January Jones has no regrets about her decision to raise her son Xander, 20 months, in a single-parent household. The 35-year-old Mad Men actress opens up about motherhood and her son’s paternity in the latest issue of Net-a-Porter’s The Edit.
“I don’t have room for anything else, so I don’t know how I would have done it with a partner. I knew I would be raising my son alone,” says Jones, whose ex-boyfriends include Jason Sudeikis, Ashton Kutcher and Josh Groban. “It was something I went in to knowingly, I was prepared mentally — and I was excited about it.”
Jones adds that being pregnant was the “most healthy and peaceful I’ve ever felt.”
The actress has repeatedly refused to reveal who fathered her son, telling the magazine, “It’s just not something the public needs to know. I don’t divulge my sexual preferences. There are parts of your life — no matter what your job — that should remain private.”
The South Dakota native continues, “When I was starting out, other actors advised me to keep certain things close to the vest. When you become a public figure people want to know everything about you, and then [they] pick it apart — it becomes negative. When my son asks those questions, I want him to [hear it from me]. I don’t want him to be able to Google it.”
Jones says she is keeping her baby daddy’s identity a secret for another reason: having an air of mystery keeps the focus on her work. “As an actor, if people know too many things about you they won’t believe you in a certain character,” she tells The Edit. “You don’t want people to have a preconceived notion of who you are.”