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Jennifer Aniston has recently revealed her infertility struggles in a candid interview about motherhood. Throughout her career, Aniston has made headlines for several high-profile relationships, with many people wondering when she would and if she would choose to have children.
Jennifer was married to Brad Pitt from 2000 until 2005 and wed The Leftovers actor Justin Theroux in 2015. In February 2018, she announced her separation from her second spouse after two years of marriage. Throughout her divorces the press speculated that Aniston refused to have a baby with Brad, making her a villain. This was not helped when Pitt was pictured as a doting father to Jolie’s adopted children.
Recently, Aniston shocked the world by revealing her IVF journey after years of being honest about motherhood, fertility and the pressures felt by women.
8/8 Jennifer Aniston On Her IVF Journey
In a shocking November 2022 interview with Allure, the Friends actress revealed that she underwent an IVF journey in her late 30s and 40s. “I was trying to get pregnant. It was a challenging road for me, the baby-making road,” she said.
“All the years and years and years of speculation … It was really hard,” the Bruce Almighty star admitted. “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.”
7/8 Jennifer Aniston Has Zero Regrets About IVF Journey
53-year-old Jennifer Aniston admitted that she had “zero regrets” about her IVF experience and now feels “a little relief” that it’s over. She now feels at “peace” that she no longer has to worry about her fertility.
“I actually feel a little relief now because there is no more, ‘Can I? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.’ I don’t have to think about that anymore,” she told Allure.
Many women took to social media to praise her for speaking so honestly about fertility and the pressures put on women.
“Jennifer Aniston has chosen to share her experiences of trying to have a child but no woman should have been subject to the relentless speculation about her body and reproductive choices that she was by the media,” a user wrote on Twitter “Stop treating women like this.”
6/8 Jennifer Aniston Admits Speculation She Didn’t Want Kids Hurt Her
In January 2005, Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt shocked fans when they announced that following “much thoughtful consideration,” they were separating after five years of marriage. The pair said at the time they would remain “committed and caring friends with great love and admiration for one another,” and emphasized that their split was not caused by “any of the speculation reported by the tabloid media.”
Many outlets speculated that the divorce was caused by Aniston’s ambition and career motivations. They also believed that she “refused” to have a baby with him, leaving him running heartbrokenly into Angelina Jolie’s arms.
Jen found the speculation “really hurtful and just nasty.” and in her first interview after their divorce in 2006 that she was “really p***** off” that such sexist and invasive reports had been taken as truth.
5/8 Jennifer Aniston Never Chose Her Career Over Children
“I just cared about my career,” Jennifer Aniston revealed in the recent Allure interview. “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. I don’t have anything to hide at this point.”
“I’ve never in my life said I didn’t want to have children. I did and I do and I will! The women that inspire me are the ones who have careers and children; why would I want to limit myself?” she admitted in a previous interview with Vanity Fair. “I’ve always wanted to have children, and I would never give up that experience for a career. I want to have it all.”
Read Related Also: These Actors Began Their Careers As Models
4/8 Jennifer Aniston On Pregnancy Speculation
“If your body is in a normal moment of having had a bite or two, or you’re having a moment of bloat, then there are arrows circled around your stomach, telling you that you’re pregnant,” she told Glamour in August 2017 when asked about the frequent speculation about baby bumps. “And it’s like, actually no, it’s just my body.”
She added, “Not that it’s any of your business to begin with. Having a child, as we know, is no one’s business except the couple or individual that’s going through it.” She has called the press speculation “really hurtful and nasty.”
“I used to take it all very personally — the pregnancy rumors and the whole ‘Oh, she chose career over kids’ assumption,” Jennifer told The Hollywood Reporter in December 2021, adding, “It’s like, ‘You have no clue what’s going with me personally, medically, why I can’t … can I have kids?’ They don’t know anything, and it was really hurtful and just nasty.”
“I’m fed up with the sport-like scrutiny and body shaming that occurs daily under the guise of “journalism,” the “First Amendment” and “celebrity news,”” she wrote in a 2016 essay, unimpressed with the pressure of women putting weight on and being accused of being pregnant.
3/8 Jennifer Aniston On the Pressure of Becoming a Mom
“[I don’t] like [the pressure] that people put on me, on women — that you’ve failed yourself as a female because you haven’t procreated. I don’t think it’s fair,” Aniston said in an interview with Allure in December 2014. “You may not have a child come out of your vagina, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t mothering — dogs, friends, friends’ children.”
She added, “This continually is said about me: that I was so career-driven and focused on myself; that I don’t want to be a mother, and how selfish that is.”
2/8 Jennifer Aniston Is Not In The Pursuit Of Motherhood
She spoke to Elle about kids not being a priority to her.
“Some people are just built to be wives and have babies. I don’t know how naturally that comes to me.”
Aniston made her stance on the topic very clear in an article from People about celebrities skipping parenthood.
“We don’t need to be married or mothers to be complete. We get to determine our own ‘happily ever after’ for ourselves. Yes, I may become a mother someday … 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. 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.’”
1/8 Jennifer Aniston Said Motherhood Will Not Complete Her
Aniston wrote an open letter published in The Huffington Post in 2016 called for ‘For The Record’ where she explicitly spoke about motherhood and the pressures put on women to have children.
“We are complete with or without a mate, with or without a child … that decision is ours and ours alone,” Jen wrote “We don’t need to be married or mothers to be complete. We get to determine our own ‘happily ever after’ for ourselves.”
“I don’t have this sort of checklist of things that have to be done and if they’re not checked then I’ve failed some part of my feminism, or my being a woman, or my worth or my value as a woman,” she later explained to People about the need to have kids. “I’ve birthed a lot of things, and I feel like I’ve mothered many things. And I don’t think it’s fair to put that pressure on people.”
