Jennifer Aniston says she never wants to adopt as she’d like child to have her own DNA

Jennifer Aniston has said she doesn’t want to adopt as she wants her own DNA in her child.

The Friends star, who recently opened up about her 20-year struggle to have kids, said she decided against adoption after trying IVF.

Aniston, 56, added that she considered having her own child was “the only way” for her, acknowledging that some people might view that as selfish.

“There’s a point where it’s, like, out of my control,” she said on 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.”

Aniston, who has been married to Brad Pitt and Justin Theroux, said having children “just wasn’t in the plan, whatever the plan was”, and recalled the heartbreaking moment doctors told her she had done all she could.

“It’s very emotional, especially in the moment when they say, ‘That’s it,’ because there is a weird moment when that happens.”

Aniston previously opened up about her private 20-year struggle to conceive and criticised the speculation she’s faced as a result of having no children.

The actor said she felt pressured to address “the narrative” that suggested she hadn’t had kids because she is “a selfish workaholic”.

“They didn’t know my story, or what I’d been going through over the past 20 years to try to pursue a family, because I don’t go out there and tell them my medical woes,” Aniston told Harper’s Bazaar UK.

The actor said her personal life is not anybody’s business but “there comes a point when you can’t not hear the narrative about how I won’t have a baby, won’t have a family”.

Aniston said that as she has gotten older, she cares less about correcting the falsehoods “because it will happen eventually”.

“The news cycle is so fast, it just goes away,” she continued – but admitted she had felt the speculation to be unjust.

“Of course, there are times when I feel that sense of justice – when something has been said that isn’t true, and I need to right the wrong. And then I think, do I really? My family knows my truth, my friends know my truth.”

Aniston previously said “the baby-making road” had been challenging for her.

She told Allure in 2022: “I would’ve given anything if someone had said to me, ‘Freeze your eggs. Do yourself a favour’. You just don’t think it. So here I am today. The ship has sailed. But I have zero regrets.

“My late thirties, forties, I’d gone through really hard s***, 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.”

She said that “years and years of speculation was really hard”, adding: “I was going through IVF, drinking Chinese teas, you name it. I was throwing everything at it.”

Aniston previously said the claim that her marriage to Pitt had ended because she didn’t want children was an “absolute lie”.