Joy Bryant Wants Everyone To Stop Telling Her To Have Kids

PSA: A woman's choice to not have children is no one's business but her own.

And that's exactly what actress Joy Bryant is telling everyone in her essay "Stop Telling Me I Should Have Kids" featured in Tuesday morning's edition of Lenny Letter.

The 41-year-old "Parenthood" actress is sick and tired of people constantly asking her why she never had children. "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," writes Bryant, who married husband David Pope in 2008.

She lists all the reasons people tell her she needs to have children: "But you’ll have beautiful children," "But you’ll be such a good mother," "But you were such a good mom on 'Parenthood'" -- and on and on the list goes.

And Bryant has only one thing to say to all of these prying inquiries: "I don’t have the need to breed." She explained why motherhood is simply not for her -- and why that's absolutely fine:

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. I am choosing to put my life energies into pursuing all that my heart desires: designing clothes, writing, traveling, developing projects to produce. Choice. Isn’t that what we’re fighting for? Having the choice, the freedom to decide how we want to live our lives?

The childfree actress explained definitively that women are not "automatic breeders" and should never be treated as such. "My womb doesn’t belong to the world. It doesn't even belong to my husband. It is mine and mine alone," Bryant wrote. "And my womb should be free to live life as MY nature intended. And if that doesn’t include a child, that’s OK, because I've got plenty of love to give, and plenty of plans to help make the world a better place through something other than my offspring."

Bryant left off on a powerful feminist note: "To each her own."

Head over to Lenny Letter to read Bryant's full essay.