Why did Gloria Steinem not have children? World-famous feminist revealed reason for not having kids six years before death

Gloria Steinem has died at ninety-two. The woman who became the face of America's women's liberation movement had, almost six years before her passing, opened up about one of the more personal chapters of her life, sitting down with Elizabeth Day on the How To Fail podcast, where the conversation turned to something she had rarely addressed directly. As per a report shared by Stylist, Gloria Steinem spoke candidly about never having biological children, and why the word "decision" never quite fit.

"It wasn't a decision in the beginning: remember I was growing up in the 1950s, not even the 60s, so I assumed women had to marry and have children, that there wasn't an option," she explained.

She kept deferring it, she said.

"There were a lot of years that I just kept putting it off into the future, 'Oh yes I'm going to do that, just not at this moment'. Fortunately, the women's movement came along and said 'wait a minute not all women have to live the same way: you have a choice'," she added.

Gloria Steinem was married once, to British activist and businessman David Bale. Through that marriage she became the stepmother to his four adult children, including Batman Begins actor Christian Bale.

Gloria Steinem on why she changed her mind about marriage after years of speaking against it:

For someone who had spent years publicly dismissing marriage, Gloria Steinem's own wedding came as a surprise to many. The co-founder of Ms. magazine married South African-born entrepreneur David Bale in rural Oklahoma in 2000, when she was sixty-six years old.

As per a report shared by CBS News, the small ceremony took place at sunrise at the Adair County home of Wilma Mankiller, the former chief of the Cherokee Nation and a close friend of Steinem's. It was conducted by an Oklahoma judge alongside Cherokee spiritual person Charlie Soap, who happened to be Mankiller's husband.

Gloria Steinem had been vocal about her reservations regarding marriage long before she walked into one. Back in 1987, she had made her position fairly clear.

"I don't think marriage has a good name. Legally speaking, it was designed for a person-and-a-half. You became a semi-non-person when you got married," she said.

Yet when the moment came, she embraced it. In a release issued by Voters for Choice, a political action committee she helped create, Steinem addressed the apparent contradiction.

"Though I've worked many years to make marriage more equal, I never expected to take advantage of it myself," she shared.

She then added something that cut to the heart of what she had always believed feminism stood for.

"I'm happy, surprised and one day will write about it, but for now, I hope this proves what feminists have always said, that feminism is about the ability to choose what's right at each time of our lives."

Gloria Steinem's life before fame, from a difficult childhood to the exposé that launched her career:

Born on March twenty-fifth, 1934, in Toledo, Ohio, Gloria Steinem had anything but an easy start. She did not attend school full-time until she was twelve years old, and life at home was far from stable. After university, a research scholarship took her to India in the late 1950s, where she spent two years working in various capacities, including supporting village women in organizing peaceful demonstrations against government policies. As per a report shared by BBC, it was that time on the ground that first sparked her deep interest in grassroots activism.

Trending

The Moving Beyond Words author arrived in New York City in the early 1960s with freelance writing ambitions, and it was an undercover investigation into the working conditions of Playboy Bunnies that put her name firmly on the map. A column at New York Magazine followed, before she co-founded Ms. magazine in 1972, which grew into one of the most recognized feminist publications in the country.

The 1970s brought Steinem to the forefront of the fight for reproductive rights, a cause she understood on a deeply personal level, having undergone an illegal abortion in London at twenty-two. She celebrated the Supreme Court's Roe v Wade ruling in 1973, which gave women the constitutional right to abortion, though she also lived long enough to witness its reversal nearly half a century later.

×

Was this article helpful?

Thank You for feedback