Stevie Nicks' personal and professional life has made headlines for decades. From her time in Fleetwood Mac to her solo career and everything in between, people just can't seem to get enough of the Gold Dust Woman. Another thing they just can't seem to get enough of is trying to figure out why she never had kids, especially when she had the opportunity. We dive deep into the singer's deeply personal decision and her secret to finding happiness as a single woman below.
Stevie Nicks on why she chose music over motherhood
Throughout her career, Nicks has never shied away from discussing her decision not to have kids, and she always credits it to one thing: Fleetwood Mac.
"I couldn't have really done both. Now, many women can do both. I'm not saying it can't be done," she said in 2001. "For me, I knew that if I had a baby, I would have to take care of that baby, and I wouldn't have been happy with a nanny taking care of my baby and walking into the room and having my child run across the room to another woman."
"I am very jealous, and I would have hated that. So under those circumstances, if I couldn't be a great mom, then I decided it would be better not to and to go ahead and do what I do, write my songs and try to help people that way."
Nicks's late best friend and former bandmate Christine McVie felt the same way and often opened up about their joint decision.
"It was a case of one or the other, and Stevie would say the same. The lads went off and had children but for Stevie and I, it was a bit difficult to do that." the keyboardist said in 2001.
Even after Fleetwood Mac went their separate ways, Nicks and McVie remained super close up until the latter's death in 2022.
Stevie Nicks says not having her baby was the right choice for her career
Another thing Nicks has always been open and honest about is her decision to have an abortion in 1979.
"I got pregnant, and it was like, 'Why? I have an IUD. I am totally protected. I have a great gynecologist. How come this has happened? What the heck?'" the singer said in 2024. "I'm like, 'This can't be happening.' Fleetwood Mac is three years in. And it's big. And we're going into our third album. It was like, 'Oh no, no, no, no, no, no.'"
During this time, Nicks was seeing Eagles singer Don Henley and working on releasing Fleetwood Mac's album Tusk.
"Having a child with Don Henley would not have gone over big in Fleetwood Mac, with Lindsey and me -- we had been broken up for two or three years. It would've been a nightmare scenario for me to live through," the singer revealed.
"And you know what? If people want to be mad at me, be mad at me," she said. "I don't care. Had I made the other choice, had I gone the other way, I'd have been a great mom. [But] I went this way, and I've done great."
Another reason the singer chose not to have that child was because of her drug addiction.
"There were a lot of drugs. I was doing a lot of drugs... I would have had to walk away," she said in 2020. "There's just no way that I could have had a child then, working as hard as we worked constantly,"
"I knew that the music we were going to bring to the world was going to heal so many people's hearts and make people so happy. And I thought, 'You know what? That's really important. There's not another band in the world that has two lead women singers, two lead women writers.' That was my world's mission."
Earlier this year, Nicks released a song called "The Lighthouse" to show her support for women like her who have decided to exercise their right to choose. She has since performed it on Saturday Night Live and released a music video.
"I wrote this song a few months after Roe v. Wade was overturned. It seemed like overnight, people were saying, 'What can we, as a collective force, do about this? For me, it was to write a song," the singer wrote on Instagram. "It took a while, because I was on the road. Then, early one morning, I was watching the news on TV and a certain newscaster said something that felt like she was talking to me -- explaining what the loss of Roe v. Wade would come to mean. I wrote the song the next morning and recorded it that night."
"That was September 6, 2022. I have been working on it ever since. I have often said to myself, 'This may be the most important thing I ever do. To stand up for the women of the United States and their daughters and granddaughters -- and the men that love them.'"
Despite her turbulent dating history in the 1970s and 1980s, Nicks has been famously single for quite a while, something that she is more than fine with.
"It would be fun if I could find a boyfriend who understood my life and didn't get his feelings hurt because I'm always a phone call away from having to leave in two hours for New York or a phone call away from having to do interviews all day long," the singer said in 2014. "It's not very much fun to be Mr. Stevie Nicks."
"If it were to happen to me, I'd be thrilled. But when I'm 90 years old and sitting in a gloriously beautiful beach house somewhere on this planet with five or six Chinese Crested Yorkies, surrounded by all my goddaughters who will at that point be middle-aged, I'll be just as happy."