Why Jennifer Aniston is my hero
 

From the Sydney Morning Herald: (I could not agree more)

http://www.smh.com.au/news/Opinion/W...206046566.html

YES.

I love it.

Me too. Good for her!

IT seems alittle bitter or strident.

There is nothing wrong with Jennifer not wanting kids, but there is nothing wrong with Brad wanting them either.

They could adopt also . . .

Perhaps she doesn't like men and is a lesbian. Has anyone ever considered this?

-Rudey

If you don't want kids, why on earth would you adopt them?

Also, this is something that should be discussed PRIOR to marriage. While I do not understand people who want to sacrifice family for career, it is her choice. I do not think she's brave for making that choice.

It depends on whether you don't want kids at all, versus having to carry them and dealing with babyhood.

You could adopt someone older if you wanted and get the best of both worlds, a kid, and didn't have to take a time out from career.

It was discussed prior to marriage. Her situation, her opinion changed--and she has every right to change her mind.

I am the same age as she is and feel the same way. Fortunately mr. amycat is not in a rush to have kids.

It depends on whether you don't want kids at all, versus having to carry them and dealing with babyhood.

You could adopt someone older if you wanted and get the best of both worlds, a kid, and didn't have to take a time out from career.

I agree with you amy, i just don't think there is anything wrong with Brad wanting kids. The article just seems a little hostile towards Brad. And I don't know why the author made it that way.

Should brad have fought to preserve the marriage and abandoned his desire to have kids cause she didn't want them?

Good for her :)

No, there's nothing wrong with Brad for wanting them. I think what the author is trying to convey is disdain for the public's attitude that Jen is off her rocker for leaving Brad and not having his babies. Its HER CHOICE. Even on GC the pervasive attitude has been one of disdain for her. I applaud her doing what is right for herself, and, ultimately what is right for Brad.

I agree, the quickest way to ruin a marriage and have complete and utter disdain for your partner is to compromise your beliefs and life goals. Having kids doesn't often bring people to a middle ground, it usually tears them further apart.

Good for her (though, Brad, I'll have your babies!)

Here's my wacky idea and maybe it'll become the newest trend in Hollywood ;)

Brad and Jen could have a surrogate mother. Jen wouldn't have to carry the baby for 9 months, she could work on her career and leave Brad home to take care of the baby when it's born.

But I have to agree with the author here.

This article makes a good point - a lot of times, women are much more realistic about the demands of parenthood. I know that in my circle of friends, it's the women who don't want to have kids yet, not the guys.

Mr RedRose and I have had this conversation before...like many guys with the "everything will be fine" attitude, I don't think he realizes the full impact that children have on your life, especially for the mother. I think women are much more aware, and are therefore sometimes more reluctant to go into parenthood.

I'm beginning to think this is the only way I would want to have kids. I just don't want to experience pregnancy. That and having to deal w/ children. :)

Being a parent, a good parent, is difficult enough when both members of the couple want to be parents. I can't even fathom how difficult it is when one of the couple is going along with it to please his/her spouse.

Mr. KR wants a third child sosososo badly, but I am, frankly, done with birthin' babies (knocks on wood). I'm tired, dammit! :) He knows that I do the brunt of work on the homefront, so he doesn't press the issue.

Jennifer Aniston knows her mind and isn't allowing herself to be pressured in to a life-altering deciosion. I say good for her!

Throw me in front of a fire squad for saying this, but I'm sorry...I never did think Brad Pitt was hot at all. I thought that way ever since I first laid eyes on him when he was on Dallas.

Clean shaven or scruffy looking, he's not that hot.

And I will fight to the death to defend your preference, because I just don't see it, either.

As KR said, raising kids is hard enough when both parents are involved. Add resentment to having the kids and losing possible jobs, and you could get a serious "Mommy Dearest" problem going here.

I hate to see people divorce, and I hope they end up working this out, but with all of their resources, I would think there would be a better solution than this.

Sad and pitiful! if you really didn't want kids when you married you really should have explored that further... instead of 4 yrs later and absolutely ruled it out.

They are saying another reason behnd the break up is pitt and jolie had a very interesting phone conversation and jennifer heard every bit....

there is another person who has not hid the fact of wanting kids.....angelina jolie


As far as the ones on here who dog parenthood and who do not have babies....your view and yours alone......

YES, parenthood is a FT time job...its 24/7...... I don't consider it a job i consider it a lifetime committment. YES it is frustrarting and overly exhausting and when those early morning baby wake up calls hit and your feeling sucidal as one put it.......at the end of the day you lay your head down and thank god for the blessings you have and the light of your life you craddle in your arms smiles or coos at you it is all worth it and somehwere in it you muster up the energy to do it all again the next day! BUT FOR THOSE OF US WHO HAVE KIDS and for those who are against having kids...... it may be frustrating and exasperating but worth every minute of it.

Okay, I may sound like the old man here, but no, it's not her choice. It's their choice -- a decision that they are supposed to make together.

Once you are married, decisions like this no longer belong to just the husband or the wife, they belong to the husband and the wife. Does that it mean it's easy to decide together on something as important as "to have kids or not have kids" when one spouse wants them and the other doesn't? Certainly not, but many, many couples have managed to do it and have stronger marriages because of it. That's because those couples have learned that in making a decision, they have to give just as much respect to their spouse's feelings as to their own.

Yes, because your spouse should never expect or even want you to do that. At the same time, having an attitude that something like this is "my" decision rather than "our" decision can ruin a marriage just as quickly.

All of that said, husband may want kids, but the kids aren't there yet. Wife, whom husband vowed to be a partner to for the rest of their lives, is there already. She gets precedence over kids that may or may not come.

I get what you're saying, but no, it's not their choice. She is still the one that has to carry the babies, and as the article pointed out, no matter how progressive her and Brad's relationship was or how much money she has, she will still end up doing more of the childcare than him. And so ultimately that is her choice.

Now, I perfectly support his right to divorce her if he thought kids were going to be a part of the marriage deal and later found out that they weren't. But you aren't guaranteed kids just 'cause you get married. Even if your wife originally said she wanted them, she isn't obligated to keep that opinion forever.

Personally, I think people are making a lot of jumps here:

1) That kids are even the reason for the breakup.
2) That they discussed the issue of children before marriage (if they didn't, the fault belongs to both of them, not just her).
3) That if they did, Brad has wanted kids all along. How do we know he didn't change his mind on the issue as well?
4) That Jennifer's wanted kids all along. I know she's said that to the press, but actions speak louder than words . . . plus I don't think that anyone thinks that a lot of the stuff spoken to the press about their marriage is anything more than propaganda so People magazine will report how idyllic and perfect the Pitt/Aniston marriage is blah blah blah.

Acting is a tough job to have if you decide to get pregnant. You can't just work through your pregnancy like with a normal job -- once you start showing, you're usually done. Plus you have to get back into shape before you can do any more work. And because your dollar value is based on requiring you to stay in the public eye, if you're not working, you have to push private details of your pregnancy and post-pregnancy into the media. Plus, if you don't want kids and say so straight out, that is looked at as unnatural and you lose some of your likeability, which is imperative to your job. So I don't blame her one bit if she doesn't want kids. Not to mention the fact that Brad kinda seems like he would be the kind of parent who is around for ten minutes every ten days to drop off some presents. Should she give him kids if she realizes that he won't be a good parent to them? There is a lot going on behind the scenes that we don't know about. I hardly think it's as simple as some of you are making it seem.

I think that their separation has brought out a lot of views that are pretty frightening to me. Plenty of people have insinuated that she should be subservient to him . . . . because he's HOT? How many steps away from "be subservient to him because he's the breadwinner" or "be subservient to him because he's male" are we? Or the idea that someone is obligated to have kids just because she once said she wanted them?

If Jennifer doesn't want to have kids, that's fully within her right. And if Brad wants them, there are millions of women out there who would be willing to help him out.

H - lots of respect, stud, but this thinking is just as backwards as thinking the woman should, by design, do most of the child-rearing. Do you see why? (and it's not the uber-feminist view on child birth and the woman - I actually don't disagree with that)

Lots of 'seems like..' and 'I feel..' in this thread, as well as "well, usually.." - not really my style guys.

I think the second sentence here is the true point - that's a pretty f-ed up world view (weltanshauung?), and pretty disturbing to see on such a mass level.

As for the last sentence - I don't think anyone's really claiming that since she said it once, she's locked into it, but along the same lines, the deal isn't the same as the one Brad was making, so he's out. I can feel for that, I guess - makes sense, doesn't it?

I have to agree. Jennifer, a "movie star"? She did her THING with "Friends." I don't think she's a movie maverick yet. Most of her films have "flopped" anyway. : confused:

I'm sure they are both happy with their decisions. Now, the question is, who will become Brad's "baby momma?" :D

One day, she may regret her decision, then again, maybe she won't.

Sorry, but she gave up the right for it to be her choice and hers alone when she got married, just as he gave up the right for the question of kids to his choice when he got married.

If they are going to act like married people, its their choice -- a decision they make together and where they each take into account how the other feels, what the other wants, how the decision will affect the other (especially the other who will bear the children) just as much as they take into account what they themselves want. It's something they work through together to come to a decision they can both live with.

And I agree with you that lots of people, including the writer of the article, are making lots of leaps about what's going on. Frankly, it's no body's business but theirs what happened.

My thought has always been that if one person wants kids and the other doesn't, that means they don't have kids. If you don't want kids, especially if you're a woman who has to carry them, I don't see it as an issue for compromise.

This point was discussed yesterday morning when I was watching CNN. The one guy that made that point was saying that he sees her as a very successful "small screen" actor, but doesn't see that transferring over to the large screen. He put it best when he said she's making a huge gamble on her movie career, and he doesn't think it's going to pay off.

No, I totally get this, which is why I've been saying in, say, abortion threads that people should not even have sex if they don't have similar views on the topic. I don't think a man should be forced to support a child that, if he were carrying it, he would have aborted, but the mother decided not to, etc. I think that many times we are too quick to say "oh, it's all her choice because it's her body." Now unless you failed sex ed, I think you understand that it takes two people to make a baby, so it's not entirely her choice. We need to have a better understanding of equality when it comes to pregnancy and so forth. But at the same time, men do not have an equal role to women when it comes to pregnancy, and until we can replicate "Junior" they won't. In this particular case I think that it's not just about sex. It's about respect for the other partner, which is how marriage differs from just sex in the above abortion example. It's her body that's going to get screwed up -- a body that (unlike most of the people who post on GC) is imperative to her career, and it is her career that is going to get put on hold when she gets knocked up. Not Brad's. To me, IF she doesn't want kids (which is still just an assumption at this point), and he is pushing for them despite what it will do to her body and career, it signifies a lack of respect for what she does.

Now, I know that's not exactly what I argued above, and I see what you're getting at, but I think accidental pregnancy and intentional pregnancy are kind of different animals. If it's just sex, more equality in choosing the outcome should be a given. But if it's tangled up in love and marriage and all that, I think that more weight should be placed on the intentions for pregnancy. And if what the article is claiming is true, it sounds like Brad just wants kids because he thinks they'd be fun, whereas Jennifer has some very good reasons for not wanting to be pregnant, which is why I'm inclined to say that this is HER choice. If he had a good reason for wanting to have children (like, I don't know, creating a small army of children to take over countries) and she was just saying no for the hell of it, then I would be more likely to say that she's not giving him enough choice in the matter. Clarified?


But then again, besides the whole army thing, I don't really think there are any "good" reasons to have children beyond the selfish ones, and as a woman I think there are plenty of reasons not to, so I'm probably biased in this respect.

Why would it? To me she is not someone I see fitting into too many different roles. I see her fitting into Rachel type roles. It's like Kramer from Seinfeld. I can't connect with him if he's playing in Schindler's List part II.

-Rudey

I know you weren't responding directly to me, but I'll say yes, it clarified your position for me, and I don't think we're that far off from each other.

I was just taking it a step further to say that in marriage -- or at least, in a healthy marriage -- the husband and wife would work through all of the points you made, would do so with respect for the other and other's needs and feelings, and would attempt to arrive at a decision they can both live with and where neither spouse would risk carrying resentment because the other spouse "acted like this was all his/her decision." It can be very difficult to find that common decision that both can live with, but it's not impossible and, if the two people are committed enough to the marriage and to each other, they will probably consider it necessary to keep working on it until they do reach that common ground.

Very true . . . now the part that I was referring to earlier is where you implicitly carried this over into child rearing - and it's not at all 'obvious' why it is implicit, nor is it necessary, though it may be traditional. I don't know if that was an intentional extension, but I don't really jive with it as much as I do with everything else you posted (which is par for the course, for me).

AGAIN, -- what if she simply CHANGED HER MIND. I've personally heard her say she wanted to have kids at a party maybe 2 years ago... So at one point she did, or thought she did.

But what if she changed her mind? That IS her right. Brad does not own her, he's her partner. So if Jen did not want to have kids (or not have them right now) it IS her choice ultimately. Yes as a couple it would be an issue they'd deal with together, but in the end, what's he going to do, forcibly impregnate her? No, it is HER choice.

I think she has a fair chance of having a movie career. Her part in "The Good Girl" was very un-Rachel and she did a good job with it. She just needs to choose the right movies/roles.

If, as it's been said, Jen changed her mind, it still doesn't give the author of that article the right to call Brad a "dunderhead." I think he truly wants children and has no doubt. He's been through lots of relationships and lots of life and he's ready to take that step where you are always thinking about someone other than yourself.

I think she's got HUGE issues as far as parenting is concerned because of her mom - some of my friends are the same way. They don't want to have kids because they don't want to make those mistakes. But I don't think you should let fear keep you from doing something if you really want to do it.

As far as automatically assuming that she would do most of the childcare, two words: John Lennon. Obviously that is not the same situation, but the fact remains that he was his son's primary caregiver the first 5 years of his life.

I just feel bad for Jen sometimes, even though I faithfully have been researching and reading every single snippet that comes out, about how we're folllowing her every move. Her separation is so public. That must blow.

She's not my hero, but if more women read this and realize that they don't have to breed if they don't want to, then it can only be a good thing. ;)

After reading the article, I say, good for her!!

( But, I don't hide my lack of desire for kids, either...)