Celebrity Families
Former ‘Bachelor’ Host Chris Harrison & Wife Lauren Zima Reveal Family Plans After Fertility Journey
Chris Harrison and Lauren Zima got candid about their future family plans on a recent episode of their Through the Drama podcast. A year and a half after their November 2023 wedding, the couple sat down with Zima’s fertility doctor, Natalie Crawford, and revealed whether they plan on having children.
During the chat, Zima gave updates on her fertility journey, which she said she wasn’t “ready” to share until now.
Zima has completed three rounds of egg freezing, but she and Harrison have no plans to have children together at this point. “Everyone’s first reaction when you say you’re freezing your eggs … I won’t say everyone … [but] a lot of people’s first reaction is, ‘That’s so exciting. Oh my God, you guys are trying!’ And then as a woman, I’m backed into this corner of having to explain, ‘Well, no, I’m not really sure that I want kids. In fact, I don’t think I want children,’ which can be a very volatile thing to say to other women, especially women who have kids.”
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The former Entertainment Tonight host is 37 years old and does not have any children of her own, but became a stepmother to Harrison’s two kids when they tied the knot. The ex-Bachelor Nation host has two adult children, Josh and Taylor, with ex-wife Gwen Harrison, whom he separated from in 2012 after 18 years of marriage.
Zima said her feelings about likely not wanting kids stems back to the death of her father 15 years ago. At that time, she had to help her mom raise her younger siblings, which she said was a “great honor” of her life but also “a lot of parenting at a young age.”
Plus, as she pointed out to her husband, “Now I have Josh and Taylor from you in my life. We started dating when they were teenagers and I love them, I would do anything for them, I would die for them. So, you know, I have that parenting there, so I don’t feel like this need, and I don’t know that I ever felt that need.”
Still, as she got older, it started “[getting] really scary because that biological clock is ticking,” she explained. Harrison said he was “supportive” of whatever decision Zima wanted to make. “I thought, ‘This is your life, this is your right, this is your body,'” he shared. “I’m only going to support you in this and I have.” Zima agreed that Harrison has “been totally by [her] side through this” whole situation.
Even if she never changes her mind about having kids, Zima said she is glad to have an “insurance policy on something that has a time stamp,” adding, “I only have so many years to say, ‘Wait, do I want to fully close the door on this?'”
Harrison admitted, “This has been an emotional roller coaster, I’m not going to lie. But for me, too, it was something that I thought about a lot for you and I.”
