Ina Garten, host of the beloved Food Network TV show “Barefoot Contessa” (and former White House staff member) has always been pretty candid about her personal life. Notably, she has opened up about her marriage with her husband Jeffrey Garten, but recently, she also shared why they decided not to have children.
For many women, choosing to have children or not is a difficult decision, one not easily made. While the popular rhetoric thrown around suggests women can have “it all” if they balance work/life/kids, real life has tradeoffs. Garten chose not to because she wanted a different kind of life, as she told Katie Couric on the “Katie Couric” podcast this week, according to People:
“We decided not to have children. I really appreciate that other people do and we will always have friends that have children that we are close to but it was a choice I made very early. I really felt, I feel, that I would have never been able to have the life I’ve had. So it’s a choice and that was the choice I made.”
I applaud Garten not only for making a tough choice, but for being able to speak candidly about it–knowing others may judge her.
