It's so selfish to have children, claims Actress Maxine Peake

Maxine Peake has questioned people’s motivation for starting a family, saying: ‘Having children is very selfish.’

The actress – who recently revealed her heartache at spending years trying to conceive – said there was a ‘vanity’ in wanting to continue the family bloodline.

Miss Peake, known for her starring role in BBC legal drama Silk, explored ‘every avenue’ – including IVF – before finally accepting defeat. She also suffered the agony of two miscarriages.

Her hardships have led the 40-year-old to reflect on why people have children in the first place.

She told The Times how an actor friend had announced to her that he was too selfish to have children.

It prompted her to reply: ‘No, you’re wrong. Having children is very selfish. There is a vanity and selfishness in some respects in believing you must continue your genes and bloodline.

Miss Peake said that watching her long-term boyfriend, television art director Pawlo Wintoniuk, 43, care for both his parents before they died had also made her wonder whether it would be less selfish not to have children.

She added: ‘It made me think I wouldn’t want to have my kids looking after me like that.’ Speaking of her struggle to conceive, she said: ‘Paw loves kids and we’ve had a go.

‘But it hasn’t worked. That is the case for many people. It is maddening, really, that women have these biological clocks, that just when they are getting used to one stage, they must go on to the next.

'I am so much more creative and brave than when I was a teenager. In my forties I have this fearlessness to keep exploring. I don’t mind rolling around on the floor any more, looking a fool.’

Miss Peake said that since she went public about her infertility, several female friends had thanked her for speaking out, saying the problem was often viewed as something shameful.

‘I find that horrifying,’ she said. ‘But they felt failures as women just because certain bits of their bodies didn’t work.’

Miss Peake had a disjointed childhood. Her parents divorced and her mother moved in with a new boyfriend, leaving Miss Peake to live with her self-educated, passionately socialist step-grandfather for six years.

He worked at Leyland Motors and, despite his intelligence, had no ambition to ‘better’ himself.

However, he did influence Miss Peake’s political beliefs. At the age of 18, she joined the Communist party. Although no longer active she has left-leaning views and has just finished a radio drama about women involved in the miners’ strike.

She and Mr Wintoniuk are now exploring adoption. ‘It might involve rethinking things, because I’m away so much,’ she said.

‘But being so close to my step-grandad, I know that relationships with people unrelated by blood can be very strong.’

Miss Peake is currently starring in costume drama The Village, in which she plays a farmer’s wife who loses her son in the First World War.