Jennifer Aniston is setting the record straight on why she never became a mother.
During a recent interview with Harper’s Bazaar U.K., the 56-year-old “Friends” star opened up about why she chose to write an op-ed for The Huffington Post in 2016, addressing the long-standing rumors regarding why she never had children.
“They didn’t know my story, or what I’d been going through over the past 20 years to try to pursue a family, because I don’t go out there and tell them my medical woes,” she said about the rumors. “That’s not anybody’s business. But there comes a point when you can’t not hear it – the narrative about how I won’t have a baby, won’t have a family, because I’m selfish, a workaholic. It does affect me – I’m just a human being. We’re all human beings.”
At a certain point, she recalled thinking, “what the hell?” and wrote the op-ed “because I knew a lot of women at the time who were trying to have kids” and were going through the process of IVF. She explained that her decision to write the piece “was not only for myself, but for any women who were struggling with the same issue.”
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Rumors of the actress putting her career over starting a family began following her divorce from actor Brad Pitt in 2005, with many speculating that he left her because she didn’t want to have a child. In reality, Aniston had privately been trying IVF, which ultimately was unsuccessful.
In the 2016 op-ed, Aniston slammed the media for defining “a woman’s value based on her marital and maternal status,” saying she and her then-husband, Justin Theroux, were being “harassed by dozens of aggressive photographers staked outside our home” trying to snap a photo of her and “uncover whether or not I am pregnant (for the bajillionth time… but who’s counting).”
“I have grown tired of being part of this narrative. Yes, I may become a mother some day, and since I’m laying it all out there, if I ever do, I will be the first to let you know. But I’m not in pursuit of motherhood because I feel incomplete in some way, as our celebrity news culture would lead us all to believe,” she wrote.
She continued: “I resent being made to feel “less than” because my body is changing and/or I had a burger for lunch and was photographed from a weird angle and therefore deemed one of two things: ‘pregnant’ or ‘fat.’”
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The actress discussed her fertility journey in a November 2022 interview with Allure, in which she admitted, “It was a challenging road for me, the baby-making road.”
She further explained that the “years and years and years of speculation” were difficult for her and now that she is past that point in her life she “actually feel[s] a little relief now because there is no more, ‘Can I? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.'”
“I was going through IVF, drinking Chinese teas, you name it. I was throwing everything at it. I would’ve given anything if someone had said to me, ‘Freeze your eggs. Do yourself a favor.’ You just don’t think it. So here I am today. The ship has sailed.”
While she felt it was important to speak her truth at the time, Aniston now says “the older I get, the less I care about correcting a narrative,” because eventually the truth will come out on its own.
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“The news cycle is so fast, it just goes away. Of course, there are times when I feel that sense of justice – when something has been said that isn’t true and I need to right the wrong,” she told Harper’s Bazaar U.K. “And then I think, do I really? My family knows my truth, my friends know my truth.”
