Jennifer Aniston’s Mixed Messaging About Babies Makes Me Angry

Poor Jennifer Aniston. I was supportive of the actor in 2016 when she ranted about how the world defined a woman’s value by her marital and maternal status. "The sheer amount of resources being spent right now by press trying to simply uncover whether or not I am pregnant (for the bajillionth time... but who’s counting) points to the perpetuation of this notion that women are somehow incomplete, unsuccessful, or unhappy if they’re not married with children,” she wrote then. 

When her marriage with Brad Pitt broke, some surmised it was because she didn’t want a baby. I didn’t know if those rumours were even accurate but I was firmly in her camp. If a man left because a woman couldn’t have a baby, he wasn’t worth hanging onto anyway.

But then I read Aniston’s recent interview to Allure magazine. 

“I would say my late 30s, 40s, I’d gone through really hard shit, and if it wasn’t for going through that, I would’ve never become who I was meant to be….I was trying to get pregnant. It was a challenging road for me, the baby-making road,” Aniston said in the interview.

Then she added: "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. So here I am today. The ship has sailed.” 

Aniston, an actor with millions of followers, just gave a generation of women the push to freeze their eggs, reiterating the same societal bias she spoke out against in 2016: that women are incomplete, unsuccessful, or unhappy if they are not married with children. 

Make that biological children.

Basically, Aniston implied that if women who were in their 20s and early 30s didn’t freeze their eggs, there was a high probability they would lose their chance at becoming a parent, promptly reducing the idea of parenthood to genetically related progeny. With her biological gifts appreciated by a legion of fans for decades (who doesn’t want a baby with that epic mane), some would argue that Aniston’s vanity for a child who looks like her is natural. 

Till today, the phrase ‘looks adopted’ is used pejoratively. Even politically aware comics crack adoption jokes. Like the one about the bratty children who were making so much noise on the airplane until someone went up to them and whispered: “Did your parents ever tell you you were adopted?” The only adoption movies that are ever made are the ones about children who embark on desperate journeys to unearth their biological roots. Incidentally, last month it became easier to adopt in India after the power to handle the final paperwork was transferred from courts to district magistrates.

Shortly after the Allure interview, a friend of Aniston’s reportedly told another publication that the actor was looking to adopt a baby girl after a lot of “introspection”. I’m convinced this was hurried damage control after someone told Aniston how ridiculous she had sounded. 

To give her the benefit of the doubt, maybe she worries she’ll be viewed by the public as an also-ran adoptive parent? Many will compare her to Angelina Jolie, the poster girl of international adoptions. But then, for a woman who says her '50s are better than any previous decade, these things shouldn’t matter at all.

I have three or four things to say to women who are influenced by Aniston (apart from the fact that Chinese tea won’t help them conceive, I mean). 

The faster women realise their desire to experience biological pregnancy is one of the most salient, long-lasting examples of patriarchal brainwashing, the quicker we can escape the trap of being prized domesticated possessions and gain a few more rungs on the ladder to real equality. The bizarre modern-day abortion debates about a woman’s right to her own body are a classic example of how successful this effort to control us has been.

Adoption should be a first choice, not a last resort for those who have tortured their body for months with hormonal injections in the effort to conceive a biological child, and subjected themselves to despair and depression after every failed IVF cycle. 

Shortly after I adopted my daughter, a stranger called for advice. She was on the cusp of adopting and feeling extremely nervous about whether or not she would experience maternal feelings for a being that hadn’t been expelled from her own body. I reassured her (and she adopted two children) but let me just say this to all prospective parents: your mothering skills have no relationship to whether or not your child is adopted. You’ll be the same kind of parent with the same love to offer your baby, irrespective of its biological status. Ask yourself not whether you will love an adopted child but whether you are mentally fit to be a parent.

Consider expanding the idea of family to include your friends and pets. I wonder if those influenced by Aniston know that many environmentally conscious people opt not to have children. “I have not been able to reconcile the conflict I feel about bringing a child into a world that doesn’t seem survivable,” one Delhi-based economist told me last year. When we spoke she was dating a climate scientist who agreed with her. “I promise we’ll only adopt if we change our minds,” he told her. 

The bias against adoption was perfectly summed up by my uncle who, when he was introduced to my beautiful baby girl, asked: “But how do you know what religion she is?”

Priya Ramani is a Bengaluru-based journalist and is on the editorial board of Article-14.com.

The views expressed here are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views of BQ Prime or its editorial team.