Cosmo editor says women can’t ‘have it all’ after giving up on idea of having kids

The editor has spoken out about the toll her career has taken on her personal life.

Farrah Storr is known to many as the editor of one of the world’s most popular magazines, Cosmopolitan, but to get there has taken a lot of sacrifices. Yes, speaking to The Times magazine, Farrah revealed that she and her husband decided to give up on plans to have children because of the demands of their careers.

“In life, you have to choose and choosing is uncomfortable,” Farrah said in the interview. “It means opening the gate to one path but closing the gate to the other. Few get to walk both paths.”

The editor went on to talk about how the idea of “having it all”, sold to her by former editor of Cosmo Helen Gurley Brown, is not achievable and why that's OK.

“Perhaps, like me, [Helen Gurley Brown] knew deep down the truth: you can’t have it all. “Along the way, I had been forced to make uncomfortable choices. “The notion that I could have or indeed would want it all was a lie. A lie sold to me by the very magazine I edited.”

Farrah says that rising the ranks in the world of publishing and working on her marriage left little room to achieve other things like having kids.

“Almost overnight, our lives became very full. “I was 36. I knew that to be an editor of a major magazine would take everything I had. “But then, so too would being a mother. As I headed into my 37^th year, we laid to rest any notions about a family and thus having it all. “I could, I decided, be OK with having it all-ish.”