Rachel McAdams is really, really good at staying undercover. No one even knew she was pregnant until she was about eight months along. She gave birth and nothing was ever formally announced. At some point, we got a secondhand confirmation that she welcomed a son, and we still don’t know that child’s name. Rachel likes it that way. Rachel is currently promoting Disobedience, and she chatted with the Sunday Times Magazine about motherhood and such. These are her first ever comments about her son.
Becoming a mom: “It’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me, hands down. [People say] your life is not your own any more, but I had 39 years of me, I was sick of me, I was so happy to put the focus on some other person. I waited a long time [for motherhood]. It’s just how it happened. And I didn’t want to do it before it was the right time.”
She wants to keep her son’s life private: “I want to keep his life private, even if mine isn’t. But I’m having more fun being a mum than I’ve ever had. Everything about it is interesting and exciting and inspiring to me. Even the tough days — there’s something delightful about them.”
Motherhood is chaos: “I have clothes on and that’s a good thing. I don’t even know what I’m wearing today. The shoes are held together with glue. Isn’t that sad? I need to get a life.”
What drew her to her partner/baby-daddy Jamie Linden: She told the Times she “just wanted to be with someone creative… we live such a gypsy life as actors, so [it’s great] being with someone who can be on the road as well.”
Whether she’ll have more kids: “I think there is definitely room for more.”
She did wait a long time for motherhood, and I used to wonder why she didn’t have a baby with some of her other boyfriends, especially Ryan Gosling. I was never a die-hard McGosling stan or anything, but in retrospect, don’t you still wonder why they didn’t have a baby? They were together for years (off and on). Maybe the timing wasn’t right for both of them, which is what she says: “I didn’t want to do it before it was the right time.” She waited until it was the right time for her. Which… I think a lot of women are scared to do. They feel their biological clock ticking, or they get scared by whatever dire fertility study says this week, and they feel like they should just have a baby ASAP, before they’re ready financially and psychologically.
THIS SUNDAY: Rachel McAdams talks Mean Girls and motherhood ahead of her exceptional new film, Disobedience. PLUS the most beautiful watches and jewellery to buy now, how to style teddy coats AND five people share their personal experiences of ghosting. pic.twitter.com/VP10pAwNmS
— Sunday Times Style (@TheSTStyle) November 23, 2018
Photos courtesy of Sunday Times, Backgrid and WENN.
I really like her! She is one of the few celebs who really value their privacy.
Her baby boy is so cute!
All of this ^^^ She’s one of my favorite actresses and I love that she doesn’t use her private life to promote herself, she lets her work speak for itself.
Couldn’t agree more!!
I had my second one at 39 and it was fabulous! She’s 12 now and she cannot avoid my hugs and kisses still.
Ha, I love hearing this! If all goes well I’ll be having my second at 39 too.
Gosh, I can’t wait to adopt!
she’s honestly such a delight.
Her and Ryan never had kids cause they knew they weren’t going to last. Ryan had his issues back then. People seem to forget that.
What issues?
what issues….please dish
Quite right. I mean, they tried twice to make it work, it didn’t. That’s life.
Ryan Gosling also has excellent PR (does anyone even remember his DUI?) and has really matured and stabilized himself. In an interview around La La Land, he put that stability solely on his wife and becoming a father. The guy has really changed for the better.
Love her – and Disobedience’ is a great movie.
Yes Disobedience….IS magnificent…so happy that it didn’t turn into stereotypical tripe regarding Alessandro Nivola (a fave) …and Rachel…MY GAWD!!!! Everyone and Everything should get an Oscar nomination!!!!
“I had 39 years of me, I was sick of me, I was so happy to put the focus on some other person.”
I can totally relate to this. I’m not a mom, but at 32 I understand the feeling of being sick of just being YOU and all about you as an individual.
She seems to have found fulfilment as a mom. Good for Rachel!
As a 38 year old single woman with no kids reading other women my age who talk about waiting until they are ready is heartening. The amount of fertility fear that is instilled in women – ESPECIALLY women in their thirties is annoying. Ive made a conscious choice to ignore it and let the chips fall where they may. I don’t want to feel rushed or scared into becoming a mother. If it’s meant to be it will happen.
Did you know that ideas about fertility are based on really bad research? A few years ago it was discovered that the data used to establish declining fertility was 300 years old (google something like wrong fertility research). And two weeks ago I read about groundbreaking research that led to toppling almost every idea about the way eggs get fertilized. Turns out it’s not about the fastest swimming sperms (they don’t even swim a lot) and that most work is done by the uterus. Nineteenth century doctors all based theirs ideas on male virility and female passivity and the survival of the fittest without actually bothering to check what happens during fertilisation and now everything needs to be re-assessed, like in-vitro procedures.
Good for her for not rushing just to fit into societal norms. She seems like a really sweet person and very fulfilled by motherhood.
I had my first, and only, child at 39. I didn’t exactly wait. I had never thought I wanted kids. Then, in my mid 30s, when I got married, my husband and I who had always been on the same page of “no” became “maybes”. But even as “maybes”, neither of us was like “ok, yes, let’s try”, it was more like “we are not firmly NO anymore”. Yet neither of us were ready to commit to trying…and the clock WAS ticking, but we were not worried because we were still so indecisive.
My child was a surprise, in that we were not trying, and the one and only time she could possibly have been conceived, she was.
When I see comments about fertility, I am torn. It is true that we are seeing people that are able to conceive with little intervention, later and later in life. BUT, that isn’t always going to work for everyone. So it is the kind of thing where if you know you really want kids, waiting CAN be a risk because you won’t know if you are someone with compromised fertility until you are actively trying. But at the same time, no, you shouldn’t be running out and conceiving a child on a random tinder date just because you are frightened that your eggs are limited.
It is all such a messed up situation anyway. I mean, at the end of the day, fertility issues or not, you are going to want to wait until the time is right anyway. “Right” being a relative term.
Fertility later in life is such a crapshoot. I’ve had many friends in their late 30’s that needed medical intervention to conceive. Five that I can think of off the top of my head but I know there are more. One of my closest friends, who is 37, has been trying for about 8 months I’m 10 weeks along with my second, both conceived on the first try. I’m 38 and had my first at 36. My Mom gave birth to seven kids and her Mom gave birth to six. The only reason I can think that I conceive so easily is genetics. I also didn’t really care if we had kids or not. If it happened, it happened. If not, we’d still live a very full life. I wanted to give conceiving a try but we both agreed we didn’t want medical intervention or to try for years. Maybe a relaxed attitude helps too? Which makes me feel like crap that I conceive so easily when I’m basically indifferent and my friend really, really wants to be pregnant and is doing everything she can to make it happen. I haven’t told my friend yet. I don’t know how to. Fertility is such an emotional subject. It sucks that so much of it is a women’s responsibility when we want to accomplish a full life and have children too. The window is limited, which is unfair, but also our reality.
I have to wonder if there’s a genetic component to it, too. My mom was able to get pregnant with my youngest sibling at 39 with no trouble at all, and the two of her three sisters who have kids both had them well into their late thirties and early forties. I had my first child at 34 after trying for a few months, and am now in the very early stages of pregnancy with a second, at 38, after again trying for like three months (I have to say, it gets harder to try when you already have one kid because your opportunities are limited by the presence of a small human who knows how to open doors…). And yet I have friends who had to use IVF and other interventions to get pregnant at much younger ages, too.
I find it really odd that people keep bringing up Ryan Gosling. They broke up a decade ago, and both have stated they didn’t want to have children until it was right, so clearly it wasn’t right with each other. Cutesy red carpet photos don’t make a happy relationship. And let’s respect their partners a bit, especially Eva Mendes, who seems to get a lot of crap from the public/their fans (despite her being with Gosling much longer than he ever was with Rachel- going on EIGHT years!- and having two children together).
Anyway, I love Rachel. She’s a good actress and really genuine. Unlike other celebrities, I really believe she values her privacy. I’m glad she’s happy and is protective of her child’s privacy.
She is so lovely, cute baby.
Love her dedication to protecting her son’s privacy but the comments about the baby’s father and why him were not that inspiring.