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Jennifer Aniston is frightened by the possibility of having children.
The Friends star frequently finds herself the subject of tabloid headlines for being 49 years old without a child, but the actress insists starting a family was never something she dreamed about when she was younger, and she's not even sure parenting would come naturally to her.
"Quite honestly, (it's) kind of frightening," she tells Elle magazine of the idea of motherhood. "Some people are just built to be wives and have babies. I don't know how naturally that comes to me."
However, Jennifer, who split from second husband Justin Theroux in February (18), insists she is still open to the possibility of kids.
"Who knows what the future holds in terms of a child and a partnership - how that child comes in... or doesn't," she adds. "And now with science and miracles, we can do things at different times than we used to be able to."
And if she doesn't become a mother, Aniston is comfortable with the trajectory her life has taken.
"We live in a society that messages women: By this age, you should be married; by this age, you should have children," she says. "That's a fairy tale. That's the mold we're slowly trying to break out of."
"Why do we want a happy ending? How about just a happy existence? A happy process? We're all in process constantly," she continues. "What quantifies happiness in someone's life isn't the ideal that was created in the 1950s. It's not like you hear that narrative about any men. That's part of sexism - it's always the woman who's scorned and heartbroken and a spinster. It's never the opposite."