Mary J. Blige has a pretty simple reason for never having children.
Blige, 51, was speaking to E! Daily Pop when she broke her silence about the reasons for never starting a family.
During her marriage to Kendu Isaacs, Blige acted as stepmother to his three children. The couple wed in 2003 and remained together until 2016 when Blige filed for divorce. The couple’s divorce was finalized in 2018.
Blige said that her divorce is a major theme of her recent album, Good Morning Gorgeous, her 15th studio effort. She was quoted by ET as saying of the album, “I couldn’t give up on myself. I had to say something that was really powerful, that I didn’t even believe, to say it to myself in the morning because who looks good in the morning?”
Scrambling for babysitters is one of the major reasons that Mary J. Blige says she remains childless
Mary J. Blige told E! Daily Pop, “I have nieces and nephews forever and I’m always watching how people are scrambling around for babysitters. I don’t want to go through that.” She added, “I like my freedom. I like being able to get up and go and move and do what I want to do. I don’t want to have to tend to someone all the time.”
Blige said that her future plans don’t include motherhood saying, “Right now that’s where I’m at – I don’t think it’s gonna happen.”
Despite not having her own children, Blige has always been active in helping others. In 2009, Blige told CNN, “I always felt that I wanted to help women, period. As a child I [saw] women really, really suffer terrible, terrible situations, and I vowed as a child to want to do something — anything — that can help them have better self-esteem so that they don’t have to be subjected to men that wanted to kill them.”
Mary J. Blige has made no secret about how tough her divorce has been
In promoting her appearance at the 2022 Super Bowl halftime show, Blige told Yahoo that due to the amount of alimony she was forced to pay $30,000 a month to her ex-husband in order to help him to maintain his lifestyle.
Mary J. Blige said, “Yes. I had to pay alimony. I was one of those girls,” she stated. “It’s me, it’s Britney [Spears], it’s Halle [Berry], Mary [J. Blige] allegedly. I was very, very angry about that. But it was because we had an existing prenup and postnup. I wanted to renege; I’m going, to be honest.” Blige referred to her ex-husband as a “con man” who was only interested in her money in a 2017 interview with Variety.
Mary J. Blige’s former stepdaughter has been open about her feelings regarding her father
Isaacs’ daughter, Briana, posted a hateful tirade against her father amid his divorce from Blige. The now-deleted post was saved by The Shade Room. In it, Briana called her father a “f*****g n***a” and a “dirt bag.”
Briana went on to accuse her father of putting money and other women before his own children. She added that her father only wanted his daughter to be around for “appearances.”
Meanwhile, Deadline reported that Blige is working with the Lifetime network to produce a movie titled Real Love. A coming of age of movie roughly based along the lines of Blige’s 1992 hit.