Parenting & Family Quote by Lara Flynn Boyle

Boyle’s line lands like a polite confession with a blade tucked inside: it’s not about hating commitment, it’s about refusing the cultural assumption that a woman’s “real” adulthood is sealed by choosing one lifelong role - wife, mother, or both. By pairing “children” and “men” in the same breath, she flattens two institutions that are usually treated as separate moral tests. It’s a sly equalizer: romance and motherhood aren’t sacred callings here, they’re relationships that demand time, identity, and permanence.

The subtext is pragmatic, almost unsentimental. “I love” does the softening work, pre-empting the predictable backlash (cold, selfish, damaged) before it arrives. Then “can’t commit” reframes the issue as capacity, not deficiency. She isn’t claiming men are terrible or children are burdens; she’s saying lifelong exclusivity is a big ask, and wanting flexibility shouldn’t require an apology tour.

Context matters: a working actress in the late 1990s/early 2000s celebrity ecosystem was expected to be legible. The press still asked women to narrate their choices as destiny, not logistics. Boyle resists that script with a punchy, quotable sentence that reads like tabloid bait but functions as boundary-setting. It’s also quietly modern: commitment isn’t dismissed, it’s demoted from mandatory to optional, a negotiated contract rather than a moral finish line.