Jennifer Aniston never adopted despite her fertility struggles because she wants her “own DNA in a little person.”
During an episode of the “Armchair Expert” podcast, co-host Monica Padman discussed her experience freezing her eggs with the “Friends” actress.
After Padman stated that she was unsure if she wanted children, she asked Aniston if she had found “peace” with not becoming a mom.
“It’s so peaceful,” the actress, 56, told her. “But I will say there’s a point where it’s like out of my control. There’s literally nothing I can do about it.”
“When people say, ‘But you can adopt,’ I don’t want to adopt,” she added. “I want my own DNA in a little person. That’s the only way, selfish or not, whatever that is, I’ve wanted it.”
“It just wasn’t in the plan, whatever the plan was,” the “Morning Show” actress later stated, adding that “it’s very emotional, especially in the moment when they say ‘that’s it,’ because there is a weird moment when that happens.”
For years, Aniston has been the subject of criticism for not starting a family.
Speaking to Harper’s Bazaar UK last week, she slammed accusations that she didn’t have children due to her busy Hollywood career.
“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, pointing out that her medical matters are “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,” she continued.
The “Marley & Me” star admitted that she is affected by the rumors because she’s “just a human being.”
“We’re all human beings. That’s why I thought, ‘What the hell?’” she said.
In 2022, Aniston confessed to the public that she and Brad Pitt had been undergoing IVF treatments back when they were together.
She also opened up about her fertility struggles in a cover story for Allure that same year, stating, “If it wasn’t for going through that, I would’ve never become who I was meant to be.
“That’s why I have such gratitude for all those s–tty things,” she said at the time, clarifying that she was “trying to get pregnant” several years ago.
“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,” she said.
“There is no more, ‘Can I? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.’ I don’t have to think about that anymore,” she said.
After being married to Pitt from 2000 to 2005, she moved on with Justin Theroux ten years later. The two were married from 2015 to 2017.
Most recently, she has been seeing hypnotist Jim Curtis.