How Jennifer Aniston’s Devastating Revelation Is a Lesson to Us All

Can we please stop asking this damn question!

“We are complete with or without a mate, with or without a child … that decision is ours and ours alone.” — Jennifer Aniston

Jennifer Aniston has endured decades, yes, decades of interrogation over her womb!

While male actors of her rank are asked questions about their acting ambitions, philanthropic endeavors, and political opinion, the media has tirelessly obsessed over Jennifer Aniston’s reproductive status.

Over the years, you could almost hear the audible exasperations as they rippled across the globe. When will this barren female finally do what is expected of her?

A woman could eradicate poverty, find a cure for cancer, and solve the climate crisis, but these achievements recoil into oblivion if she hasn’t fulfilled her “womanly” obligation and become a mother.

Society equates womanhood to motherhood.

If a woman is not a mother, what even is she? This strikes fear into the heart of the patriarchy. Who knows what mayhem women might get up to when they aren't chained to children?

The message is simple. Women without children are to be feared and ostracised. We must keep them in their place and limit their exposure in case this obscenity is contagious!

The scale of a woman’s achievement is all too often reduced to her reproductive habits.

It’s one thing when a woman chooses not to have children. Yes, she faces stigma, pressure, and being othered; believe me, I’ve been there. But women who make this choice are empowered with a sense of control. We may be attacked for our choice, but our sense of knowing arms us for this inevitable battle.

When a woman desperately wants children and biology or life circumstances are not playing ball, can you imagine the heartache? The scab of childlessness is picked every time a woman is asked “when” she is going to have children or “why” she doesn’t already have them.

The world is cruel, scathing, and particularly invisibling for childless women.

Jennifer Aniston has come out on her own terms and told the world she did want children all along. She tried IVF, but it didn’t work.

While society was obsessing over Jennifer Aniston having children, she was desperately enduring rounds of IVF. Every interviewer who asked that obscene and obnoxious question:

“When are you going to have children?”

Was twisting the knife a little deeper into her womb. Every article ever published speculating the workings of Jennifer Aniston’s uterus was an attack against her first and foremost and then on women as a whole.

Jennifer Aniston remained composed and demure. She stood tall on behalf of women. She spoke passionately about women being complete with or without children. All the while, she was trying to get pregnant.

What a devastating show of courage. But she shouldn’t have been put in this position in the first place!

Other people’s reproduction plans are none of our business!

The anguish and turmoil of undergoing fertility treatment are traumatic enough without being repeatedly and publically grilled about your baby-making status. This taunting behaviour is unbearable.

Jennifer Aniston’s latest revelations broke my heart.

I can’t even begin to imagine her sense of inadequacy and isolation over these years. And the public never tired of the incessant questions.

As a woman, how do you stop the world from asking you about children? Serious question, answers on a back of a postcard and sent to me in Ireland, please.

Jennifer Aniston has served as an icon for all childfree women. And now it seems she is also a beacon for the childless too. But this is a beacon she doesn’t want to be. Where is her “miracle” baby? My empathy dial is on overdrive as I attune to my imaginings of her feelings.

I share her anger. I’m furious at the relentless and insensitive pestering she endured during possibly one of the most difficult times of her life.

Shame on everyone who has ever asked Jennifer Aniston about her reproductive plans.

In fact, shame on everyone who has asked anyone about their reproductive plans.

This is not a need-to-know question. It induces shame and pressure and can trigger trauma. It implies women are not enough as they are without children.

The point is that you never know what is happening if a woman doesn’t have children. Maybe it is through choice, and maybe it isn’t. Either way, here’s an idea — don’t ask unless they bring the conversation up!

There are lessons to be learned here.

Let’s stop making children the default conversation with women! It’s time to use our imagination and cast our communication skills out wide.

You know, one of the first questions I get asked by a new hairdresser “so, how many children have you got?” UGH! Stop! We are more than our parental status!

It makes me wonder, is talking about children the new talking about the weather paradigm? Can we really not think of anything else to say? Or is that the most acceptable form of trying to find common ground?

Here’s a golden rule. Unless someone brings their children into the conversation or volunteers their desire to have children, stay schmum!

If you can’t think of questions to ask instead of the predictable children-oriented questions, here are a few tips:

• Replace “do you have children?” with “what fills your time?” or “tell me about your greatest achievement to date.”
• Replace “when are you going to have children?” with “what are your future plans?” or “what’s on your bucket list.”
• Replace “how many children do you have?” with “have you any interests that you’re passionate about?” or “what ignites your soul?”

I forever wish that those who want to have children (and will be good parents) will have them and those who don’t want them won’t — and will be respected for this choice.

Unfortunately, some people walk among us who brandish non-parents with profanity, regardless of how they came to this position.

I recently rebutted an unfounded, small-minded, and vitriolic viral attack on women without children. Ironically, in my response article Why Childfree Women Are An Essential Part Of Society's Cohesion, I reach out my maternal wings and scoop up childfree and childless women into the safety of my clutches.

When you come for a woman without children, you come for all of us!

Now please, show Jennifer Aniston some compassion, rethink your questioning of childless and childfree women, and walk away.

Thank you for reading Ali Hall

Here are some more articles on the topic of childfree and childless.