‘Just adopt,’ they say. But what if you don’t want to?

Jennifer Aniston has admitted that after IVF failed, she preferred not to try adoption.

- Kat Brown

Jennifer Aniston has said she doesn’t want to adopt because she would want her child to have her DNA. The 56-year-old Friends star, who recently opened up about her 20-year struggle to have children, told a podcaster that she decided against adoption after trying IVF, explaining that she saw having her own child as “the only way” for her, acknowledging that some people might consider that selfish.

As someone who has also struggled with infertility, I didn’t find it selfish. In fact, I was rather thrilled at her admission. For once, here was someone being refreshingly honest.

“There’s a point where it’s, like, out of my control,” she said on the Armchair Expert podcast. “There’s literally nothing I can do about it.

“When people say, ‘But you can adopt,’ I don’t want to adopt. I want my own DNA in a little person. That’s the only way: selfish or not, whatever that is, I’ve wanted it.”

What a relief to hear that it’s for the perfectly reasonable explanation that she “selfishly” wanted to have children who carried her genes. As she rightly anticipated, reaction has been mixed, to which I’m afraid I must roll out the line I usually save for religious groups protesting in front of abortion clinics: “And how many children have you adopted?” Exactly.

Aniston is an icon for many reasons, but for me, it’s because she is the only mainstream celebrity I can think of to talk openly about unexplained infertility and failed IVF. Moreover, she has done so in such a calm, matter-of-fact way that removes all the sting and stigma from it. No A-lister has to share their personal life with us. It’s none of our business. But Aniston has shared her story, and so generously too.