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Celebrity chef and cookbook author Ina Garten is defending her decision to live a child-free life with her husband, Jeffrey Garten.
“I think it would have been difficult, and I think Jeffrey and I would have had a different life together,” Ina, 78, revealed in an interview with The New York Times published on Saturday, August 29. “I’m not saying it’s a better life or a worse life, but there were times when Jeffrey decided that he wanted to start a business in Japan, so he moved to Japan.”
She continued, “I was in East Hampton, we went back and forth and we figured it out. I think that probably couldn’t have happened if we had kids, and I couldn’t have stayed long hours at the store, doing catering and running the store.”
Ina and Jeffrey got married in 1968 — at a time, much like today still, when women were expected to marry and have children. (U.S. birth rates have reached a historic low, with less teens having babies and more women in their 30s and 40s deciding to have children when they’re ready, willing and able.)
In lieu of having children, Ina left her government job at age 30 after seeing a classified ad for a gourmet food store in West Hampton Beach, New York, named The Barefoot Contessa. The author transformed the speciality store into a lifelong brand and nickname before selling the physical restaurant in 1996 and going on to publish nearly a dozen bestselling cookbooks while hosting various successful Food Network series.
“I think it would have been much harder,” Ida told The New York Times of what life would have been like if she had decided to have children. “I’ve never looked back on the decision and thought, I should have done it differently. I understand how my friends have wonderful families, and they really enjoy being parents, but it’s just not something I ever wanted to do.”
She concluded of deciding not to become a mother, “I’m really happy that I didn’t.”
The cooking guru’s most recent comments are not the first time she had publicly discuss her private family planning decisions. In 2017, Ina told former Today show cohost Katie Couric that the choice not to have kids wasn’t a particularly difficult one.
“We decided not to have children,” she told the journalist at the time. “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.”
She continued, “I really felt, I feel, that I would have never been able to have the life I’ve had [with children].”
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