In her role as Kate Pearson on the family dramedy This Is Us, Chrissy Metz is learning a lot about what it’s like to want to be a parent and encountering obstacles along the way to reaching that goal. However, she admitted in a new interview that she isn’t quite ready to be a mom herself just yet.
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“I have a huge family and I taught preschool. I love children and they are the funniest, most magnificent creatures,” she told Us Weekly on the Nov. 7 episode of their podcast, Watch With Us. She also noted that liking kids doesn’t necessarily mean she’s ready to have kids of her own right now.
“But I can’t even keep a succulent alive, so I’m concerned that should these thoughts and desires come about, that whether I do it conventionally or unconventionally, who knows?” Metz said. “I just feel like a baby myself. I need to nurture myself first before I could do that to another human being.”
https://media.giphy.com/media/ZxbrLkEOcauZFWVKok/giphy.gifMetz’s This Is Us storyline in season three closely follows her and Toby’s pursuit to conceive a child of their own. However, Kate is struggling to conceive through IVF treatments, partially due to her weight, which Metz said has given her some perspective on how tough conceiving through IVF can be, especially when it feels like there are too many obstacles to overcome.
“What I love is that [the writers] touch on this feeling of inadequacy because you feel, like, ‘Oh, I’m a woman who can’t have a baby naturally and I have to do this and I have to do that.’” she said. “But sometimes, that’s just the case and it’s not personal and you’re not broken. I think a really important message to convey is that it might not be a conventional way to start a family, but it’s a possible way and I know people whose lives have been completely changed for the better because of it.”
https://media.giphy.com/media/CjVjgJ0tG47dM5IC1O/giphy.gifAccording to a 2017 report from the U.S. Society of Assisted Reproductive Technology, approximately 1 million babies were born in the U.S. between 1987 and 2015 through the use of IVF or other assisted reproductive technology. These include egg and sperm donors or adopted embryos.
Metz noted in her interview with Us that not everyone is meant to have children, and not all people with uteruses give birth: “That’s why adoption’s also a storyline in this show, and fostering,” she said. “There’s so many other ways that you can be a parent. But it’s not because you’re broken or inadequate, but just some different journeys.”
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A great thing about This Is Us is the way it tackles these real-life topics — and even if Metz isn’t quite ready to upgrade from raising succulents, at least she can be prepared through her research for her role if she does decide to pursue parenthood herself.
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