Originally published on 4/15/25

Actress Marilyn Monroe was married three times throughout the course of her life, yet she never had any children. Was it a personal choice?  A medical one? We take a closer look at why she made this choice and what she shared about starting a family.

What to know about actress Marilyn Monroe

Born in 1926 in Los Angeles, California, Monroe quickly rose to fame during the 1950s after moviegoers everywhere fell in love with her curly blonde hair and fun, flirty personality. 

Her first film was Dangerous Years (1947), and from there, she went on to become a household name thanks to such movies as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), The Seven Year Itch (1955), The Prince and The Showgirl (1957) and The Misfits (1961). 

Aside from her acting career, Monroe was also a model and made history by becoming the first ever covergirl and centerfold for Hugh Hefner’s magazine Playboy in 1953. 

Sadly, Monroe died in 1962 at age 36 from an accidental drug overdose, which came after a long-standing battle with depression, anxiety and drug abuse. 

Marilyn Monroe’s husbands 

Given how beautiful and sultry she was, it only makes sense that Monroe was married multiple times. 

First, there was James Dougherty, who she married in 1942 at age 16 under her birth name Norma Jean Baker. Dougherty was 20 years old and working as a Merchant Marine at the time of their union. 

Following their ceremony, Monroe dropped out of school and decided to spend all of her time working as a housewife, but found it quite boring–which makes sense given her adventurous spirit. She then began trying to pursue an acting career, and once she slowly began to find success, Monroe divorced Dougherty in 1946, changed her name and left the housewife life behind. 

Six years after her first divorce, Monroe entered into a very passionate relationship with New York Yankees player Joe DiMaggio in 1952. Two years later, Monroe and DiMaggio got married, and while it might have seemed like the perfect love story, things went south really quickly. 

DiMaggio was reportedly very aggressive, jealous and possessive and often told Monroe to quit her job and stay home all the time. Well, she’d been there and done that, finding that it wasn’t a good fit, so that was a non-starter. And from there, the situation was further elevated after she worked on The Seven Year Itch (1955), which DiMaggio hated because of the scene when the actress’ skirt blew up over an air vent suggestively. This caused the baseball player to switch from mental abuse to physical. 

“He doesn’t want to know about my business. He doesn’t want to know about my work as an actress,” Monroe once said, per PBS. “He doesn’t want me to associate with any of my friends. He wants to cut me off completely from my whole world of motion pictures, friends and creative people that I know.”

Monroe and DiMaggio divorced in 1955, with the actress citing  “mental cruelty” as the reason. The two briefly reunited in 1961, and following Monroe’s death in 1962, DiMaggio helped plan her funeral. 

The actress’ third and final marriage was to playwright Arthur Miller, best known for writing Death of a Salesman (1949) and The Crucible (1953). After meeting on the set of As Young as You Feel in 1951, the two went their separate ways before reconnecting in 1956, the same year they married. 

Sadly, though, the couple had a lot of differences and went their separate ways in 1961 after working on Monroe’s final film, The Misfits (1961), together. 

Why didn’t Marilyn Monroe have kids? 

The reason for Monroe not having kids is simple: she had endometriosis, which caused the lining of her uterus to grow outside of it. 

Despite this, though, she did try to have children and even got pregnant three times while married to Miller, but two of them ended in a miscarriage while the other was an ectopic pregnancy. Because of these health issues, the actress did consider leaving Hollywood altogether and staying home to try and help her conceive. 

 “She did share with her friend, (poet) Norman Rosten, after her second pregnancy, ‘Should I do my next picture or stay at home and try to have a baby again? That’s what I want most of all: the baby, I guess. But maybe God is trying to tell me something, I mean, with all the pregnancy problems,’” Greg Schreiner, the president of Marilyn Remembered, told USA Today in 2022. 

Monroe’s pregnancy problems also reportedly caused problems within her marriage to Miller, who was rumored to make her feel ashamed for her inability to have children. It was believed to have been a contributing factor in their divorce.

Link to original: https://www.womansworld.com/entertainment/celebrities/did-marilyn-monroe-have-kids-a-look-at-her-decision-not-to