The Baby Quote That Got Carrie Underwood in Trouble Makes Perfect Sense
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Carrie Underwood photo via Flickr/Wikimedia Commons
Carrie Underwood is all over the tabloids this week now that she's unveiled her baby bump, but the singer has had a rough few days. She got massively trolled for saying this to Redbook:
"I'm 35, so we may have missed our chance to have a big family. We always talk about adoption and about doing it when our child or children are a little older. In the meantime, we're lucky to be a part of organizations that help kids, because our focus right now in our lives is helping as many kids as possible," Underwood said in her recent Redbook interview.
Twitter didn't miss a nanosecond to start railing at her, and comments got nasty. Here's one:
But Underwood never said 35 is too old to have kids. What she said is she thinks that's too old to have a big family, and depending on how you define "big"—also, depending on how you define "have a family"—she's not necessarily wrong. Chances are good that you can have multiple babies after 35, but if a "big family" to you means four or more children, that might be challenging. Not impossible by any stretch, depending on your own particular body and fertility and health history, but potentially challenging.
And now we all know Underwood is pregnant again (she already has a three-year-old son). She just might decide to keep having kids well into her 40s, through natural conception or IVF or any other advanced reproductive technology she opts to try. Or she might decide not to, or not be able to, for reasons we don't know and don't deserve to know if she doesn't feel like sharing.
Either way, since "having a family" also includes adoption, fostering, and multiple other methods for uniting people who plan to love and care for each other, the possibilities for Underwood, and for anyone who wants a family, are many. But her quote did seem to imply that giving birth to multiple kids after 35 isn't a given, and frankly, when it comes to individual bodies and health and fertility, nothing is a given.
Underwood did say that she and her husband, hockey player Mike Fisher, would like to adopt kids down the road, and that certainly opens up more options for having a big family.
The singer is coming off not just a tough week but a difficult year too, after a horrible accident led to facial and wrist injuries and more than 40 stitches to her face. Can we just wish her a healthy and happy pregnancy now, and leave her in peace?
