'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

You cannot possibly have any actual insight or understanding not being a mother yourself. Please keep your thank fucks to yourself I’m sick of hearing it.

There's an important reason it's taboo to express regret over children: it is extremely painful to know your mother regrets having you.

This is true now because it’s weirdly been portrayed as the 1 life choice that never comes with any risk of regret. Which is irrational if you think about it.
There will be some who do regret and while I’m not saying celebrate it, I am saying there should be ways to openly recognise it as a risk abd pathways to get help. We have recognised that for adoption- for the mother and child- there is a psychological fallout and help is developed and on offer. There should be similar for regret as well. A lot of the hurt on the child’s part comes from the social view that only a monster would regret becoming a mother and if their mum isn’t a monster, then the child wonders if they are unlovable, a bad child.

The regret exists and causes more damage when it is bottled up, kept in the closet the way things are now.

Ha, we cross posted and yes I completely agree with you. My post echoes a lot of yours.

There was a scene of this in Bridget Jones. Played for laughs but still.

Twice in my life I have been there when a mother cries in anguish at the regret. It’s actually extremely upsetting and I remember both times very clearly.

As I said earlier anything great comes with risk. You can play safe and never risk it. That’s a valid choice. But then you potentially miss out too in ways that can’t be put into words. It’s whether you choose to throw your hat into the ring and take the risk or not.

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.

I expect its a bit 'good news bad news'.

Also you can’t know. Your child may turn out to be an interesting lovely person who enhances your life and the world generally or the baby could become Nigel Farage or god forbid Andrew Tate or a manosphere man. Massive regret for those mums I imagine.

The MN without children board is frequently visited by mothers berating women who chose not to have children with comments like "you've never known real love" and "it's the most profound thing you'll ever do" without pausing for one second to think how those comments impact on women like me who are childless not by choice

it's not a one way thing

i find this thread really sad tbh. women who regret motherhood really do need to be recognised and given support and a space to talk about but as we've seen from this, it's immediately drowned out by all kinds of other issues around motherhood

I really agree with this, I have felt this pretty strongly for a while. I've seen that on the Parenting board, and even in Breastfeeding, where you'd think surely it could be a place for just mums.

I think it’s worth adding that sometimes the regret isn’t for the life you’ve lost but for the burden of guilt, and worry that you have to carry forever. From the moment you become a mother, grief shadows happiness. The potential for catastrophic loss is always present, and lesser, but more persistent, is the nagging worry of getting it all wrong.

I have one dc who moves easily through life, and one who has struggled through every phase and on occasions begged me to end his life. My regrets are for my selfish procreation, and the trap for me is the awful paradox of loving him too much to let him go.

Mulling this further, while I do not regret having my kids, I do have an adjacent regret and that is related to my youngest with autism who is struggling into adulthood. I’m worried they will never be able to live independently.

So while I do not regret having them, they are amazing, loving, and beautiful and will love them until my last breath, I do wonder if I’ve done this child a disservice bringing them into a world that is both hostile and extremely difficult for them to just survive in. Thriving and succeeding is out the window, I’m afraid.

I wonder did I bring a child into this world who is going to have mostly suffering and pain with only flashes of joy here and there? And what happens when me and DH are gone? How will they get on? I feel perhaps I was selfish having them.

The article doesn’t really speak to that.

Same. I have been on a few threads in parenting where women with no children are dishing out really bad parenting advice. I would rather have fathers on there as they have way more of a clue about parenting than women who dont like kids, don’t want them and think children should be hardly seen and never heard. They often espouse the tough love approach or even abusive parenting methods like shouting or spanking. It is horrendous.

It’s similar from parents with toddlers or those with very biddable teens giving their ridiculous views (usually recommending authoritarian parenting) for 16 plus - like that’s going to work.

I’ve seen friends go through hell with difficult teens and deal with it so carefully and admirably. And no shouting at them and grounding them won’t work - if only it were that simple 🙄.

I think the thoughtful posts now outweigh the initial hostile comments Exhausted if you want to contribute?

@JuliettaCaeser
Although, I feel that while similar it is more valid than the opinions of the childfree. There are some children that are easier than others to parent. It’s nice to know you’re not imagining you have difficulties with your child.

I think the goal is to get a cross section from all mothers, but adding in childfree opinions is adding noise to the advice/data which then makes it harder for mums seeking advice to discern the advice that is grounded in the reality of a women with experience of being mothers versus the imagined what would I do if I were a mother.

Research I read ( no I don’t have the reference) said that most women who regret having children ( and it was a small percentage) have unsupportive or no partners. So it was more to do with their circumstances than motherhood itself.

Assuming these women wanted to become mothers, we don’t know what the counterfactual would be. If they never had children, would they have regretted that too?

I’ve lost count of the number of threads I’ve seen infiltrated and it’s both irritating and worrying. It’s changing the landscape of the place. I feel the same way about the sex board, although for different reasons of course.

Mothers shouldn’t be taking over the childfree board either but I never go on there.

Brutal honesty: I wanted my children so, so much. Experienced infertility and recurrent miscarriages and it was devastating. Now I have kids and I hate my life. It was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made, having kids. I should have listened to the universe when it tried to intervene.

So describing the posts above as “not helpful” or accusations of “bulldozing” isn’t telling someone that their contribution is unwelcome and is not “telling someone what to do”. Or that it’s not OK to make the statement “Sure, some women love motherhood” - something that anyone can see, male/female, mother or not - solely because I’m not a mother. Right.

As for your comment about the “correct” board to discuss this in, this is feminist discussion, not a parenting subboard.

I absolutely advocate - and continue to do so - for the reasons why women regret motherhood and for the voices of those who experience that regret to be heard. Only then can women make informed decisions. I absolutely want those women to post here - or indeed anywhere - and to feel that they aren’t going to be judged.

The idea that only mothers should comment on the issue of regret, and not women who have chosen not to become a mother precisely because of those potential regrets, is bizarre.

As a childfree woman, I found the article interesting and I thought it was positive that (it seems) younger generations are becoming more aware of motherhood as a choice, not an obligation. I hope this will translate eventually into less societal judgement of childfree women.

I mean, a lot of it is known about, or reasonably ought to be, before having children - Ok you can’t know exactly what something is like until you experience it but you know they will place a restriction on your life, will cost a lot of money, impact your career/earning, etc.

My 2 are grown up now or almost and whilst I don’t regret becoming a mother I really really didn’t enjoy having young children. I just wasn’t massively cut out for it. I struggled with patience and the relentlessness of it. I thought I’d be better at it than I was but then given my own mother wasn’t massively cut out for it when we were young either, it shouldn’t have really been a surprise. I have a much better relationship with my own mum now as an adult than I did as a child.

What I find hard even now is the constant worry about them, I think that’s just hardwired in. In some ways it’s even worse when they are adults and you can’t control what they do. This thread has been helpful actually as I saw a mention of therapy which I had never even thought about but which may help.

How I would put it is not that I regret having them but that I think I’d have been just as happy if I hadn’t. I got pregnant easily twice and so whilst I wanted children I never had a longing for them if that makes sense.

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 strongly suspect this as well. If the ‘D’F was pulling his full and equal weight of parenting, then the DM may well feel v differently. How many threads do we see of exhausted mothers and useless fathers? Or threads from exhausted single mothers whose husbands have buggered off.

Not to mention how parenting in our modern era has become more stressful full stop. Especially with the mother now expected to be in full time paid work, then carry the bulk of the unpaid home labour, at a time of rising costs and fewer extended family to help.

The expectations of what mothering involves or entails has increased too. I had pretty laissez-faire parents, but the expected involvement in a child’s life was definitely less back then. The state helped out for a while but no more sure start, fewer services, longer waits, but more pressure to ensure homework is done, take children to clubs etc etc. It’s all a recipe for disaster and in fact many many mothers have done an amazing job of parenting under terrible circumstances.

Nothing is more important than raising children and I wish there was more support for mothers to do so.

This is definitely a conversation that is ripe for discussion.

Many women who, prior to motherhood, express ambivalence, are reassured that 'once you become pregnant / once baby is here' they'll feel different. Unless the voices of women who speak up about their motherhood regret are amplified, uncertain prospective mothers have little to back up their ambivalence in the face of bright-eyed encouragement. For some women, their hunches are right -parenthood is not for them, and it can be a really hard stance to maintain in a society which, once the whole, rose-tints the experience.

As a parent of a child with a developmental disability, I am acutely aware of the fact that I am now signed up to be a carer for life, and that I will work until I drop in order to ensure DC1 has the best life she can possibly have. This at a time when most of my peers are starting to think about winding down and plan for retirement in the not too distant future. My DC's dad was a very ambivalent prospective father, who -probably wrongly- eventually convinced himself he'd brave fatherhood; not because of the joys of becoming a parent, it turned out, but because he wanted us to stay together. We're now separating as the intensity of parenthood has broken him -his life would have been immeasurably easier (which is what he wants) without children, and without people convincing him it would all be alright and that he had the personal resources to do a good job of it.

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.