Ina Garten Says Her Childhood Is the Reason She Didn’t Want Kids: 'It Was Nothing I Wanted to Recreate'

The Food Network star opened up about her 55-year marriage to husband Jeffrey during an interview with BBC News’ Katty Kay

Ina Garten reveals how her past has shaped her future.

During a BBC News interview with host Katty Kay at her home in East Hampton, New York, the Food Network star opened up about why she never had children.

“Did you know you couldn’t do what you wanted to do if you had them?” Kay asked.

“I think it’s much harder. [But] “I don’t think that’s why I made the decision,” Garten replied.

Garten, who married husband Jeffrey nearly 55 years ago when she was 20, said her own childhood was the main reason she didn’t want to expand her family.

“I am currently writing a memoir and in a way I am looking back on my childhood. There was nothing I wanted to recreate,” she said. “I’m always happy to look back and realize that many of my decisions were based on my childhood. And so I think that was a motivating factor.”

Ina Garten reveals plans for ‘quiet Thanksgiving’ with husband Jeffrey: ‘Cooking and watching old movies’

She then added, “Jeffrey and I were so happy together.”

Ina and Jeffrey Garten.

Ina Garten/Instagram

She then shared advice, especially for fans in their twenties, about big decisions and milestones in life.

“Everybody wants to know, ‘Where am I going to end up?’ Forget where you end up. You don’t know where you’re going to end up,” she said. “All you know is if you jump in the lake and splash around, while you’re there, you’re going, ‘Oh, that’s really interesting out there. I think I’ll follow it there.’ And see where it gets you.”

The author of the cookbook was honest about her childhood in the past. In 2021, she appeared on an episode of Al Roker’s podcast, Cooking up a stormwhere she discovered that despite her profession, she was not allowed to be in the kitchen or cook while growing up.

Ina Garten as a child. ina garten/instagram Ina Garten says her mother didn’t let her cook when she was growing up: ‘She wanted a kitchen for herself’

“I don’t know, I think my mother just wanted me in my room and she wanted the kitchen for herself,” Barefoot Contessa the star said of her late mother Florence. “She said, ‘It’s your job to study, it’s my job to cook. Get out of the kitchen.’ So I kind of always wanted to do that.”

Instead, Garten taught herself to cook by reading Julia Child Mastering the art of French cooking and exercise every night. “At some point I thought, ‘I want to do this for my job, not just for fun,'” she said.

Ina and Jeffrey Garten. Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images

Garten told Roker that what she didn’t get as a child, she wanted to give as an adult in her career.

“I think what I craved as a kid was connecting with people and I felt like if you feed them, they always show up and you have a good time together,” she explained on the show. “It was a relationship I loved so I kept repeating it.”

The chef explained in 2017 during an episode of Katie Couric’s podcast Next questionthat in addition to the ban on cooking, her mother, who was a dietitian, even restricted the food in her diet.

“My mother was obsessed with food,” she said at the time. “So we weren’t allowed any carbs, we weren’t allowed any butter. We had margarine. And her idea of ​​a great dessert was an apple.”

She joked that her career was “the ultimate rebellion” against her mother.

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Source: HIS Education