at-home mom has been studied and debated at length. Deschanel is one of the many women who have made plans to hold off having children.
“Not everyone enjoys childrearing or feels incomplete without children in their lives,” said Dr. Jennifer Glass, a professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. “Others, like Ms. Deschanel, may have looked around at the harried lives of many (but not all) employed mothers and decided why bother?”
Glass, who is a working mom of two, said many women feel they do not have the support they need to have children and continue with careers that they may have spent decades developing.
In many professional fields, such as acting and sports, the peak years of a woman’s career success dovetail almost perfectly with the peak years of fertility. For some of these women, they may decide they want children “but just not right now because their work and romantic relationships had not gelled in a way that provided needed time and financial support for cutting back,” Glass said.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio