Anna Kendrick And The Double Standard Of Childless Men And Women

On more than one occasion, “Pitch Perfect” actor Anna Kendrick has said that she’s fine with not having kids.

“Motherhood isn’t for me,” she wrote in her 2016 memoir, “Scrappy Little Nobody.”

In an interview with the magazine Flow Space published earlier this week, Kendrick, 39, was asked if she still holds that stance ― and she smartly redirected the conversation. Instead of saying “No, I’m still good on that,” she discussed the double standard that exists between child-free men and child-free women.

“I was thinking recently about a phrase I’ve heard men say about their desire to have children in the future, and it occurred to me: I don’t think I’ve ever heard a woman say that,” Kendrick said. “The thing they’ll say is, ‘Yeah, maybe one day — a couple of kids running around.’”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard a woman say that!” she told the magazine. “Because it paints a certain visual, yes? That you [as a man] come home at the end of your workday, and you put down your proverbial briefcase, and you’re making yourself a cocktail, and a woman in a Laura Ashley dress is out in the yard, and there’s a couple of kids — in white! — running around.”

Painting this very Don Draper scene, Kendrick said she wonders: “Where are you in that [equation], sir?”

“It’s like when I hear husbands say they want to ‘help out’ with the kids,” she continued. “It’s two working parents! And I always want to kind of say something, and then I’m just like, ‘Well, I’m the childless cat lady. I’m not gonna say shit.’” (The latter comment is, of course, a reference to Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance’s comments about “miserable” “childless cat ladies” having too much influence in the country.)

Kendrick’s remarks perfectly capture the casualness with which men are able to envision ― or not envision ― having kids, which is markedly different from how seriously women are expected to take the question.

Men talk about raising children with a certain “que sera, sera” attitude ― maybe there’ll be a few kids running around here someday, as if the men are mere passersby, and not active participants in the events of their own lives.

Of course, some of this conversation hinges on a woman’s biological clock. While women’s reproductive years have increased, 35 is often treated as the “fertility cliff” for potential mothers, and some people’s anxieties stem from…