(Michael Buckner/Getty Images)
Joy Bryant is an American actress. She is best known for her role as Jasmine Trussell, a mother in the popular television series Parenthood. And although she loves children and has enjoyed playing the role of mother – not once, but five times throughout her career – she is personally not interested in having children of her own.
“If one more person asks me if and when I’m going to have children, or tries to convince me that I should, or gives me unsolicited advice, I will … exhale. I will politely tell them to mind their own business,” Bryant said recently in a letter to the online newsletter Lenny.
SEE ALSO: Angelina Jolie: “I never wanted children”
Bryant goes on to say that she is tired of people constantly telling her to have children.
“I know people don’t mean any harm, but this really shouldn’t be an issue at all because what I do or don’t do with my uterus should be nobody’s business but my husband’s.”
To put it simply: “I have no desire to reproduce.”
One of Bryant’s favorite justifications is when people tell her what wonderful children she will have.
“I mean, they look at me and my tall, handsome husband, the stuntman, and they just can’t understand why we would intentionally waste such high-quality eggs and sperm, the selfish people that we are.”
Bryant with her husband Dave Pope. (Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for Muscle Milk)
“I guess I’m the egoist because I refuse to be the vessel through which humanity is redeemed from its mediocrity.”
SEE ALSO: Meet the woman who is ‘allergic’ to pregnancy
Another reason given is that she played a mother on television for years.
“The role of mother did not awaken in me the desire to become a mother,” she says.
“You think I was good at pretending to be a mother? Thanks. That means I was good at my job. I just take that as a compliment.”
But some of these comments also hurt. She goes on to say that when people suggest that she should just give her husband has a baby, which hurts a little.
“Because it’s so simple,” she says. “It doesn’t matter what I feel, want or need, I should just give him a baby like it’s a blow job. We’re talking about a human being who should be wanted by the people who created him.”
She also feels hurt when people refer to her biological clock. The 41-year-old actress says: “The big biological clock you see dangling from my neck ran out of batteries a long time ago; the rope it hangs from has come loose. I wear this watch for fashion reasons, not for practical reasons. And yet I know what time it is. Stop watching me.”
(Instagram/joybeezy)
But her biggest frustration is that it’s backwards to even be asked this question. Women have been fighting for their right to choose for decades, and yet she is criticized when she chooses to exercise that right.
SEE ALSO: Are celebrity bodies physically accessible after pregnancy?
“Motherhood, in all its beautiful meaning, is a job I don’t want. It doesn’t matter how great my resume is or how many glowing recommendations I get. I don’t need to be a mother to be fulfilled in my life.”
“We don’t automatically have to have children. My womb doesn’t belong to the world. It doesn’t even belong to my husband. It belongs to me and me alone, and my womb should be free to live life as MY nature intended.”
What do you think of Joy Bryant’s open letter? Let us know your thoughts by tweeting to @YahooStyleCA.
