Julie Bishop’s revealed why she never had kids. Does it really matter?

It’s the kind of story you’re very unlikely to read about a male politician, CEO, celebrity or indeed any man with a high public profile. A whole piece on why they don’t have children.

Yet there is such a story about Julie Bishop, and on first reading it doesn’t seem so very unusual – possibly because we’re used to expecting women to have had children, and if not, to profess a great longing for one or a sadness that they didn’t have one.

But stepping back from the piece about Australia’s foreign minister – headlined ‘Foreign Minister Julie Bishop reveals why she never had children’ –  and looking at it in an abstract way, it does raise the question of whether this interest in her childlessness is fair. And it does seem a bit strange that it’s even a story, when it very likely wouldn’t be if she was a man – maybe because generations of expectations of women don’t die easily.

Of course, the story appeared in Kidspot, a site aimed squarely at mothers, so it’s no surprise that the topic of children would be the focus of an interview. So maybe the slight strangeness comes instead from the fact that the story pointedly notes that Bishop has been in a number of long-term relationships and even married, as if that makes her childlessness a particularly unusual choice (not that lack of a marriage or long-term relationship ever stopped a woman from having a baby if she wished).

Or maybe it’s Bishop’s refusal to fit into the stereotype of the career woman who later mourns her decision to focus on work, not family life. Or the one of the woman who tried so very hard but was unable to have children. Instead, she just says that she expected to have kids and never made a decision not to, but that that’s just how her life turned out. 

“At 37, that’s when I decided to go off to Harvard and did all these things, and it was very much about what I wanted to achieve in my life,” she told Kidspot. “The window closes pretty quickly at 40. So politics is pretty much my life. I feel incredibly lucky that I’ve had the kind of career that is so consuming that I don’t feel I have a void in my life.”

It’s not the first time the 61-year-old has declined to be unhappy over not having had children. In 2013 she said she had never been grieved over it and now saw “no point lamenting what was or what could have been”.

It’s unlikely Bishop would be surprised by the interest in her childlessness, or that it may cause some people to consider her unusual or even less likeable or admirable than she would’ve been had she had kids. After all, Liberal senator Bill Heffernan said that former PM Julia Gillard was unfit to lead the country because she was “deliberately barren” and Liberal Senator George Brandis called her “very much a one-dimensional person” because she had “chosen not to be a parent”.

But regardless of whether the interest is to be expected, is it right? Should we stop having these expectations of high-profile women? And even if we should, can we?

(A related issue that Starts at 60 is by no means innocent of is an interest in high-profile women’s attire and appearance – perhaps because the world still is a stage when it comes to women and beautiful dresses and few women, no matter how accomplished they may be in other fields, choose not to dress as nicely as possible when the occasion demands it. As long as commentary about their achievements and professional moves is just as common as that on their outfits, it may be less problematic – although it’s hard to tell.)

Perhaps there isn’t an immediate answer to this, and instead interest in such matters will slowly decline (after all, women with one or no children are becoming more common with every generation in the western world). In the meantime, it’s probably safe to say that Julie Bishop isn’t losing any sleep over it.

Do you think the interest in famous women without children is natural? Do you think it’ll be less of a talking point in future? Should we ask the same question of high-profile men who remain childless?