ennifer 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.

“Just adopt!” is often thrown in by the terminally clueless as a solution to infertility. Few stop to think about how it is a completely different path – and one that deserves its own respect. The child and their needs should be at the centre of any adoption, not those of the adoptive parents.

Adoption is a serious path, with background checks and tough panel interviews. Children may have contact with their birth parents through Christmas cards, and siblings are encouraged to stay in touch too. Things have changed since the Seventies, when one adopter I know was able to adopt babies “from good families” through an agency in Chelsea. Now, babies are more often paired with adopters through the “foster to adopt” scheme, with ongoing contact with the birth family, and no guarantee that you will adopt them later on.

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Aniston is currently starring in ‘The Morning Show’ (Apple TV+)

I have some good pals who fostered to adopt in the UK. They are imbued with a faith much, much stronger than mine, which gave them the resilience and “why not?” mentality that saw them through. They were able to permanently adopt their child eventually, but throughout the entire process, it was not a given.

We were in the pandemic when we heard we couldn’t have children. For me, the risk of having a child I had been looking after taken away was too much for me and my husband. On average, it takes one year and seven months from a child entering care to being placed with adoptive parents.After placement, it then takes a further 9 months on average for the adoption order to be granted. Adoption is hard work, and while I consider myself to be a resilient woman, I am also self-aware enough to know a foster-to-adopt process might break me.

It took months of researching adoption to come to my decision. I inhaled podcasts as I always do – and especially those from queer adopters, who have a similar hurdle to me in terms of not being able to get pregnant with their partner. Daddy Life London, about an anonymous gay man adopting with his partner, opens with the couple fostering to adopt, and the baby subsequently being placed back with their birth parents.

There’s an additional thread, which is that infertility of any length – let alone 20 years in Aniston’s case – is bloody hard going enough on your mental health. One of the deeply humbling things about infertility is learning to live in and with a yawning chasm of despair that can be overwhelming and hard to climb out of.

To then embark on a completely different and arguably even more challenging path of adoption requires real commitment, and I deeply admire Aniston for acknowledging that it wasn’t the path for her.

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Aniston’s relationships, with the likes of Brad Pitt, have been the subject of endless media scrutiny (Getty)

Adoption isn’t only for “heroes” or people of the impressive stripe we see on DIY SOS: The Big Build, caring for multiple siblings with disabilities. It is for people who go in with their eyes open, who can appreciate that their needs will need to come last. It’s a process that may entail years of anxiety and stress with a child’s birth family and with social services. Sometimes more children are born, and parents are then asked if they would like to keep the family together and foster to adopt a second, or third child.

Even if you do go into it fully prepared, it may still fall apart – as can happen to any family. There is a lack of robust data around this, but a reasonable estimate for adoption breakdowns post-adoption order in the UK is likely between 1-4 per cent on average, with higher rates occurring for older children or children with additional needs.

There’s also a massive difference between UK and US adoption, not least because the US also involves a not insignificant amount of cash through private adoption agencies, which often involve adopting children from overseas.

Alice Hutton is a British domestic adoptee as well as an ex-BBC journalist, now based in the US, who investigates this practice and the growing community of adult adoptees calling on the US adoption “industry of forced adoption” to stop.

“Adoption is an increasingly controversial issue,” she tells me. “For more than 100 years, it has been marketed as a legitimate family-building tool and a ‘beautiful’ way to grow a family. But there are also growing campaigns in the US, in particular, that view it as legal human trafficking based on systemic injustice that relies on the often-forced separation of family units who are poor and of colour or indigenous, in favour of white, middle-class families.”

Hutton urges any potential adopters to ensure they have the voices of adoptees in their research, which, shamefully, I had not done when I was doing my research. “Just because you live in Britain, does not mean that this should be an issue considered ethical or ‘solved’ in any way,” she says. “I urge you to read widely and prioritise the voices of adoptees rather than adopters or agencies.”

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Jamie Lee Curtis is one of many high-profile figures to have adopted children after suffering fertility issues (Reuters)

So, I stand with Jennifer Aniston today. 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 got older, she cares less about correcting the falsehoods. “The news cycle is so fast, it just goes away,” she continued – but admitted she had felt the speculation was “unjust”.

It’s this speculation that gets you down, whether you are a Hollywood actor, or a woman who hasn’t had a child but is of an age and circumstance when it is expected by society, however progressive we think we all are.

“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.”

And if the truth is you don’t feel that adoption is for you, who should say otherwise? It’s really none of anyone’s business.