Jennifer Aniston has played a mom on screen multiple times. But during a recent appearance on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast, the 56-year-old opened up about her decades-long fertility struggle and how she finally came to terms with the heartbreak of not being able to have children of her own. “There’s a point where it’s, like, out of my control. There’s literally nothing I can do about it,” she revealed. “It just wasn’t in the plan, whatever the plan was.”
For years, she remained silent on the topic while suffering in private. Only recently, she’s come forward to explain her journey and to hopefully help others going through the same thing. “It’s very emotional, especially when they say ‘that’s it,’” she admitted of running out of options. “Because there is a weird moment when that happens.” Still, she insisted she’s accepted her fate. “I actually feel a little relief now because there is no more, ‘Can I? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe,’” she shared. “I don’t have to think about that anymore.”
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False Narrative
Motherhood is something the world wanted for Jen, too. After tying the knot with Brad Pitt in 2000, the Friends alum faced endless baby buzz. So, when the couple announced they were splitting after five years of marriage, and Brad, 61, began the process of adopting new love Angelina Jolie’s children, Maddox and Zahara, just 12 months later, rumors swirled that he and Jen had called it quits because she chose Hollywood over starting a family, according to ABC News. (Brad and Angelina went on to welcome four more children.) “[There was a] narrative that I was just selfish. I just cared about my career,” Jen recalled in a 2022 interview with Allure. “And God forbid a woman is successful and doesn’t have a child. And the reason my husband left me, why we broke up and ended our marriage, was because I wouldn’t give him a kid. It was absolute lies.”
And hurtful ones at that. “Seeing Brad go on to raise a large family with Angelina was a pretty bitter irony, considering everything she went through when they were together,” a source tells Star. “Jen would admit privately that it was painful that he got to experience parenthood so quickly, when she was still very affected and upset by her own disappointments.”
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Redefining Motherhood
Jen had tried everything to get pregnant. Not just with Brad but with her second husband, Justin Theroux, too. “It was a challenging road for me, the baby-making road,” she confessed to Allure of her 30s and 40s. “It was really hard. 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.” The Morning Show star also recently revealed that giving birth herself was the only path she saw to parenthood. “When people say, ‘But you can adopt,’ I don’t want to adopt,” she admitted. “I want my own DNA in a little person. That’s the only way, selfish or not, whatever that is, I’ve wanted it.”
Mega
Instead, Jen found other ways to fill the void. “I’m a great babysitter,” she told E! News back in 2016. “[I] put ’em in the pool, put ’em in a tub, put ’em in [my] jewelry. My girlfriends’ kids usually come and roam in my closet, the girls do at least, [play] dress up.” The Golden Globe winner is godmother to Courteney Cox’s daughter, Coco Arquette, 21 — “they have a beautiful relationship,” says Star’s source — and also very close with Jason Bateman’s daughters Francesca, 18, and Maple, 13. “She almost makes us parents look bad because she’s so incredibly attentive and consistent with her curiosity and warmth,” he gushed to Vanity Fair in August. “She’s the first one to call or text about big dates in the girls’ lives. She has questions about boyfriends.” The actor even went as far as to call Jen, now dating hypnotherapist Jim Curtis, “closer to a co-mom” with his wife, Amanda Anka. “She’s been a part of their lives from the moment they were born.”
While Jen may not have become a mom in the traditional sense, she’s created a chosen family in her friends. As the actress herself put it in a 2016 op-ed for The Huffington Post, “We don’t need to be married or mothers to be complete. We get to determine our own ‘happily ever after’ for ourselves.”
This story Jennifer Aniston Talks Fertility Struggles Being ‘Out’ of Her ‘Control’: ‘Just Wasn’t in the Plan’ first appeared on Star. Add Star as a Preferred Source by clicking here.