Supermodels Tearfully Reveal Fertility Struggles

Supermodels Tyra Banks and Chrissy Teigen are opening up publicly about their struggles with infertility.

The co-hosts of the talk show FabLife share an emotional moment in an upcoming episode, each revealing her frustration with the question every woman hates: When are you going to have kids?

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In a clip from Monday’s show, Teigen reveals that she and her husband, singer John Legend, who have been married for two years, have been trying to conceive for some time. “I will say, honestly, John and I were having trouble,” Teigen says. “We would have had kids five, six years ago if it happened. But my God, it’s been a process. We’ve seen fertility doctors.”

It’s a very personal struggle, but one that Teigen says people ask about all the time. “The questions come from all over. It’s crazy because I can’t imagine being that nosy to be like, ‘So when are the kids coming?’ because who knows what someone is going through?” Teigen says. “Who knows if someone is struggling to have children?”

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In a tearful moment, Banks shares her own emotional struggles. “I’m so tired of seeing on my social media, ‘Why don’t you have kids?’ You don’t know. You don’t know what I’m going through, you have no idea,” she says. “When I was 23 years old I used to tell myself, ‘In three years, I’m going to have kids.’ Then I turned 24 — ‘In three years, I’m going to have kids.’ And every single year I kept saying that, and then after a while it’s like, ‘OK, now I want to,’ and it’s not so easy.”

The “when are you going to start a family?” question is one that people should drop altogether, Teigen says. “Anytime somebody asks me if I’m going to have kids, I’m like, ‘One day you are going to ask that to the wrong girl, who is really struggling, and it’s going to be really hurtful to them,’” she says. “I hate that. I hate it! Stop asking me!”

Dr. Lisa Rouff, a psychologist who specializes in infertility, says plenty of women share similar frustrations. “People who don’t have any struggles or issues of infertility need to be more aware that that’s a loaded question,” she tells Yahoo Parenting. “It’s a very private and personal thing that can cause anxiety.”

These personal questions are even more common today than they were 10 or 15 years ago, Rouff says. “Our culture is fetishistic about pregnancy,” she says. “There’s this constant focus on celebrity pregnancy and baby bumps, and it’s a way people use to evaluate worth, which I hate to say, because it’s a medical thing. [Being able to have kids easily] doesn’t make you better or worse.”

And the nosy questions don’t stop there, Rouff says. Well-meaning people are constantly asking pregnant women if they were “trying” or asking women with one kid when they will have a second. “More and more people are even asking questions like, ‘Did you get pregnant naturally?’ ‘Did you use your own eggs?’” Rouff says. What those curious minds may not realize, she explains, is that “[fertility issues] are a very painful struggle for someone, who might just be trying to keep it together and function throughout their day. When you ask them these questions, you completely derail that. Maybe they don’t have the space and time and energy for this conversation and, to be honest, you don’t need that information. It’s not really relevant to anyone else’s life.”

Better than any of these inappropriate questions is a simple “What’s new?” Rouff says. “That way, if someone wants to tell you something, they will.”

For women like Teigen or Banks who are on the receiving end of constant inquiries, Rouff says there are a few coping strategies. “If it’s someone close to you, you may just want to level with them, and say, ‘Look, this is what has been going on,’” she says. “Or you make a vague comment.… But I’ve had clients just take the time to explain to someone why they shouldn’t ask the question. They say, like she did here, ‘You don’t know what other people are going through and you don’t want to unintentionally upset someone.’” Rouff says it’s helpful for women to have a strategy in place, as it’s a question that will unfortunately be asked repeatedly.

Still, Rouff says Teigen and Banks are doing women a great service by addressing these issues on their show. “For so long there has been a lot of shame around infertility,” she says. “Seeing someone else who is able to admit [to having similar problems] is very empowering for women. It gives them a language to talk about their struggles with people in their lives. It normalizes the issue, so you know it’s not just you who is quietly suffering.”

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