Why Betty White didn’t have children? What late TV legend said about motherhood

Betty White is often fondly remembered as one of TV’s most iconic figures, thanks especially to the classic sitcom Golden Girls, playing Rose Nylund, or as the “happy homemaker” Sue Nivens in The Mary Tyler Moore Show, or even the sarcastic but lovable matriarch Elka Ostrovsky in Hot in Cleveland. But off-screen, the “First Lady of Game Shows” was fiercely independent and career-driven, and while she thrived in both her personal and professional life, motherhood never factored into it.

The actress, who passed away in December 2021 less than three weeks away from her 100th birthday, was married three times. Her first marriage was in 1945 to Air Force P-38 pilot Dick Barker, but it lasted less than a year. In fact, in her 1995 autobiography Here We Go Again, she mentioned the marriage but didn’t even include his name.

She married talent agent-turned-actor Lane Allen in 1947, but that marriage ended too in 1949 because he wanted Betty to settle down and start a family, but she didn’t. At that point, she was still trying to find consistent work post-war, finally finding success on radio with The Betty White Show in 1952 and then producing and starring in the sitcom Life with Elizabeth.

In 1963, Betty married game show host Allen Ludden, who she’d met when she was a celebrity guest on his show Password. The two were blissfully in love and remained together until his death in 1981 from stomach cancer. Through Allen, Betty experienced motherhood by acting as a stepmother to his three children from his marriage to Margaret McGloin Ludden (who’d passed away in 1961).

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As a stepmom to his children David, Martha and Sarah, Betty found immense joy. “It turned out great,” she once told People, with her The Proposal co-star Sandra Bullock once recalling to the publication: “Betty said, ‘You know what? I never had children biologically. I married someone who had three children. And how blessed I was to have those three stepchildren.'”

The Hot in Cleveland star maintained that she didn’t expressly want to devote time to having children of her own, especially not while her career was taking off. She told CBS previously: “I’ve never regretted it. I’m so compulsive about stuff, I know if I had ever gotten pregnant, of course, that would have been my whole focus.”

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“But I didn’t choose to have children because I’m focused on my career,” she continued. “And I just don’t think as compulsive as I am that I could manage both.” While biological motherhood was never high on her list of priorities, her greatest maternal instincts did emerge in her dedication to animal welfare, a passionate advocate who worked tirelessly with organizations like The Morris Animal Foundation, Los Angeles Zoo Commission and Actors and Others for Animals.

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It was reported at one point that she had up to 26 dogs, and in her 2011 book Betty & Friends, she wrote that her parents “were genuine animal nuts, and I am eternally grateful that they have passed much of that passion on to me.”