Joy Bryant wants everyone to stop telling her to have kids
(Michael Buckner/Getty Images)
Joy Bryant is an American actress. She’s best known for her role as Jasmine Trussell, a mother on the popular TV show “Parenthood.” And while she loves kids and has enjoyed playing the role of mother – not just once, but five times throughout the course of her career – personally, she isn’t interested in having any 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 offers their unsolicited advice, I’m gonna, I’m gonna … Exhale. I’m going to politely tell them to mind their own business,” Bryant said in a recent letter to online newsletter Lenny.
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Bryant goes on to say that she’s sick of people constantly telling her that she should have kids.
“I know people don’t mean any harm, but this really shouldn’t be an issue at all, because what I choose to do or not do with my womb should be of no concern to anyone but my husband.”
To put it simply, “I don’t have the need to breed.”
One of Bryant’s favourite justifications, is when people tell her what beautiful children she will have.
“I mean, they look at me and my tall, handsome stuntman husband and can’t wrap their brains around why we would purposely waste such prime eggs and sperm, the selfish people we are.”
Bryant with her husband, Dave Pope. (Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for Muscle Milk)
“I guess I’m the selfish one, because I refuse to be the vessel through which mankind is delivered from its mediocrity.”
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People also use the justification that she has played a mother on TV for years.
“Playing mom didn’t make me want to be a mom,” she says.
“You think I was good at pretend mom? Thank you. That means I was good at my job. I’ll just take this one as a compliment.”
But some of these comments also hurt. She goes on to say that when people suggest she should just give her husband a baby, it stings a little.
“Because it’s just that 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 are talking about a human being who should be wanted by the people who created her.”
She also feels burned when people reference her biological clock. The 41-year-old actress says, “that big biological clock you see dangling from my neck ran out of batteries a long time ago; the rope from which it hangs has loosened its grip. I rock this clock for fashion, not function. And yet I still know what time it is. Stop clocking me.”
(Instagram/joybeezy)
But her biggest frustration lies in the backwardness of being asked this question in the first place. Women have been fighting for their right to choice for decades, and yet, when she chooses to exercise that right, she is criticized.
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“Motherhood, in all its beautiful significance, is a job I do not want. It doesn’t matter how great my résumé is or how many glowing recommendations I receive. I don’t need to be a mother in order to be fulfilled in my life.”
“We don’t have to be automatic breeders. My womb doesn’t belong to the world. It doesn’t even belong to my husband. It is mine and mine alone, and my womb should be free to live life as MY nature intended.”
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