The topic of motherhood is one that has always had the potential to get tetchy as far as Jennifer Aniston is concerned. At the age of 53, the Friends actress is yet to become a mother, something which has often raised questions from fans and various press outlets.

On her part, Aniston has constantly refused to answer questions about why she made the decision to have no children. Rightfully, she deems it to be a personal matter that no one should be forced to divulge, nor judged by.

Following her 2010 romantic film The Switch, Aniston attracted criticism for purportedly promoting what some deemed to be non-traditional family values. One of those offering this kind of judgement was conservative broadcaster Billy O'Reilly, although the actress snapped back at him with a takedown on just how old-fashioned his views were.

"The point of the movie is what is it that defines family? It isn’t necessarily the traditional mother, father, two children and a dog named Spot," she said at the time.

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Aniston's progressive perspective is likely to have been influenced by her own family background, given that she was estranged from her mother for about one and a half decades.

Jennifer Aniston's Family Background

Jennifer Aniston was born into a family of actors. Both her parents were renown screen performers, with her father John best known for playing the character Victor Kiriakis on the NBC daytime soap opera, Days of Our Lives. He also featured in other notable productions, such as The West Wing, Gilmore Girls, and Star Trek: Voyager.

Aniston's mother was known as Nancy Maryanne Dow, and she too, managed to build a decent acting career. Most of her screen work dates back to the 1960s, when she appeared on shows like The Beverley Hillbillies, The Wild Wild West, and the movie The Ice House. She did return to big screen acting in 2004, when she played the lead role in a family drama film titled Pure.

Given her parents' career path, Aniston was unsurprisingly born in Los Angeles, California, where especially her father was an established Hollywood star. She has revealed that despite their day jobs, her parents often discouraged her from watching television as a child.

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Aniston has two step-brothers - John T. 'Jack' Melick Jr. and Alexander Aniston - one from each of her parents' other relationships.

What Happened Between Jennifer Aniston's Parents?

John Aniston and Nancy Dow met for the first time in 1964. On December 11 the following year, they got married. Jennifer, their only child together - was born about three years later, on February 11, 1969. In the same year, John landed his famous role on Days of Our Lives, and he moved his entire family to New York, where filming for the show took place.

In a 2007 interview with Esquire, Jennifer Aniston revealed that these were the happiest days of her childhood. This euphoria would not last forever, though, as things took a turn for the worse between her parents. Sadly, despite being a young child, the future actress felt that it was her responsibility to bring back the joy into their home.

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"As the years passed, tension came between my mom and dad, and I'd do funny things to try to bring back the laughter," said Aniston. She also explained that she could not quite put a finger on exactly what her parents were fighting about. "It's hard to recall now what those things were. Maybe I've blocked them out," she continued.

Why Did Jennifer Aniston Fall Out With Her Mother?

Before she had celebrated her 10th birthday, Jennifer Aniston found out that her parents' marriage was over, in one of the worst ways possible. "When I was about nine, I came home from a friend's party and my dad wasn't there. Divorce happens in a lot of families, and I don't want to break out the violins. But that was that," she recalled, in the Esquire interview.

As she grew up, Nancy Dow's wounds from her divorce unwittingly found their way to her daughter, and they began to drift apart. By the time she was gaining worldwide recognition as Rachel Green on Friends, things had gotten so bad between them that they were not talking.

Dow made things even worse by writing a book titled From Mother and Daughter to Friends: A Memoir, which further strained her relationship with Aniston.

The Friends star would herself go on to experience divorce as a grown-up, from Brad Pitt and later, Justin Theroux. In fact, it wasn't until her split from the former that she finally managed to patch things up with her mother.

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