(LifeSiteNews) — Actress Emma Watson, who skyrocketed to fame as Hermoine in the Harry Potter series, has come out to condemn one of postmodern society’s particular cruelties: encouraging young people to get married.
“I think it’s such a violence, and it’s such a cruelty on people — especially young people, I think, and especially women,” she said on a podcast. “To make them feel like they have no worth, or like they haven’t succeeded yet in life because they haven’t forced to its culmination something that I just don’t think can or should ever be forced.”
This is a recurring complaint for Watson. “I was like, ‘Why does everyone make such a big fuss about turning 30?” she said several years ago. “This is not a big deal. … Cut to 29, and I’m like … ‘I feel so stressed and anxious.’ And I realize it’s because there is suddenly this bloody influx of subliminal messaging around. If you have not built a home, if you do not have a husband, if you do not have a baby, and you are turning 30. … There’s just this incredible amount of anxiety.”
To be scrupulously fair to Watson, she went on to say that if she had married young, she would probably be divorced by now. Considering the fact that Watson grew up in Hollywood, that might well be the case. The carousel of marriages, divorces, and adulteries amongst the celebrity elite makes normal people wonder why they bother, to begin with. But the primary cultural message to young people — especially young women — has not been: get married young and have babies.
It has been something approximating the opposite. Watson seems to be projecting her own anxieties more than anything else.
Is it “such a cruelty” to encourage young people to get married when they are young, or indeed to have children when, biologically speaking, they are most likely to arrive? I doubt Watson is referring to her fellow Hollywood superstars, but many middle-aged celebrities have admitted that their primary regrets are how they focused on their careers or partying instead of getting married and having children. Indeed, the main theme of Matthew Perry’s tragic memoir was not just addiction — it was his deep regret that he did not get married and have kids.
READ: JK Rowling rebukes pro-transgender Emma Watson for behavior while she faced death threats
His Friends co-star Jennifer Aniston has made similar comments, saying that she wished someone had told her to freeze her eggs while she was young so that she could have had children later in life. She tried multiple times using IVF and failed. Candace Bushnell, the best-selling author and creator of the show Sex and the City, one of the most influential shows encouraging young women to get rich and sleep around rather than settle down, admitted in 2019 that she now regrets choosing her career over children, and that in her sixties, she is now “truly alone.”
‘Then when I got divorced and I was in my fifties, I started to see the impact of not having children and of truly being alone. I do see that people with children have an anchor in a way that people who have no kids don’t,” Bushnell said. In other words, if she were Emma Watson’s age and could go back and do it differently, she would. Is it “cruel” to say so? Or is it cruel not to?
Al Pacino, who is now in his eighties, has said that his focus on his career during his younger years made him delay fatherhood, and that now he feels like he missed something: “I wish I’d had kids earlier. I love kids. It’s a different kind of love.” Robert DeNiro, also in his eighties, concurred: “I wish I’d settled down earlier. … Kids change everything, and I regret waiting so long.” Jack Nicholson, who is 87, has spoken out multiple times about how he regrets his philandering lifestyle. “I should’ve gotten married,” he said. “I regret not giving my kids the structure of a real home base.”
Even George Clooney, who for years held the title of Hollywood’s most eligible bachelor, has said he wishes he’d gotten married earlier, and that he “regret[s] all those years alone.” Matthew McConaughey echoed those sentiments, noting that: “I regret running from love. … I wish I’d married young and had kids right away.” Kirsten Dunst, like Aniston, said she wishes she’d “frozen my eggs at 25” and that she regrets “waiting so long for kids.”
There is something particularly cruel about an industry that uses women for their beauty when they are young and expects them to “freeze their eggs” in order to have children later, once their services as sex symbols on TV sitcoms and romantic comedies for the vicarious enjoyment of audiences of strangers has expired.
It must be emphasized that for those who wish they were married and are not, or those who struggle with infertility, can indeed feel acute pain when they feel social pressure to achieve a lifestyle they wish they had. But Watson — who was recently eviscerated by J.K. Rowling for her support of transgender ideology — is not making that case. She is claiming that encouraging young people to get married and have children is cruel. If her fellow celebrities who are older than she is and once followed her trajectory are to be believed, nothing could be further from the truth.
