'Like a trap you can't escape': The women who regret being mothers

I think I know what the big taboo is about. It's to do with a mother's love for her child and how that is used to trap and silence her into a life of drudgery and caring - a type of silent martyrdom (you must nevert tell anyone, especially your children if you regret becoming a mother) so that men can get on with more interesting things.

Most of us think the nuclear family is the natural way for humans to live, but any evolutionary biologist will tell you that humans engage in alloparenting - shared parenting and that's how our brains are wired. We are certainly not wired for doing it solo or even as a couple. We are also not wired for teenagers living at home because they would have been fending for themselves in our evolutionary history.

The gap between our brains and our culture is where the taboo lies. Our culture (and men telling women what they are) uses motherhood to constrain women in a cruel way. We were never meant to give up ourselves, ignore our instinctual boundaries (e.g getting touched out, no time for self, child centered lives), but we are told it's a natural part of it.

On becoming mothers many women realise they have given up their agency and are understandably unhappy about it and it can feel like a prison sentence. But then we are shamed and told to keep quiet about it (cos you don't really matter any more).

As Susan Jeffers said in her book I'm Okay, You're a Brat, it is in the long term cruel and a bit vindictive NOT to warn your children how difficult being a mother is as you might lay the ground for them being equally trapped and unhappy down the line - not the same as saying you regret them. You frame it as a problem of society and a lack of support, not because of individual children.

I’m sorry, but just no. No matter what pseudo-psychological-sociological language you dress this up in, no child should hear their mother regrets having them. Feeling loved, secure and wanted is absolutely key to a child’s sense of security, worth and attachment. And that’s important for how they ( even unconsciously) see themselves as adults.

It’s perhaps the ultimate narcissism of the ‘individualistic me-me’ age to think parents have a right to prioritize their own mental health by telling their kids they regret having them.

It’s cruel. It’s wrong to do this.

Thank you for this. I often cant see the wood for the trees at the moment. You’re right it’s a shame it is hard to appreciate it fully when you’re in it. Like being young I suppose! You take that for granted at the time too.

I think advice like this is why the loss of the village is a double whammy, not only does it mean the loss of practical support but also moral support and the experience of those who’ve been there and done that. I have a group from ante natal class and we are muddling through parenthood together, but except for our own mothers, we don’t have anyone from another generation to seek advice from really.

“…remembering my mother saying the same thing to us when we were kids if we saw a 'down and out' in a doorway 'Remember - he was once a baby and his mother loved him' “

The sad thing is that some mothers do not love their children. It simply isn’t true to say otherwise, much as we might want to believe it.

It ties into this idea that “You love them when they arrive”, like that just happens. Sometimes it doesn’t. I admire the sentiment but a horrifying percentage of homeless people were abused as children, some of those by their own mothers. Assuming a mother’s love just happens is to deny the experience of those who weren’t loved or cared for.

As for the Childfree MNers board, I don’t understand why it garners such hostility. I’m sure there are some posters there that post in bad faith on threads about children (although, as this thread has shown, discussion of not wanting children (before or after birth), even if it’s relevant to the conversation in those cases, does not sit well with some). But there are plenty of parents who go onto childfree threads to tell posters that they have no meaning in life, don’t know love and even lecture them that they won’t go to heaven:

www.mumsnet.com/talk/childfree-mumsnetters/5451801-so-relieved-i-didnt-have-children

I think advice like this is why the loss of the village is a double whammy, not only does it mean the loss of practical support but also moral support

Mumsnet has genuinely been one of my Villages, especially for breastfeeding support in the early days, and for my birth trauma (many name-changes ago).

Thank you for this. I often cant see the wood for the trees at the moment. You’re right it’s a shame it is hard to appreciate it fully when you’re in it. Like being young I suppose! You take that for granted at the time too.

I think advice like this is why the loss of the village is a double whammy, not only does it mean the loss of practical support but also moral support and the experience of those who’ve been there and done that. I have a group from ante natal class and we are muddling through parenthood together, but except for our own mothers, we don’t have anyone from another generation to seek advice from really.

It may not feel like it, but it will pass. In those early days it really does overwhelm. My god, it does. Those endless days. And then it very very slowly gets a little bit less intense, all the time.

And suddenly they are nearly grown and the challenges are different ones, and the feelings of being stuck are transmuted into a different thing altogether.

And it feels like those endless days were a blink of an eye and you miss how tiny they were.

It all sounds a bit cliched, but that's probably because its a truism.

I do think its a shame there often isnt the time and space in the early years to really enjoy them.

I'm not even going to try to express why this resonated so deeply with me, even though I'm childless by choice, never entertained the possibility of motherhood for one nanosecond...

But the uniqueness, the power, the responsibility, the dependence - I see all that from a distance, and I know about the joys and pleasures, and the worries and
fears for your defenceless, dependent 'little grubs' .

I see it, and I would never want to do anything to undermine a woman who is undertaking that unique journey that I didn't undertake.

Is that a roundabout Mothers' Day greeting? If you want it to be, and if you can take it in the spirit it is intended, it is💐.

And Kingdomofsleep the story of your friend brought tears to my eyes, remembering my mother saying the same thing to us when we were kids if we saw a 'down and out' in a doorway 'Remember - he was once a baby and his mother loved him' - which has remained with me all my life.

I'm not even going to try to express why this resonated so deeply with me, even though I'm childless by choice, never entertained the possibility of motherhood for one nanosecond...

But the uniqueness, the power, the responsibility, the dependence - I see all that from a distance, and I know about the joys and pleasures, and the worries and
fears for your defenceless, dependent 'little grubs' .

I see it, and I would never want to do anything to undermine a woman who is undertaking that unique journey that I didn't undertake.

Is that a roundabout Mothers' Day greeting? If you want it to be, and if you can take it in the spirit it is intended, it is💐.

And Kingdomofsleep the story of your friend brought tears to my eyes, remembering my mother saying the same thing to us when we were kids if we saw a 'down and out' in a doorway 'Remember - he was once a baby and his mother loved him' - which has remained with me all my life.

OK I'll just say one more thing and then avoid any further derailment in this regard.

If a thread is about a particular demographic or activity (mothers, lesbians, disability, playing the accordion whatever that might be) and one has no experience of being in that demographic or doing that activity, that does not make one's opinion not valid but it might make one's emphatic pronouncements less valuable to the discussion.

I agree, I felt this quite suddenly after having my first, how everyone depends on several others.

Also, it hit me how much effort goes into making a human being. My body really struggled through pregnancy and birth, I was in real danger at one point when birthing dc1, and after she was born it felt at the time how even more precious she felt to me from how hard it was to make her happen. And then after that, how much work it was to keep her healthy and well, this helpless grub, who couldn't even roll over in bed, for months and months.

A friend of mine sadly had a relatively late MC and was very unwell from that, and afterwards she told me, one time when she was still recovering from it she saw a homeless man in the street and felt suddenly very emotional thinking how his mother laboured to bring him into the world and how that made him (and everyone else) really precious. I actually value my own life more, even, after my experience birthing dc1.

One of the worst things about MN is the childfree board.

I do NOT mean women struggling with infertility or that women who aren’t mothers whether through choice or otherwise are not welcome. They are.

But the clamours for a board for women who don’t want to be a mother and are content and indeed vocal and proud about that choice has led to regular and triumphant appearances on threads where mothers are struggling for a whole load of reasons. I think it’s one factor (of many admittedly) that has really changed the feel of the place for the worse.

Thanks @Kingdomofsleep for thoughtful and sensitive posts on this issue.

I don’t regret becoming a mother because I really do love them and I have an eye for the long haul if you like. I know I will want family around me as I enter my autumnal years (I’m probably already in them!)

But having two very young children has been very gruelling and for me not enjoyable at all. That isn’t meant to sound disparaging about those who do love it but I am constantly faced with nonsense about ‘when I am in my 90s I will revisit this’ and sepia photos of a woman with toddlers and babies around her. If I get to my 90s and I am confronted with a two year old screaming inconsolably because she wanted to wear a top she had as a six month old and no longer fits, I’ll be pissed off in the extreme: it is bad enough experiencing it once but not a second time!

Honestly, my regret is having two. I don’t know if I can honestly call it regret as if an angel from god visited me now and asked if I wanted to return one, I couldn’t, but if I’d never met them, but knew how having two would be, I don’t know if I’d make the same choice.

Yes I can, although it won't be fitting for this forum.
I believe that children destroy lives, basically.
Of both women and men.
Without exaggeration, my 20 year long marriage has been mostly problem free and happy.
I don't see that with married couples and kids.

Not sure you can deny that children so often destroy a marriage/relationship.

I have quite a lot of childfree friends and family who have long happy marries of between 20 years and 64 years. The majority of my friends with children are divorced, some more than once

Not sure you can deny that children so often destroy a marriage/relationship.

I have quite a lot of childfree friends and family who have long happy marries of between 20 years and 64 years. The majority of my friends with children are divorced, some more than once

Have been following with interest. It feels like there is so much here. I’m very much ‘in the trenches’ in that I have a 3 year old and a baby. If you asked me what I’d really like to do for Mother’s Day today the answer would be ‘have a day to myself’ but that doesn’t really feel in the spirit.

I agree with those talking about guilt, the constant fear of something happening to them or getting it wrong, the judgment from others whatever you do and the sheer relentlessness of it all. At times it is utterly overwhelming.

I wouldn’t describe myself as having regrets about becoming a mother. I have found it much harder second time than first. I often think of my old life and miss things about it, I miss the sleep, being able to get up and decide what to do with my day without thinking of anyone else, being able to have evenings out, my body being mine and not
having small people all over me all day. Generally the good bits outweigh those feelings which is why I wouldn’t say I regret it. But it’s an absolute slog sometimes (a lot of the time actually) and I can completely see why some women would regret it.

For me personally if I didn’t have children I think I would’ve felt regret about that, so I think the wistful memories of my old carefree life are just that - missing an easier time when things feel difficult now.