Ina Garten, the celebrated cookbook author and television personality, has shared her perspective on the decision not to have children with her husband, Jeffrey Garten. Garten, 78, stated in a recent interview with The New York Times that she believes having children would have led to a different life for the couple and potentially presented difficulties.
"I think it would have been difficult, and I think Jeffrey and I would have had a different life together," Garten said. She elaborated that her husband's career occasionally required significant travel, including a period when he started a business in Japan, necessitating travel back and forth between East Hampton, where she lived, and Japan.
"We figured it out," she recalled. "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." Garten was referring to the early days of her culinary career when she transformed a gourmet food store in the Hamptons, The Barefoot Contessa, into a catering business and authorial brand.
The couple married in 1968. Garten explained that a traditional family structure with children was not something she ultimately desired. "I’ve never looked back on the decision and thought, ‘I should have done it differently,'" she told the Times. "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."
In her 2024 memoir, "Be Ready When the Luck Happens," Garten also touched upon her upbringing, noting that an unhappy childhood influenced her decision. She recounted to Hoda Kotb in 2025 that in her 20s, she resisted the idea of having children because she didn't want to replicate what she perceived as a negative home environment from her own youth. "It never occurred to me that other people’s lives were different because that was my experience," she said.
"And then one day, maybe when I was around 25, I thought, ‘I just don’t want to have children.' I just don’t want to do that," Garten shared. "And thank God [Jeffrey] is amenable to what I would I want. He wants me to be happy and it was OK."