Trending Now: Jason Bateman Didn’t Think This ‘SmartLess’ Moment Would Come Off This Bad – Fans React

Pressing a successful woman at the peak of her career about her decision to be child-free is the territory of pushy older relatives whom she sees unwillingly at holidays and funerals. It is not, in fact, the territory of pushy older podcasters.

Every childless member of the Millennial generation knows exactly what it’s like to have a Gen-Xer or Boomer bug us about our family plans. We didn’t have the good fortune to hit adulthood at a time when those older than us weren’t actively destroying the economy and boxing us out of the job market, and, for many of us, having kids is a luxury that we simply can’t afford — especially when A.I. companies are coming for both our jobs and our water.

As an internationally successful pop music superstar, Charli XCX may not have the exact same economic stressors shaping her family plans, but whatever she chooses for her personal future is the exact same amount of none-of-your-business as any other Millennial living the DINC lifestyle.

So, when Jason Bateman pressed Charli well past the point of the audience’s comfort when questioning her family plans during the singer’s appearance on a recent SmartLess episode, his Gen-X nosiness came off much less sage than he probably hoped and instead made him seem like yet another old creep who can’t stop inquiring about a younger woman’s uterus next to the open casket.

Now, in fairness to the Arrested Development star and SmartLess co-host, it’s not like Bateman’s line of questioning is all that uncommon, especially among his own generation, which places much less value in personal boundaries than the ones beneath them. And, quite frankly, he played off the embarrassment of Charli revealing that she has a husband after he suggested that she “might find somebody” pretty well, even if his quip that, “Maybe on your next husband you’ll want kids” doesn’t read quite as charmingly flippant on the page as it sounds coming out of his mouth.

Even still, for a professional podcaster who books the biggest names in entertainment on a weekly basis, mansplaining the wonders of motherhood to a woman during an interview just isn’t a good look in a day and age when, theoretically, women are supposed to be able to make decisions for themselves on that subject.

As Charli fans pointed out, it’s hard to imagine Bateman ever present this line of questioning to a man, unless that man was Sean Hayes and it was the set-up for one of his more personal insults of the week.

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