Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi officially became an item back in 2005, and today they're
one of Hollywood's most beloved and longest-lasting couples.
"Baby!"
"Coming."
"Alexa, turn down the thermostat."
The lovebirds married in 2008, but despite their commitment to one another, they never
had children.
In 2014, DeGeneres told People,
"Honestly, we’d probably be great parents.
But it’s a human being, and unless you think you have excellent skills and have a drive
or yearning in you to do that, the amount of work that that is and responsibility – I
wouldn’t want to screw them up!
We love our animals."
She said something similar on the Today show back in 2015:
"I love kids, but that's such a big commitment.
It seems long-term.
It seems like a commitment that you have to stick with.
And I just don't know if I can."
Of course, DeGeneres certainly has a sense of humor about the issue.
"It's, it's too risky.
Like, what if I don't like the kid?"
She goes on to say:
"What if it turns out that it's not as cute as I wanted or as talented?
I'm gonna compare it to all these kids that I have on this show that are so smart and
so funny.
And I'm like, 'You are nowhere near these kids I had on today.'"
In 2016, DeGeneres jokingly told The Daily Telegraph that they don't have kids because
of… their furniture?
As she put it:
"We talked about [having kids] for a minute, about four years into the relationship, but
we just decided we like our conversations not being interrupted and our furniture without
sticky grape juice on it."
On a more serious note, she added:
"I think in this profession it can be really tough for children.
It's hard for them to have to share their parents with the world.
I even see it with my nieces.
When we're out in public and people want to talk to me they're like, 'Why does everybody
want your time?
Why aren't you just with me?'"
Although DeGeneres has clearly considered the idea, it sounds like she and De Rossi
don't at all regret not having kids.
DeGeneres touched upon the topic during her 2018 appearance on Jerry Seinfeld's Comedians
in Cars Getting Coffee, explaining
"I thought I would have kids.
When I was younger, I really wanted to have a baby.
I thought I would adopt.
I never thought I would have a baby, but I thought I'd want kids."
When Seinfeld reminds DeGeneres that she "still could," she replies with her typical dry humor:
"No, Portia doesn't want kids.
She doesn't like the squealing when they're in a pool, that high-pitched squealing of
joy that they have."
Meanwhile, de Rossi admits that there's a lot of pressure to have kids when you're in
your thirties, telling Out magazine:
"You think, am I going to have kids so I don’t miss out on something that other people really
seem to love?
Or is it that I really genuinely want to do this with my whole heart?
I didn’t feel that my response was ‘yes’ to the latter."
She goes on to say:
"You have to really want to have kids, and neither of us did.
So it's just going to be me and Ellen and no babies — but we're the best of friends
and married life is blissful, it really is.
I've never been happier than I am right now."
And their pets clearly mean the world to them.
DeGeneres told People in 2014,
"Animals are the closest things to God."
In November 2019, Little Things reported that the couple has four dogs and three cats, and
DeGeneres also has her own wildlife fund to support endangered species around the world.
For years, DeGeneres and de Rossi have been dogged by tabloid rumors — particularly
rumors that they are, in fact, pregnant.
“It's just one big rumor that doesn't seem to go away.
And at this point I feel like I'm disappointing the whole of America.
Not just my mother."
And although you'd think these rumors would get old real fast, de Rossi says they're actually
a good thing at the end of the day.
She told Us Weekly in June 2018:
"I know it sounds ridiculous, but when that started happening I thought, 'Oh, now we're
finally accepted.'
We get the same s--t as every celebrity couple.
I thought, 'Wow, this is great that I'm pregnant, not pregnant, divorced, not divorced,' whatever.
That means there is an acceptance for this."
That's a very good point.
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