INSPIRED by the New York Times bestseller of the same name and the first book in a series that has sold over 35 million copies worldwide, What to Expect When You’re Expecting is a hilarious and heartfelt big-screen comedy about five couples whose intertwined lives are turned upside down by the challenges of impending parenthood.
Over the moon about starting a family, TV fitness guru Jules (Cameron Diaz) and dance show star Evan (Matthew Morrison) find that their celebrity lives do not stand a chance against the surprise demands of pregnancy.
Baby-crazy author and advocate Wendy (Elizabeth Banks) gets a taste of her own militant mummy advice when pregnancy hormones ravage her body while her husband, Gary (Ben Falcone), struggles not to be outdone by his competitive alpha-Dad Ramsey (Dennis Quaid), who is expecting twins with his much younger trophy wife, Skyler (Brooklyn Decker).
Photographer Holly (Jennifer Lopez) is prepared to travel the globe to adopt a child but her husband Alex (Rodrigo Santaro) is not so sure, and tries to quiet his panic by attending a “dudes” support group, where new fathers get to tell it like it really is.
Meanwhile, rival food truck chefs Rosie (Anna Kendrick) and Marco (Chace Crawford)’s surprise hook-up results in an unexpected quandary: what to do when your first child comes before your first date?
Diaz, who is well known for her comedic roles in films such as Bad Teacher, Knight & Day and What Happens in Vegas, talks about her views of having children in a question-and-answer transcript provided by the movie’s distributor, Nusantara Edaran Filem.
Do you have a timeline in terms of when you thought you would be married and have kids?
“I thought I was going to be married and have two children by the time I was 21. I think I felt I had to model my life after my mother’s. But then, my career was starting to take off and there were still so many things I wanted to do. So that dream for me was shattered early on. After that I never put another timeline on anything in my life.”
Do you think our culture pushes motherhood and judges women who do not have kids?
“I’m sure a lot of people would expect that I would have had a child by my age. But it’s not what I’ve wanted out of my life thus far. We still live in a largely chauvinistic world. There’s a box people put themselves in, and when you live outside of it, that makes them uncomfortable; they have to look at themselves and question their own choices.”
What about pressure from your families?
“My mum would never, ever do that. She’s happy when she sees me happy. If having children and a family was something I really wanted but couldn’t manage to have, my mum would feel bad for me. But since she’s never heard me say I want a baby or husband, it’s not even a conversation between us.”
You can’t equate children with happiness. It’s right for some people and it isn’t right for others.
“I read an article in a New York magazine titled something like I Love My Children. I Hate My Life. Raising happy kids is very challenging, and there are often a lot of sacrifices that have to be made. You look at where we came from, the feminism of the 60s and 70s that basically said: ‘Women can do it all’. And slowly, women are realising: ‘Wait a minute, it’s hard to do it all’. I think whatever choice women make about having a child, in whatever capacity, there’s a reason for it. I don’t think anyone should regard those choices as good or bad. Women just have to let up on ourselves, which is really hard to do in this day and age.”
It just proves that you can’t ever predict what’s going to transform your life.
“Regardless of what you plan for, I think you have no idea what life is going to hand you. And I think the great thing is [if] you don’t expect anything, then you usually get much more than you could possibly ever imagine.”