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

[IwantToRetire]

I'm not going to post any extracts from the article as better to read the whole content.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgkvge4rkmo

It wasn't intended as a personal slight, but as a general perception.

And I, for one, have never said that there are not down-sides. Of course there are. But that on balance it seems far healthier and conducive to personal equilibrium to attempt a more philosophical approach to one's sufferings and diificulties - as being part and parcel of life's variation. What is the purpose of nurturing regret, and what does it change?

But that on balance it seems far healthier and conducive to personal equilibrium to attempt a more philosophical approach to one's sufferings and diificulties - as being part and parcel of life's variation. What is the purpose of nurturing regret, and what does it change?

And that's fair enough for "sufferings and difficulties", although it's possibly not an approach everyone wants or is able to take. But my point is about avoiding those "sufferings and difficulties" to start with - if that's what you want to do or how you'd see them if they arose - rather than being stoic about them afterwards.

But motherhood is a.multitude of things, highs and lows and deeps and the unexpected. Its going to be a mixture for almost everyone, depending on so many factors.i'd say trying to decide its unmitigated good or bad is impossible and pointless. And regret isnt absolute either. You might regret for an hour one day or regret for long periods or frequently but that might also be balanced or outweighed by times of gratitude. The idea of 'permanent' regret is questionable. Feelings fluctuate and change.

I'm not making personal comment here directed at you.........but my daughter in law was fearful of having children ( even though she knew deep down she wanted a family) because she was scared she'd get post-natal depresion like her mother did. Also she'd remembered the tales of how her mother almost died whilst giving birth to her.

She was also worried she'd not be able to conceive at all anyway because she has polycystic ovarian syndrome - and actually did lose her first pregnancy in the first 10 weeks of gestation. Her approach has been to take control as much as is possible.........of her diet; her health; getting the best medical advice; planning out exactly how she wanted the birth to go etc

Her first child was born in October last year.....it went well; healthy baby; no trauma; no post natal depression...though she is finding the early months and breastfeeding incredibly tiring - and soon she has to go back to work ( but has decided she'll go P/T initially - fortunately she can work from home and has control over her workload).

She obviously wanted to have a baby ( as did my son - her husband) and so accepted the inevitable ups and downs.....but if you don't particularly want a baby and neither does your partner - and you know you don't want to have cope with the inevitable downsides and other scarifices then there is no compulsion on you to do so. It would be a waste to spend your life regretting it. Not having children when most of your family and friendship circle does must have its own difficulties, though? I guess the voluntary 'child free' people must tend to seek out others like themselves with whom to socialise

Not having children when most of your family and friendship circle does must have its own difficulties, though? I guess the voluntary 'child free' people must tend to seek out others like themselves with whom to socialise

It does bring challenges - I've lost friends where we've drifted away from each other because we lived very different lives. I have found that the parent-friends who drifted away were generally those who, for example, didn't take account that not everyone can meet for coffee mid-week or catch up at play dates, and who designated weekends as 'family time' and wouldn't incorporate any other social activities at those times. So we just lost touch because there wasn't ever a time I could see them and I guess they naturally excluded me as their socialising tended to revolve around children and other parents.

But some old friendships have endured because we've both made the effort to maintain them. I've also seen their kids go from bumps to almost-adults now and it's been really lovely. I've made other friends too, sometimes through the shared bond of being child-free, or through activities which are naturally child-free.

As for family, we're not close but I have received criticism of my decisions and that, erm, hasn't helped foster better relations! And for relationships, differences in wanting children has ended several. I'm much more careful now of being clear on the matter as it was often assumed I'd change my mind, although my advancing years are thankfully making that a very obvious non-starter

@ArabellaScott I think this is really the crux of it:
Nobody can ever fully know beforehand, though. You cannot 'inform' yourself of something so deeply unknowable. There is almost no way of knowing how things will unfold. Much is luck. We can make a rough guess, but nobody can know how their pregnancy, birth, post natal expwriences will be, how easy/hard/healthy their baby/child will be, what cicrumstances will play out with work, partner, health, etc.

I think often the shock about "not being told" how hard it would be comes because we have so little control over the temperament of our child. And that has such a huge impact on our mothering experience. That's relatively unusual for most decisions that we make. Generally speaking, at least in Western middle class circles, we can be pretty sure that if we put our minds to something we can achieve it (running a marathon, getting a job, learning a language) and that the outcome is roughly proportional to the effort exerted. But, in the same way you can't just effort your way out of birth trauma, you can't just work harder at parenting and get a child who is easy to parent.

I assumed that nurture and parenting style would have a much bigger impact than it actually seems to. So we hear stories of other mothers finding it extremely tough with various things (sleep, breastfeeding, weaning, tantrums). But we also hear of other parents who don't have these difficulties. And we know there are strategies and parenting techniques to deal with things. So it seems like by reading the right books and applying the strategies well and being loving and kind and gentle, we will have a lot of control over how our child behaves, how and when they sleep, what they eat, how they settle at school etc. (See also childbirth!)

Of course, there are parenting strategies that are genuinely helpful, but babies and children start at such different places with all kinds of different strengths and difficulties that it makes it almost meaningless when considering whether to have a baby. As a case in point, a colleague has 2 children who both slept through the night consistently from a young age and are totally happy to be left with a sitter. They are calm and play well independently. These are skills my DS is still developing at nearly 4 (and I haven't just passively waited for change, I have put in a lot of effort)!

Our experiences of parenting are absolutely poles apart. There was no way to predict this ahead of time. But if I was a prospective mother hearing both our experiences, I would probably think something like "Well there's no way I'm being like that sucker. She must have done something wrong. There's no way my child will be like that."

I agree that access to the areas you mention are valuable for women. But the idea we weren't already doing things of value, that simply weren't BEING valued, also flows through Western White feminism.

And as far as sexual freedom goes, I think hetero women were sold an absolute pup on that one. Not that we shouldn't be ABLE to be sexually free; but that within the patriarchal paradigm, that freedom is far too often manipulated into a different kind of servitude to me.

The most valuable sexual freedom to the heterosexual woman is the freedom to say no to sex frankly, and it is one for which we are still fighting. The freedom to say yes, which was granted with surprising enthusiasm by the patriarchy, while on the face of it equality, quickly becomes the obligation to do so under any and all circumstances in a patriarchal structure. Think of all the women murdered by their partners whose partners are now getting away with it by saying it was 'consensual rough sex'; any implication that OF COURSE no woman would be getting off on being beaten or strangled half to death by someone much stronger than her is dismissed as vanilla prudery, in large part because a certain flavour of feminism says that sexual freedom for women is having sex like men.

As far as the strengths of men go, I am not much interested in them. If some women find men useful for something that's all very well, but it isn't the work of feminism to identify their strengths and ameliorate their weaknesses. And the risks and hostility men as a class present to women as a class make me reluctant to take on that work in any way. I might feel very differently about that if I had sons. But I don't, I have two daughters, and I feel I have far more to be worried about bringing them up as girls in the current social environment than my parents had to about me 30/40 years ago, which is frankly horrifying but true. The idea of them submitting their beautiful hearts and bodies to the kind of men I see around me in the generation ahead of them absolutely horrifies me to be frank.

I feel I have far more to be worried about bringing them up as girls in the current social environment than my parents had to about me 30/40 years ago,

I wonder. Maybe when we were young we were liberated in modern society with equality and nothing to fear and we thought our parents were old prudes from a bygone age making a fuss about nothing.

(edited for rhetoric :-))

I was born in 1984. The boys and men I grew up with, while far from being raging feminists, weren't raised on a perpetual diet of porn and resentment. It had made a significant difference to the male-female dynamic and I'm worried for my girls growing up in it.

I think this is huge.

I think back to the early 80s when I was first in school at 5. My father worked away so it was mostly my mum taking care of me and she made me breakfast and said good-by at the door before going to work herself. I walked home to the neighbour's for lunch,then back to school. After school I would drop my bag at home and play out or at a friend's until mum came home from work. I would see the neighbour if I needed anything or wanted to watch tv or whatever. Mum made supper, I'd play until bed. I might have an art lesson on Saturday which she drove me to.

No school run, no packed lunch, no running to classes every day after school, not having to figure out how to entertain me all day. Even with a dad who was away at sea for eight months a year, I don't think it was as crazy as many parents find life now. And I don't think the children turned out particularly worse.

Yes, this.

Lately I have been thinking a lot about other things I might have done if I hadn't married and had kids. Maybe I'd have gone to live in a bigger, more exciting city, had a different kind of career, married a different kind of person.

The main reason I am contemplating this now is that my two oldest kids are now at a point where they are making their own choices about these things, and sometimes we talk about it, and so I am reflecting a lot on what my experience has been.

Do some of these ideas sound appealing? Sure! But then, so did having kids and staying home to take care of them, home educate, and work on some other projects I was really interested in. And like all of us I made choices which opened some doors and closed others.

It's also very easy to put on rose tinted glasses about the choices I didn't make. Maybe if I had moved to London to become a spy and marry (redacted) and had a really amazing city garden in a listed house in a tree lined neighbourhood things would have been much more amazing. But that is a lot of "ifs". And even if I had done all of those things, perhaps I would wish I'd stayed close to my family and had kids. Who knows.

As the cost of living grows, state support and public services fall apart and future opportunities for young people seem to be contracting, I’m not surprised that increasing numbers of women feel that they’ve been kind of mis-sold what life would be like after becoming a mother.
There’s so much social pressure on motherhood. And huge financial limitations on life after kids especially around housing which knocks the stuffing out of so many other plans women might have had.

I agree with all this

I think we need to change neighbourhoods to make them more child-friendly. The increase in cars for one has made people a lot more reluctant to let kids play out.

I agree strongly with this.

I remember thinking when in the absolute worst point of newborn days that nobody could ever prepare you for it, because it was not possible to imagine or conceive of how hard it was to learn how to do all these difficult things post surgery and on zero sleep.

The other thing nobody can tell you is the bone deep bond that matters more than anything else ever could or did or will. That's pretty astounding imo.

I think framing it in terms of whether you 'enjoy' it or not or of 'good choice' etc is just not even touching the sides. It's not like anything else I've ever done or known, really.

That bond can be shaky or non existent, and can be severed and tested, though.

That really is something no one talks about!

The bond is also linked to breastfeeding -just like all our mammal cousins, but human females are 'milked' , pun intended, until children are 18.

If I had my time again I wouldnt have had children.

I'm a little aghast, how did you think the boys would take being told that they have no particular strengths, unlike girls, or that the strengths they seemingly has weren't important ones?

Hmm...I don't read pp as saying that. She said that the boys were saying 'boys are better at sport' in a Tate-type supremacist way, so she was pointing out women have physical strengths too.

I agree though the 'battle of the sexes' framing is not ideal.

I agree with a lot of your post.

But this section : ' As far as the strengths of men go, I am not much interested in them. If some women find men useful for something that's all very well, but it isn't the work of feminism to identify their strengths and ameliorate their weaknesses. And the risks and hostility men as a class present to women as a class make me reluctant to take on that work in any way. '

Pragmatically speaking, it's hard to get men to support a feminism which only views them as people who 'may be useful for women' but aren't of much interest/relevance otherwise. I understand on an individual level focusing on supporting women, and I agree re the upsurge of misogyny in society.

Men as a class won't ever support feminism. We've tried, I think we got as close to it as we were ever going to in the 90s, and since then the pendulum has been swinging back hard. I think if our liberation can only come about with men's say-so, it isn't much of a liberation.

I agree. Becoming a parent (I do think the same profound change happens for fathers as well as mothers) is like adding a whole new dimension to your life that just ... Wasn't there before.

I like the framing around "maternal ambivalence" from Margo Lowry, which makes space for the difficult emotions experienced as a mother without collapsing that into regret / failure. Those negatives exist alongside positive, wonderful things - they don't cancel each other out, they are all there all at once.

That said, I do think it would be possible to regret becoming a mother. I have had jobs that I thought I would like but actually hated. If someone had told me I had to stay in those jobs for the rest of my life I would have despaired. Luckily you can quit a job, but you can't not be a mum once you have a child.

Hmm...I understand saying that but isn't that too pessimistic? I mean, in that case, what's the solution? Female separatism?

. Unless women migrate to Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland, then we have to live in a half-male world. I don't really see how women can become liberated in a way totally non-dependent on the views of 50% of the population.

Conversely, I don't think in modern society men as a group are able to behave with complete lack of dependence on the attitudes of women, either, though as I said, I agree that misogyny is worsening.

As I say in the first paragraph, I think the ideal is to hold fathers to the same high standards that mothers are, rather than relaxing standards for mothers. So I do agree!

However, on a primal level, I think in those early days it's really only the mother who matters. And depending on how a society is structured, the father may not even be involved, and the maternal uncles are the ones who act as the guiding, loving male figure in the children's lives.

I think in our current western society, father abandonment causes issues, but there are societies where that isn't the case. But I think in every society, the mother is the most important figure in a young child's life.

So in current society, men need to be judged just as harshly as women, but biologically, mothers are intrinsically more connected and important to a baby and young child than fathers, who are fairly superfluous.