TV star Jane McDonald once opened up about why she didn’t have children during her previous marriage.
The Cruising with Jane McDonald star previously opened up about her “lonely marriage”. The beloved TV star was married to her manager Henrik Brixen from 1998 to 2003.
Jane McDonald on not having children
In her 2019 autobiography, Riding The Waves: My Story, Jane opened up about not having kids.
I began to feel lonely in my marriage
She wrote: “Henrik and I once talked about having children but there wasn’t room for babies in his plans for me. I began to feel lonely in my marriage.”
She also said: “Your manager is your boss and tells you what to do, what to wear and who to be, so our relationship changed. I loved him with all my heart, but felt he’d stopped looking at me as a wife. I became a product.”
This isn’t the first time Jane has opened up about her relationship with Henrik.
Jane added to Echo News in 2013: “For me, it was an easy decision to not have children, because I knew I couldn’t do both.”
Jane’s mum never ‘saw her’ having kids
In the TV star’s latest book, Let the Light In, she dived deeper into the topic, discussing how her mother couldn’t see Jane embrace her maternal side either.
In fact, she encouraged her to focus on her career instead.
Don’t feel you have to explain yourself to anyone
Jane wrote: “Mum made no secret of the fact she never envisaged me taking the traditional route and marrying and having children at a young age.
“Gran was of the same opinion, convinced from when I was a little girl that my destiny involved a lot of travel. The older I became, the more I listened to Mum and Gran’s predictions, and the more I wanted them to be true.
“Having a ring on my finger and having children in my early twenties, which was what nearly everyone did back then, my sister and brother included, was not the life I wanted or imagined I’d ever have.”
The Loose Women panelist admitted she never ‘dreamed of a big white wedding’ or imagined the names she’d one day give to her children.
She also declared: “It’s perfectly okay not to want to be a parent, and if that is not your purpose, don’t feel you have to explain yourself to anyone.”
Singer would never badmouth her ex-husband
In 2018, Jane explained why she would never speak about Henrik – who was a ship’s plumber, who later became Jane’s manager – in a bad light.
Speaking to the Mirror at the time, Jane said: “Henrik tried his very, very best and he was brilliant at what he did, but he didn’t know the industry. We’d come to a point where Henrik had made quite a few enemies and he said, ‘If I don’t leave you, you are never going to have a career.’
“And that is why I never talk about Henrik in a bad light at all because he was the one that walked out of the marriage to save my career.”
Losing her partner Ed
More recently, Jane sadly lost her fiancé Eddie Rothe in 2021. He died following a battle with lung cancer.
Speaking on her friend Kaye Adams’ podcast How To Be 60 in 2022, Jane said of her loss: “When he died, he took our future.
“I’ve got to have a different life now. And that’s taken a bit of adjusting to. But I’ll get there, because that’s what we do, we get there.”
Cruising with Jane McDonald is on January 26 at 9.30am on Channel 5
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