Ina Garten is getting honest about why she never had children, and it all ties back to her childhood. During an interview for BBC News, conducted by Katty Kay in Ina's home in East Hampton, New York, the 75-year-old got candid in the conversation about how her past affected her present.
The Food Network star says that her childhood kept her from wanting children of her own, even when she and her husband Jeffrey got married almost 55 years ago when she was 20 years old. She hasn't changed her mind since.
"Did you know you couldn't do what you wanted to do if you'd had them?" Katty had asked, prompting the start of the conversation. “I think it’s much harder. [But] I don’t think that’s why I made the decision,” Ina answered.
“I’m actually writing a memoir right now and it’s kind of looking back at my childhood. It was nothing I wanted to recreate,” she continued. “And I’m always looking forward to look back and realized a lot of my decisions were based on my childhood. And so I think that was the motivating factor.”
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She added that she and Jeffrey were "just so happy together." And then she went on to give advice for people in their 20s about making big decisions in life.
“Everybody wants to know, ‘Where am I going to end up?’ Forget where you’re going to end up. You don’t know where you’re going to end up," she advised. "All you know is that if you jump in the pond and you splash around, while you’re there you’re going to go, ‘Oh that’s really interesting over there. I think I’ll follow it there.’ And see where it brings you."
In a 2021 interview on Al Roker's podcast, Cooking Up a Storm, the author shared that the way in which she was neglected in her childhood is what she wanted to give in her career as an adult. She commented on the fact that her mother never allowed her to be in the kitchen as a child, and that she learned to cook by reading Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and practicing nightly.
"I think what I was craving as a child was connecting with people and I felt that if you feed them, they always show up and you have a good time together," she said then. "That was the connection I loved so, I kept doing it over and over again."
Fans flooded the comments section with their opinions on Ina's explanation as to why she never had kids.
"Why do women even need to publicly acknowledge not having children?" one person questioned.
Another person chimed in: "Love You Ina..! Your Life, Your Decision. You Owe Not a Single Person Any Explanations. ."
On the other hand, some comments went against the grain.
"I believe such experience should be the reason why you give a child the type of childhood you’d never experienced to prove to your parents or your guardian that you are better than them, my opinion ♀️," one person stated.
Another fan added, "Mine wasn't great but didn't stop me my kids are my life❤️."
