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FOr for a long time, was one of Hollywood’s most important questions Why didn’t Jennifer Aniston have kids?It was there why he ever took another step sex and the City The movie and how Leonardo DiCaprio’s girlfriend always looked 25.
No one could work on it: after all, Friend star Was America’s favorite. She had great hair, a stellar acting career, and, for a while, an equally famous husband in Brad Pitt. According to the society’s Good Woman Handbook, she needed only one child to receive certification—ideally several children.
But Aniston didn’t buy into it – based on decades of vicious rumors, a story was created that established the actress as a greedy, career-hungry monstrosity who lacked the empathy needed to be a good mother.
it followed him every relationship Following her divorce from Pitt, which many speculated was because she did not want children, and the 56-year-old’s continued public profile despite her continued professional success. Now, after addressing the speculation in a 2016 op-ed Huffington PostAniston has revealed how much it all took a toll on her, revealing she struggled with fertility issues.
“They didn’t know my story, or what I’ve been through for the last 20 years trying to support a family, because I don’t go out and tell them about my medical problems,” the actress said. Harper’s Bazaar“It’s nobody’s business. But there comes a time when you can’t hear it anymore – the story about how I won’t have kids, won’t have a family, because I’m selfish, busy with work. It affects me – I’m just human.”
Reading these quotes made me angry for many reasons. First, because another successful woman was judged, scrutinized, and blamed for not fitting into the extremely limited mold created for her by society. And secondly, because she was forced to share private medical information in order to rally against assumptions that no one had the right to make.
But it also made me angry on a personal level. Because even if, like 31 year old single womanI’m a little put off even thinking about having kids, the pressures and worries Aniston has been forced to face mirror those of me as well as my single female friends.
I’ve lost count of how many times my married friends have asked if I want kids someday. I know they mean well. But whenever I’m asked this question, I can’t help but feel angry at the social assumptions that underlie it. On the one hand, saying “no” could result in an Aniston-adjacent characterization that paints me as a career-obsessed loner. But saying “yes” can be equally sad, because without a partner, without any financial stability and a flatshare, I can currently only think about children in a fantasy version of my life.
There is also the noise of fertility in all this; What if someone asked me that like Aniston, I was actually trying to conceive and struggling? Do I have to give that information to anyone? What if I had had a miscarriage, from which I was recently recovering? And what if, at age 23, I had a miscarriage after being sexually assaulted, making the prospect of getting pregnant again completely terrifying and associated with all kinds of deep sexual trauma?
Yes, this actually happened – and I don’t think it’s something I should be reminded of when someone I went to university with is trying to make something small talk with me at a wedding (Seriously, why do people always ask single women if they want kids in their marriages?).
No one should make assumptions about why a woman does – or doesn’t – have children. As Aniston exemplifies, we never really know what’s going on behind the scenes, nor should we need to. Surely in 2025, it’s time we respected that.