25 People Explain Why Parenting Isn’t A Choice They Would Repeat
“No lying: did you regret having children?”
The decision of whether or not to have children is a profound one, especially for women contending with the pressures of a diminishing biological window. Society often upholds parenthood as life’s greatest achievement, but more and more people are beginning to challenge this idea, with many choosing to remain child-free. Still, the fear of future regret persists.
While parenthood is frequently painted as only joyous and fulfilling, the reality is much more nuanced. Many parents hesitate to speak openly about their doubts for fear of social judgment. Fortunately, in today’s more open climate, people feel safer sharing their honest experiences, which can help others make better-informed decisions. Our team stumbled upon an engaging discussion where parents were asked if they regretted having children, and a surprising number admitted to some regrets, detailing the reasons behind their feelings. Read on for insightful, thought-provoking responses—especially relevant for anyone weighing this life-changing choice.
Image source: Jack Claxton, Insecure man indoors medium shot
Yes.
My son is 27, suffering from chronic depression, in a low-paying dead-end job without the faintest idea of how to get out of it. His life is an unending continuum of unhappiness and dissatisfaction.
If I knew that he would develop like this, I would not have had him. I would not want to bring a person into this world outside of his own volition, if I knew that he would experience no joy in his existence.
I was under the impression that almost all living creatures had at least the capacity for joie de vivre, and I assumed that it would be so for my child, as well.
Sorry, son. I don’t know what to do.
Having been asked, and to clear up a few misapprehensions evident in some of the comments I received - an update after almost 3 years:
Ah, I think things are marginally better. He’s still living with us, and in fact he’s out of a job, at the moment. But he seems to be developing a more positive, optimistic outlook and is preparing to further his education.
Just to clear up one or two things:
We are a loving and extremely supportive family and have always been so. I do not in any way resent his existence and I am glad for his presence in my life.
My initial answer had to do with if I regret having children - my point being that if I had anticipated beforehand that he would struggle so much to find pleasure in his existence, I would’ve decided against it. It really is a situation of caring too much, rather than caring too little - which most people seem to get, but some don’t.
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Going anonymous on this one, for reasons that are, or should soon be, obvious.
Although I've always loved being around kids (I was the guy playing with all the kids at any party) and they seemed to take to me, I knew I never wanted to have any of my own. Fortunately, my wife felt similarly... until she neared 40, and then went kind of crazy with this newfound unquenchable desire for motherhood. We had trouble getting pregnant at that age, and rounds of IVF ensued; following several, one was successful, after huge time, financial, and emotional costs. Our son came along, and was healthy and quite adorable. Major success story from the outside, right?
I was immediately plunged into a seemingly endless spiral of resentment and depression (the real kind, clinical, requiring seeing a psychiatrist and going on medication). I knew at a profound level that I Did Not Want This. It completely destroyed spontaneity and flexibility; everything needed planning, and our son like all very small children needed to be watched pretty much 24/7. All our friendships were put on hold, since getting out of the house even for planned things was difficult. Work and other obligations were missed whenever he got the sniffles. As he grew, things got better, somewhat. There were all manner of pointless activities that he didn't care much about (karate, swimming, 20 other things), constant trips to school, play date planning, things that, as far as I can tell, nearly every parent dislikes, and only few are vocally honest about.
The therapist told me that this was much more common than I'd guess, but there was a huge taboo about saying you simply hated being a parent. So, I googled "I hate being a parent" and, Lo: it was all over the place. People overcome by tedium and regret.
Here's the interesting thing: by any reasonable standards, I'm a good parent. People are always pointing this out, how attentive and affectionate I am as a father. I want to do a good job, and I want my son to have a good life. I do love him. I just wish that someone else would be actually enjoying the process of raising him, since on an objective and subjective level, my own life is just markedly less enjoyable since he came along. That's simple honesty. The best analogy would be that, instead of being yourself, you're enacting a script, day in and day out, this pretending to be enthusiastic about something you hate. It would wear you down. You'd long to break free of it and be yourself again.
My wife knows all this, and is constantly upset by it. There's no sense of "you sacrificed your own happiness so I could achieve my dream of being a mother". Instead, it's more like "there's something wrong with you for reacting this way", and that alone has put a serious strain on the relationship. At the worst times, I've thought of walking out, but I could never do that to my son. Too many marriages in my extended family have fizzled, leaving the kids lost. But, to be honest, there are times when I just stand there and want to bang my head against the door frame, I just loathe being a parent so much. He's almost 10 now, and I console myself that there are 8 years more of this, then college. I think I can make it until then without losing it, especially since, although he's a very difficult child, he is gradually getting easier and not requiring such constant monitoring.
I wrote this for two reasons. First, for others who may be thinking "I think I won't like being a parent, but everyone thinks I should have kids, and maybe I'll love it!" Yes, just possibly; but, if you don't, you will be massively miserable. Second, for those who have a kneejerk reaction of "How can you say you don't love your OWN CHILD!" I'm not saying that. I'm saying that his coming along marked a pronounced negative turn in my own happiness, despite the fact that I do love him and am trying my best not to let that unhappiness interfere with his upbringing.
What's odd about this predicament is that no one, least of all other parents, has much sympathy for you, even if you are clinically depressed to the point of dysfunction. One is supposed to view having a child as some sort of multifaceted bejeweled gift from The Cosmos. How can anyone be so ungrateful to The Cosmos for a gift of such magnificence? And that, in the nutshell, is a big fraction of the problem of living with this. There are worse problems, of course, but this particular one is mine.
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Yes. Plain and simple.
You can judge me all you want. Don't care.
My daughter was the best thing I had ever done in my life, I loved her with all my mighty heart. Being her father was the highlight of my life… Then she became something else entirely and went away, never to talk to me again.
No pain matches this. So, yes, I regret having my kid. Deeply.
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I regret that I was not mentally stable enough to understand someone like me shouldn't have children. I love my children dearly, and tried my best, but my failings unfortunately left them almost as scarred as I was at the tender early adult years they're at, from basically marrying my abuser in a different person, unknowingly exposing them to just as terrible a person. I believe in reincarnation and feel they would have been better off with someone else. However, I'm not sad they exist. And maybe having a bad mother is a lesson they needed in this lifetime, if my beliefs are true.
My oldest has the Huntington's gene though. I DO regret having him, because I know what's coming now that I did my research. I know it's not going to be pretty, and id rather have death by a thousand cuts and broken bones than watch him suffer. He didn't deserve this and certainly doesn't deserve what's coming.
Image source: Angie Martin, Ambreen
I 100% very deeply regret having my 4 children. Before passing judgment, please let me explain.
I am an introverted, hard-working person. My mother named me Angel at birth, which set me up for a lifetime of living up to trying to be the perfect kid.
Sadly, as hard as I was on myself, everyone else was even harder on me.
It seemed like everyone was always disgruntled that I was ‘different’. I had sensory problems and hearing damage called misophonia because I suffered a skull fracture at 6 months old.
I had to try to find quiet time for myself whenever and wherever I could steal it to deal with my hearing sensitivity, otherwise I would suffer migraines and stress.
All the extroverts around me were perpetually unhappy that I couldn't give them 100% of my time and attention. I was constantly beat up emotionally by the adults around me for not having the energy, and for taking time out for art and nature to keep myself balanced.
Over decades, this dissatisfaction they had toward my style of living led everyone to start calling me crazy, bipolar, etc. Crazy for wanting to go fishing, read a book, paint a picture. Crazy for taking extra time in the shower or restroom to meditate, crazy for taking walks, and so on. Surely, I must have a mental issue, wanting to spend time in my own company.
In fact, several people I was around physically demolished my gallery-quality artwork to show me how they felt about my ‘quiet’ nature and activities. I was so devastated at their behavior that I permanently quit doing art at 18 after a gallery approached me to put my work on display.
It didn't matter that I tried to convince every psychiatrist from here to Timbuktu that I had some undiagnosed mental disorder that certainly they could fix with some magic pill. Certainly, I convinced myself, a pill would make me tolerable to everyone else.
I wanted nothing more than to be a mom for most of my life. I was told I would never have children, and I almost died several times trying to have children.
Finally, I had 4 children in a 20-year span of time. I was tickled pink. They were quirky, ADHD and autistic, and I loved the daylights out of them. I loved everything there was to love about being a mom.
Just like my family had, my extroverted husband and in-laws hated my personality.
Hated how I raised and mentored and guided the kids. Hated how I let them do art and make messes. Hated how I let them disassemble and reassemble things to figure out how the world worked. Hated that I pushed them to go new places and try new foods.
Most of all, they hated that I needed a break here and there. They hated that I asked for someone to watch the kids for 5 minutes so I could take my extra long shower after we did yard work and remodeling all day.
They called me a “bad mom” and a “bad wife” because I asked for a few breaks here and there. They convinced a few people that my requests for quiet time or alone time were somehow unreasonable. That grandma could do so much better; she was the vision of perfection that everyone else had to live up to.
I already failed her test because I didn't dust my mantle the day she visited for her white glove inspection. I was too busy ‘playing with my kids’, they said, to be a proper housewife to my husband.
All the people who claimed to be so much better at parenting than I convinced the courts I had ‘bipolar’. I even committed myself several times after that and tried to get meds for my ‘bipolar-ness’ to try to show people that my hearing sensitivity wouldnt cause any more problems.
Even me memorizing and spouting off all the symptoms to try to convince people that I had bipolar hadn't worked, the experts looked at me and said “you're just sad. You lost 4 children. I don't have a magic pill to make you feel any better about it.”
It took 5 child-less years and 30+ experts before I finally conned one into giving me psych meds, but the meds didn't make me feel any better about losing my home and my children.
I was too ashamed to look at any of them anymore. I have lived in my car for 5 years. I left everything behind. I never went back
A year after he took custody of our kids and moved them all in with his mother, my ex sent me an email stating that he took my kids to teach me a lesson for ‘nagging’ him. I guess he couldn't resist the urge to twist the knife in my back again about asking him to watch them so I could take a shower.
I guess grandma is still supermom, and I'm still the dog poo that I always was.
I nagged him, 1 time, to relieve me so I could take a break and a shower. Just like everything else in my life, the very moment I tried to take care of myself instead of someone else, I was somehow no longer deserving of being treated like a human being.
I saved the lives of 3 drowning kids. I CPR'd my infant back to life when he nearly died from meningitis he caught from another family member. I did a million other humanitarian things throughout, including helping someone with a stalled car this morning.
But no matter what I do, it's not enough. It's never been enough. It will never be enough.
I'm an introvert with a hearing sensitivity, and that makes me unworthy of being mother to my own children.
My mother took her life last year because she didn't feel good enough either. Everyone in our miserable town convinced her she was a terrible mother, too. Surely, she's a terrible mother to have had a terrible daughter with sensitive hearing, right? To have had a daughter who lost all her kids because she asked for help 1 time in 20 years of being a mother.
If I wouldn't have given birth to my children, I wouldn't have suffered any of this. Perhaps, my art work and authored books would have made me a pretty penny by now. I wouldn't have wasted 20 years of talent because extroverts told me I shouldn't waste my time writing or doing the art that I loved.
I certainly wouldn't have suffered being embarrassed about being a ‘terrible’ mother to the degree that I won't ever be able to live down the title and the stigma everyone has placed on me.
It's clear to me from my struggles in getting pregnant to my struggles in losing contact with my babies that I was never meant to be a mother at all.
I regret having my children, not because of them, but because a mother is expected to be perfect, and any other definition is considered a failure.
We, as humans, even take babies away from animals when we think we know better. I'm not sure why I ever imagined that same thing wouldn't happen to me, just for being a little ‘different’.
I hope my children don't have children. Since they are also a little ‘different’, and our society likes to separate ‘different’ children from ‘different’ parents to give them to ‘normal’ couples to try to make everyone ‘normal’.
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Good question. While dating in my 20s, I told the girl I was dating, my future wife, that I didn't want to get married or have kids because of how the world was. A few years later we married and then eventually had two kids.
Great kids. The youngest just graduated high school. Oldest is in college. They both are smart and best of all kind and compassionate.
Still though, I think it was a mistake especially with the state of the world today. Love them but they've been through a lot of stuff.
Image source: Kim Scheinberg, freepik
Did I ever regret having children? You mean, like, have I ever regretted it in the 23 years since my oldest was born?
God, yes.
The first time was two days after I brought Max home from the hospital after the c-section, when I couldn’t get him to latch and couldn’t get him to stop crying. And lots more times during that first 18 months when I had undiagnosed PPD.
The time I remember most clearly, though, was on 9–11. Our youngest was 10 weeks old. My first thought upon seeing the second plane hit the towers was, “The world he was born into just a few months ago looks nothing like the world he’s going to grow up in.” Plenty of times over the next month or so I looked at Sam and wondered, “Had I known in Oct 2000 what I know now, would we have gone ahead and had a second kid?”
And since 2016? Even my kids themselves have asked about the wisdom of bringing them into the world we’re in now. One of my kids is adamant that if he raises kids, anything other than adoption would be cruel, given the state of the planet.
Both my kids were (mostly) planned, very much wanted kids. I don’t regret a minute I’ve spent with them or a dime I’ve spent on them or the hairs I’ve greyed because of them. They are, unquestionably, the best thing in my life. I would walk into traffic or a burning building for them.
But I think about what the world might look like in 20 or 30 years (both environmentally and politically) and think maybe, just maybe, their future is nowhere near as bright as the one I’d imagined for them 25 years ago.
And I despair a little.
Edited to add: I really wasn’t expecting anti-semitism to make such a big comeback in my lifetime, never mind theirs. And while I had a little hope that we were making progress against all the variations of homophobia, that proved false, too. A young relative who shares my last name recently asked, “Should I be more afraid of going to temple or a gay bar?” and just… oof.
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EDIT: For anyone still coming across this answer I feel the need to add in an extra note. READ MY FULL ANSWER! I’m getting annoyed by the comments of “Never” or “Not once” and etc. as though you can only be happy or regretful. As though your kid never drove you crazy or you and your partner never once got into an argument. Life isn’t black and white. Do everyone else a favor and stop trying to look good to strangers on the internet.
I originally answered this question because I suspect the original poster of this question was attempting to discern if going through with a pregnancy was worth it or if raising kids for others was as hard as it is for them. Lying and saying that you never regretted your children so you look like the perfect parent online would not help someone through a tough time/decision they are struggling with.
Life sucks and sometimes we need a little reminder that it doesn’t just suck for us alone and that we all struggle through hard times in life, but it gets better and we come out stronger on the other side.
Regret isn’t a life long emotion. Just like happiness comes and goes, so does regret, sadness, pride, and every other emotion on the spectrum. My daughter has made me feel just about every emotion possible in her six years on this planet and I would not trade them for anything.
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Absolutely! And I am sure there are some to the extreme out there, but in my opinion anyone that says differently is lying to themselves.
There were days that my daughter would cry and if I picked her up she would wail even more. I would feel like a terrible father and think that it would never get better and this was the worst thing I could have ever done to myself.
There were days that she would start throwing up all over the place or chewing on something I printed out for a client or whatever and totally ruin whatever it was she threw up on, chewed on, or tore up.
There are still days where she puts stickers on everything, let’s the dog loose from the backyard, lies to her mother and I, etc. that all make me feel like I should just stick her in her room and put a jail cell bucket and food dispenser in the corner.
My wife and I have not been able to go out as much any more (which is kind of all right because we are more introverts, but sometimes it is nice to go out and just be in each others company…) and anytime we want to go out we either have to bring her with us or plan a bunch of other steps to make sure she is cared for.
BUT despite all this, and everything else that I can’t remember right now because there has just been so many times I have wanted to drop her off at the steps of the nearest pawn shop… I love the dang kid!
Just like everything in life, kids are not perfect and the situations you find yourself in with them will not always be perfect. After those things happen though the better times that you have with your kids will be all the better.
After struggling day after day to teach my daughter the basics of math and the alphabet she came home from kindergarten one day and read me her first book! I am kind of tearing up as I type this, because I felt so much pride in her accomplishment.
Jogging behind her as she rides her bike to school (still training wheels and very slowly) I feel immense pride in her as she jumps the curb or makes a sharp turn without falling. I kind of reach out my hand just in case I need to stabilize her but she pulls though all on her own! I am hoping in a few months we can take the wheels off and I can’t wait to see her flying down some steep hill with the wind in her hair.
While there are a many, many, many things that she has done and will do in the future that have made me kind of regret putting myself in this situation there are many other things that make it all worth while. Nothing is perfect. Not even kids. But in addition to her learning from me, I have also learned from her. I couldn’t imagine my life without her in it.
Really, I just wish the kid would put her shoes away once in a while…
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I don't regret my kids. I regret allowing myself to have children with a loser. It's the biggest regret I have. I made a bad choice for a partner, and my kids missed out on a good relationship with a real father. And I did it alone. But the kids, the were never the problem. My lack of love for myself was. I has no business messing around with him he had no goals nothing. I still feel so embarrassed and ashamed of my choices.
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Very much so.
I was 17 in 1979 when I got unexpectedly pregnant and was totally unprepared for what I was getting myself into. Long story short, I was a selfish, idiot teenager and didn’t give my children any kind of good start in life. My husband only married me so the kids could have his name, then he left. I raised them while on welfare, and I know I never gave them the attention and care that they needed.
I love my children, don’t get me wrong, but I should NOT have had them when I did. I ended up giving custody of my youngest three to my mother, then their father, but got them back when he passed away. I had a fourth before getting my tubes tied (best decision ever!) and I did keep him, and he’s turned out well. The other three, not so much. No surprise there.
It took me YEARS to figure out why I kept getting pregnant when I insisted on using condoms. My late ex-husband had to have been poking holes in them. It never once occurred to me at the time. I was such an idiot.
If I could have had my children in my late 20s, when I began to really mature as I remember it, I wouldn’t regret it at all and would have given them such a better start in life and raised them with so much more attention and concern for their future. As it is, all I can do now is help them as much as they’ll let me. I certainly understand why they don’t want much to do with me.
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Of course I did, and I find it hard to believe you can find anyone who didn’t.
At some points.
Children are an enormous drain on you, physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, financially. Pregnancy is miserable, and if you’re a man, the fact that your wife is miserable is also going to make you miserable, and you don’t get the hormonally charged rewards, nor do you have the hormonally charged brain mechanism that makes you forget the misery. (If the latter didn’t exist, the human species would die out, as no woman would have more than one child)
Once the child is born, you’re up feeding every two hours, and struggling to perform all the functions for a helpless infant who cannot even communicate their needs… even their one communication channel, crying, is also used merely for exercise, so it doesn’t even communicate that there is certainly a problem to solve!
This combination of stark terror, utter confusion, and extremely poor sleep goes on for months, and only gradually tapers out. When they are thirty, you’re still going to be feeling some degree of it.
But that leads to the opposite complaint; there’s an awful sense of loss that is continuous, as your child gradually grows away from you, away from needing you for everything, to needing you for some things, to needing you less and less… and it’s SUPPOSED to work like that.
The flip side of the coin is, it’s very rewarding, particularly if you had them on purpose, which suggests you have the sort of personality that WILL find it rewarding. I would not give up the experience for anything and ON BALANCE do not regret any of what it cost me.
But I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t regret some of the costs.
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I’m a mother of 5 daughters. I was married to a true psychopath. I was uneducated about mental illnesses like that, & I married too young (18) to someone 8 years older - it was basically an arranged marriage. He was very abusive & moved me all the way across the US from my family. I was raised in & a devout member of a very strict religion (cult) that kept me in a horrible situation for many years. That cult that teaches that women are just baby-makers & are supposed to stay home & have kids & make their husbands happy.
My oldest daughter died at age 6 from an extremely rare & fast growing/untreatable brain cancer called a “bilateral thalamus gliobastoma”. She died 3 mo. after being diagnosed. When she passed, I also had a 4 year old & a 7 month old. My 4 year old grew up seeing me grieve & came to the conclusion that I loved her sister more than I loved her, which wasn’t true; I was just grieving hard, as any loving mother would. She has carried some resentment & estranged from me. The daughter who was 7 months old got SA’d by her dad, half brother & a neighbor. I personally believe that’s why she got into substances & is now paranoid-schizophrenic. She has been estranged from all of us for years. My 4th daughter is a joy & a true gift from God (her name means gift from God) and she truly is. She has been diagnosed with a rare condition and will need surgery soon. She also has a malformation in her back call Scheurmann’s Kyphosis that causes her to have a “hump back” appearance & back pain. She is very loving & kind & sweet. She’s 19 now. It’s heartbreaking to see her suffer though. My last daughter is very close with my 2nd daughter, so she doesn’t want very much to do with me. No matter how hard I try to connect emotionally with her, she blocks me out emotionally. I’ve learned this is a thing in familes where estrangement has happened with older siblings, it just spreads.
If I could have known how things would go for me with my children I don’t know if I would have chosen to have children. I truly love them all! However being completely honest, it’s been an extremely emotionally painful & sad life for me. I never judge anyone who doesn’t want kids. I sometimes feel jealous of people who didn’t have kids & can afford to do things I could never afford, & I see how they have freedom to do what they want.
P.S. I got out of the cult & the abusive marriage. I have worked my butt off to provide the best I can for my girls. Luckily their abusive “dad” has stayed away since 2016 but not before doing A LOT of damage. I love all of my daughters with all my heart. It’s been very challenging to juggle “all the things” by myself. My kids don’t have all the things other kids have & I can see how hurt they’ve been by not having a good dad. I feel sad a lot about how things went for all of us.
Image source: Joel Wexler
Oh yes. I wish I never met their mother. Then years later, her thieving, lying husband joins them in making my life miserable after I tried to help them all. If I had a single life with a couple dogs even half as good as my companion Gussie, I’d be happier today.
Tips:
Don’t lend money to adult children. Unlikely you’ll get it back, even if you’re sick and unemployed, and they’re running a business (shady as it is). And their spouse, the businessman, won’t even say “thanks old man”.
Don’t cosign graduate school loans for 30 somethings no matter how much they swear they won’t dump it on you. Not only will they, but they also won’t tell you and let a default appear in your mail. This cost me my security clearance, and thus my job of 41 years. Thanks, pal, if you come across this.
When the ex-wife’s sleazy husband tells you has an annuity you can buy (because at 60+ years old he’s broke and needs cash), DON’T DON’T DON’T . When the payments show up in the hands of this jerk, he’ll tell you he can’t give them to you. He’ll make up lies. He’ll use the grandchildren as extortion chips. And when you lose patience with the lies and deception and start badgering and insulting him (and I was as vile as possible towards him), HE will threaten YOU with being a bad loan collector, even quoting a US federal statute. Loan? Now he’s calling my guaranteed annuity a loan. I would sooner give this guy a testicle than a loan. I knew he was a bad businessman; I didn’t think he was a liar and a thief. And get this - idiot’s company is retirement advice.
All this could’ve been avoided. Just say no.
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YES!!!! YES, I have. Please don't judge. I'm being very honest here. It's been a week and third attempt, editing and retyping my answer…Worried of all the backlash, hate comments and adverse reactions. But you know what… this week I learned, I'm not alone. Many of us parents who have adult or young adult children DO FEEL THIS WAY! Many are afraid to say the truth…but this IS THE TRUTH! We (yes, including me) are the reason why so many of our elderly parents have lost that light of joy, that twinkle in their eyes.
I tried my BEST to raise my children differently than how I was. I knew exactly what went wrong with our upbringing…I was determined to make the change… Brake the cycle, put an end to that chain link. I've kept the communication lines open. No subject was off the table. And I wouldn't allow myself to get mad or upset when bringing something to it I've been honest, patient, respectful, and VERY open. Speaking to my kids, from a tender age, the facts of life…no lies (being mindful of their ages of course), I figured… I figured we had this in the pocket. Learning from my past mistakes and other's, why and how to avoid them, growing and learning from them together. Not judging anyone but try to put ourselves in their shoes. We all seemed to be on the same page. One big happy functional family. “Relationship goals" family.
And then, one day…it's like a slap on the face and the floor mat gets swiped away from underneath your feet. You are now standing across, face to face, to a complete stranger. Someone who has fooled you for such a LONG time. Thinking now, that the young adult children you have raised, devoted your time, life, energy, EVERYTHING to them… are not who you thought. They run fast away from what we raised them. I’m staring at my 6 year old son, with tears rolling down my face, as he's sleeping asking myself, are you guys really worth it? was it really worth it? What did I do wrong with his older siblings? Where? When?
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My kid is 7 1/2. I began to realize it at the age of two, when I realized that I was never going to be able to relax ever again while he was still a child living in my house. The first two years I was riding high on the whole baby thing. But then I realized that it was never going to improve. Like he stopped crying all the time but now he was talking all the time following me around asking asinine questions, and getting into everything. Just systematically going through the house, opening stuff up tearing it out looking through it. And for a while it was cute, like always just a curious little raccoon. But it never stops. And the more he talks, the better he gets to talking, the more questions the more detailed questions, the more you have to listen to. From the moment he wakes up to the moment he actually falls asleep, my husband and I are constantly dealing with him in someway. Learning from home didn’t help, obviously. And I don’t think he’s developmentally delayed. Just very very needy. Get me a snack time I shoes I’m bored I’m hungry I stubbed my toe I don’t understand what’s happening at school I don’t know where my folder is I dropped my pencil on and on and on. When he’s not bothering the cat or the dog or rifling through my husband‘s tools or my paperwork. He’s just 100% all “id.” The concept of sitting quietly and doing something by himself just doesn’t exist. And I get frustrated and spend most of my time trying not to lay my hands on him or tell him off. Most of the time I succeed and not letting my hands on him but telling him off is a problem. But I figure if telling him to go away is the only alternative to throttling him then I’ll just tell him to go away.
And you’ll go broke - health insurance, toys, clothes, kid food and babysitters. Now with Covid we’re back to finding some type of nanny or babysitter for him or in the alternative quit our jobs and sell the house because we can’t work while sitting next to him all day every day assisting him through basic tasks like writing his name on his work assignments and answering questions and picking up his pencil.
So in short, if you ever want retire with money in the bank, read a book, take a bath, enjoy cooking and eating a meal, watching an adult show then having a kid is not for you. Because you can kiss it goodbye for 18 years.
#1
Image source: Jack Claxton, Insecure man indoors medium shot
Yes.
My son is 27, suffering from chronic depression, in a low-paying dead-end job without the faintest idea of how to get out of it. His life is an unending continuum of unhappiness and dissatisfaction.
If I knew that he would develop like this, I would not have had him. I would not want to bring a person into this world outside of his own volition, if I knew that he would experience no joy in his existence.
I was under the impression that almost all living creatures had at least the capacity for joie de vivre, and I assumed that it would be so for my child, as well.
Sorry, son. I don’t know what to do.
Having been asked, and to clear up a few misapprehensions evident in some of the comments I received - an update after almost 3 years:
Ah, I think things are marginally better. He’s still living with us, and in fact he’s out of a job, at the moment. But he seems to be developing a more positive, optimistic outlook and is preparing to further his education.
Just to clear up one or two things:
We are a loving and extremely supportive family and have always been so. I do not in any way resent his existence and I am glad for his presence in my life.
My initial answer had to do with if I regret having children - my point being that if I had anticipated beforehand that he would struggle so much to find pleasure in his existence, I would’ve decided against it. It really is a situation of caring too much, rather than caring too little - which most people seem to get, but some don’t.
#2
Image source: Anonymous, EyeEm
Going anonymous on this one, for reasons that are, or should soon be, obvious.
Although I've always loved being around kids (I was the guy playing with all the kids at any party) and they seemed to take to me, I knew I never wanted to have any of my own. Fortunately, my wife felt similarly... until she neared 40, and then went kind of crazy with this newfound unquenchable desire for motherhood. We had trouble getting pregnant at that age, and rounds of IVF ensued; following several, one was successful, after huge time, financial, and emotional costs. Our son came along, and was healthy and quite adorable. Major success story from the outside, right?
I was immediately plunged into a seemingly endless spiral of resentment and depression (the real kind, clinical, requiring seeing a psychiatrist and going on medication). I knew at a profound level that I Did Not Want This. It completely destroyed spontaneity and flexibility; everything needed planning, and our son like all very small children needed to be watched pretty much 24/7. All our friendships were put on hold, since getting out of the house even for planned things was difficult. Work and other obligations were missed whenever he got the sniffles. As he grew, things got better, somewhat. There were all manner of pointless activities that he didn't care much about (karate, swimming, 20 other things), constant trips to school, play date planning, things that, as far as I can tell, nearly every parent dislikes, and only few are vocally honest about.
The therapist told me that this was much more common than I'd guess, but there was a huge taboo about saying you simply hated being a parent. So, I googled "I hate being a parent" and, Lo: it was all over the place. People overcome by tedium and regret.
Here's the interesting thing: by any reasonable standards, I'm a good parent. People are always pointing this out, how attentive and affectionate I am as a father. I want to do a good job, and I want my son to have a good life. I do love him. I just wish that someone else would be actually enjoying the process of raising him, since on an objective and subjective level, my own life is just markedly less enjoyable since he came along. That's simple honesty. The best analogy would be that, instead of being yourself, you're enacting a script, day in and day out, this pretending to be enthusiastic about something you hate. It would wear you down. You'd long to break free of it and be yourself again.
My wife knows all this, and is constantly upset by it. There's no sense of "you sacrificed your own happiness so I could achieve my dream of being a mother". Instead, it's more like "there's something wrong with you for reacting this way", and that alone has put a serious strain on the relationship. At the worst times, I've thought of walking out, but I could never do that to my son. Too many marriages in my extended family have fizzled, leaving the kids lost. But, to be honest, there are times when I just stand there and want to bang my head against the door frame, I just loathe being a parent so much. He's almost 10 now, and I console myself that there are 8 years more of this, then college. I think I can make it until then without losing it, especially since, although he's a very difficult child, he is gradually getting easier and not requiring such constant monitoring.
I wrote this for two reasons. First, for others who may be thinking "I think I won't like being a parent, but everyone thinks I should have kids, and maybe I'll love it!" Yes, just possibly; but, if you don't, you will be massively miserable. Second, for those who have a kneejerk reaction of "How can you say you don't love your OWN CHILD!" I'm not saying that. I'm saying that his coming along marked a pronounced negative turn in my own happiness, despite the fact that I do love him and am trying my best not to let that unhappiness interfere with his upbringing.
What's odd about this predicament is that no one, least of all other parents, has much sympathy for you, even if you are clinically depressed to the point of dysfunction. One is supposed to view having a child as some sort of multifaceted bejeweled gift from The Cosmos. How can anyone be so ungrateful to The Cosmos for a gift of such magnificence? And that, in the nutshell, is a big fraction of the problem of living with this. There are worse problems, of course, but this particular one is mine.
#3
Image source: Darkling Moneymaker, freepik
Yes. Plain and simple.
You can judge me all you want. Don't care.
My daughter was the best thing I had ever done in my life, I loved her with all my mighty heart. Being her father was the highlight of my life… Then she became something else entirely and went away, never to talk to me again.
No pain matches this. So, yes, I regret having my kid. Deeply.
#4
Image source: Heather Southall, freepik
I regret that I was not mentally stable enough to understand someone like me shouldn't have children. I love my children dearly, and tried my best, but my failings unfortunately left them almost as scarred as I was at the tender early adult years they're at, from basically marrying my abuser in a different person, unknowingly exposing them to just as terrible a person. I believe in reincarnation and feel they would have been better off with someone else. However, I'm not sad they exist. And maybe having a bad mother is a lesson they needed in this lifetime, if my beliefs are true.
My oldest has the Huntington's gene though. I DO regret having him, because I know what's coming now that I did my research. I know it's not going to be pretty, and id rather have death by a thousand cuts and broken bones than watch him suffer. He didn't deserve this and certainly doesn't deserve what's coming.
#5
Image source: Angie Martin, Ambreen
I 100% very deeply regret having my 4 children. Before passing judgment, please let me explain.
I am an introverted, hard-working person. My mother named me Angel at birth, which set me up for a lifetime of living up to trying to be the perfect kid.
Sadly, as hard as I was on myself, everyone else was even harder on me.
It seemed like everyone was always disgruntled that I was ‘different’. I had sensory problems and hearing damage called misophonia because I suffered a skull fracture at 6 months old.
I had to try to find quiet time for myself whenever and wherever I could steal it to deal with my hearing sensitivity, otherwise I would suffer migraines and stress.
All the extroverts around me were perpetually unhappy that I couldn't give them 100% of my time and attention. I was constantly beat up emotionally by the adults around me for not having the energy, and for taking time out for art and nature to keep myself balanced.
Over decades, this dissatisfaction they had toward my style of living led everyone to start calling me crazy, bipolar, etc. Crazy for wanting to go fishing, read a book, paint a picture. Crazy for taking extra time in the shower or restroom to meditate, crazy for taking walks, and so on. Surely, I must have a mental issue, wanting to spend time in my own company.
In fact, several people I was around physically demolished my gallery-quality artwork to show me how they felt about my ‘quiet’ nature and activities. I was so devastated at their behavior that I permanently quit doing art at 18 after a gallery approached me to put my work on display.
It didn't matter that I tried to convince every psychiatrist from here to Timbuktu that I had some undiagnosed mental disorder that certainly they could fix with some magic pill. Certainly, I convinced myself, a pill would make me tolerable to everyone else.
I wanted nothing more than to be a mom for most of my life. I was told I would never have children, and I almost died several times trying to have children.
Finally, I had 4 children in a 20-year span of time. I was tickled pink. They were quirky, ADHD and autistic, and I loved the daylights out of them. I loved everything there was to love about being a mom.
Just like my family had, my extroverted husband and in-laws hated my personality.
Hated how I raised and mentored and guided the kids. Hated how I let them do art and make messes. Hated how I let them disassemble and reassemble things to figure out how the world worked. Hated that I pushed them to go new places and try new foods.
Most of all, they hated that I needed a break here and there. They hated that I asked for someone to watch the kids for 5 minutes so I could take my extra long shower after we did yard work and remodeling all day.
They called me a “bad mom” and a “bad wife” because I asked for a few breaks here and there. They convinced a few people that my requests for quiet time or alone time were somehow unreasonable. That grandma could do so much better; she was the vision of perfection that everyone else had to live up to.
I already failed her test because I didn't dust my mantle the day she visited for her white glove inspection. I was too busy ‘playing with my kids’, they said, to be a proper housewife to my husband.
All the people who claimed to be so much better at parenting than I convinced the courts I had ‘bipolar’. I even committed myself several times after that and tried to get meds for my ‘bipolar-ness’ to try to show people that my hearing sensitivity wouldnt cause any more problems.
Even me memorizing and spouting off all the symptoms to try to convince people that I had bipolar hadn't worked, the experts looked at me and said “you're just sad. You lost 4 children. I don't have a magic pill to make you feel any better about it.”
It took 5 child-less years and 30+ experts before I finally conned one into giving me psych meds, but the meds didn't make me feel any better about losing my home and my children.
I was too ashamed to look at any of them anymore. I have lived in my car for 5 years. I left everything behind. I never went back
A year after he took custody of our kids and moved them all in with his mother, my ex sent me an email stating that he took my kids to teach me a lesson for ‘nagging’ him. I guess he couldn't resist the urge to twist the knife in my back again about asking him to watch them so I could take a shower.
I guess grandma is still supermom, and I'm still the dog poo that I always was.
I nagged him, 1 time, to relieve me so I could take a break and a shower. Just like everything else in my life, the very moment I tried to take care of myself instead of someone else, I was somehow no longer deserving of being treated like a human being.
I saved the lives of 3 drowning kids. I CPR'd my infant back to life when he nearly died from meningitis he caught from another family member. I did a million other humanitarian things throughout, including helping someone with a stalled car this morning.
But no matter what I do, it's not enough. It's never been enough. It will never be enough.
I'm an introvert with a hearing sensitivity, and that makes me unworthy of being mother to my own children.
My mother took her life last year because she didn't feel good enough either. Everyone in our miserable town convinced her she was a terrible mother, too. Surely, she's a terrible mother to have had a terrible daughter with sensitive hearing, right? To have had a daughter who lost all her kids because she asked for help 1 time in 20 years of being a mother.
If I wouldn't have given birth to my children, I wouldn't have suffered any of this. Perhaps, my art work and authored books would have made me a pretty penny by now. I wouldn't have wasted 20 years of talent because extroverts told me I shouldn't waste my time writing or doing the art that I loved.
I certainly wouldn't have suffered being embarrassed about being a ‘terrible’ mother to the degree that I won't ever be able to live down the title and the stigma everyone has placed on me.
It's clear to me from my struggles in getting pregnant to my struggles in losing contact with my babies that I was never meant to be a mother at all.
I regret having my children, not because of them, but because a mother is expected to be perfect, and any other definition is considered a failure.
We, as humans, even take babies away from animals when we think we know better. I'm not sure why I ever imagined that same thing wouldn't happen to me, just for being a little ‘different’.
I hope my children don't have children. Since they are also a little ‘different’, and our society likes to separate ‘different’ children from ‘different’ parents to give them to ‘normal’ couples to try to make everyone ‘normal’.
#6
Image source: Ժɾҽց, freepik
Good question. While dating in my 20s, I told the girl I was dating, my future wife, that I didn't want to get married or have kids because of how the world was. A few years later we married and then eventually had two kids.
Great kids. The youngest just graduated high school. Oldest is in college. They both are smart and best of all kind and compassionate.
Still though, I think it was a mistake especially with the state of the world today. Love them but they've been through a lot of stuff.
#7
Image source: Kim Scheinberg, freepik
Did I ever regret having children? You mean, like, have I ever regretted it in the 23 years since my oldest was born?
God, yes.
The first time was two days after I brought Max home from the hospital after the c-section, when I couldn’t get him to latch and couldn’t get him to stop crying. And lots more times during that first 18 months when I had undiagnosed PPD.
The time I remember most clearly, though, was on 9–11. Our youngest was 10 weeks old. My first thought upon seeing the second plane hit the towers was, “The world he was born into just a few months ago looks nothing like the world he’s going to grow up in.” Plenty of times over the next month or so I looked at Sam and wondered, “Had I known in Oct 2000 what I know now, would we have gone ahead and had a second kid?”
And since 2016? Even my kids themselves have asked about the wisdom of bringing them into the world we’re in now. One of my kids is adamant that if he raises kids, anything other than adoption would be cruel, given the state of the planet.
Both my kids were (mostly) planned, very much wanted kids. I don’t regret a minute I’ve spent with them or a dime I’ve spent on them or the hairs I’ve greyed because of them. They are, unquestionably, the best thing in my life. I would walk into traffic or a burning building for them.
But I think about what the world might look like in 20 or 30 years (both environmentally and politically) and think maybe, just maybe, their future is nowhere near as bright as the one I’d imagined for them 25 years ago.
And I despair a little.
Edited to add: I really wasn’t expecting anti-semitism to make such a big comeback in my lifetime, never mind theirs. And while I had a little hope that we were making progress against all the variations of homophobia, that proved false, too. A young relative who shares my last name recently asked, “Should I be more afraid of going to temple or a gay bar?” and just… oof.
#8
Image source: Michael Strickler, EyeEm
EDIT: For anyone still coming across this answer I feel the need to add in an extra note. READ MY FULL ANSWER! I’m getting annoyed by the comments of “Never” or “Not once” and etc. as though you can only be happy or regretful. As though your kid never drove you crazy or you and your partner never once got into an argument. Life isn’t black and white. Do everyone else a favor and stop trying to look good to strangers on the internet.
I originally answered this question because I suspect the original poster of this question was attempting to discern if going through with a pregnancy was worth it or if raising kids for others was as hard as it is for them. Lying and saying that you never regretted your children so you look like the perfect parent online would not help someone through a tough time/decision they are struggling with.
Life sucks and sometimes we need a little reminder that it doesn’t just suck for us alone and that we all struggle through hard times in life, but it gets better and we come out stronger on the other side.
Regret isn’t a life long emotion. Just like happiness comes and goes, so does regret, sadness, pride, and every other emotion on the spectrum. My daughter has made me feel just about every emotion possible in her six years on this planet and I would not trade them for anything.
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Absolutely! And I am sure there are some to the extreme out there, but in my opinion anyone that says differently is lying to themselves.
There were days that my daughter would cry and if I picked her up she would wail even more. I would feel like a terrible father and think that it would never get better and this was the worst thing I could have ever done to myself.
There were days that she would start throwing up all over the place or chewing on something I printed out for a client or whatever and totally ruin whatever it was she threw up on, chewed on, or tore up.
There are still days where she puts stickers on everything, let’s the dog loose from the backyard, lies to her mother and I, etc. that all make me feel like I should just stick her in her room and put a jail cell bucket and food dispenser in the corner.
My wife and I have not been able to go out as much any more (which is kind of all right because we are more introverts, but sometimes it is nice to go out and just be in each others company…) and anytime we want to go out we either have to bring her with us or plan a bunch of other steps to make sure she is cared for.
BUT despite all this, and everything else that I can’t remember right now because there has just been so many times I have wanted to drop her off at the steps of the nearest pawn shop… I love the dang kid!
Just like everything in life, kids are not perfect and the situations you find yourself in with them will not always be perfect. After those things happen though the better times that you have with your kids will be all the better.
After struggling day after day to teach my daughter the basics of math and the alphabet she came home from kindergarten one day and read me her first book! I am kind of tearing up as I type this, because I felt so much pride in her accomplishment.
Jogging behind her as she rides her bike to school (still training wheels and very slowly) I feel immense pride in her as she jumps the curb or makes a sharp turn without falling. I kind of reach out my hand just in case I need to stabilize her but she pulls though all on her own! I am hoping in a few months we can take the wheels off and I can’t wait to see her flying down some steep hill with the wind in her hair.
While there are a many, many, many things that she has done and will do in the future that have made me kind of regret putting myself in this situation there are many other things that make it all worth while. Nothing is perfect. Not even kids. But in addition to her learning from me, I have also learned from her. I couldn’t imagine my life without her in it.
Really, I just wish the kid would put her shoes away once in a while…
#9
Image source: KindaNice, stefamerpik
I don't regret my kids. I regret allowing myself to have children with a loser. It's the biggest regret I have. I made a bad choice for a partner, and my kids missed out on a good relationship with a real father. And I did it alone. But the kids, the were never the problem. My lack of love for myself was. I has no business messing around with him he had no goals nothing. I still feel so embarrassed and ashamed of my choices.
#10
Image source: Suzanne Feld, user20119892
Very much so.
I was 17 in 1979 when I got unexpectedly pregnant and was totally unprepared for what I was getting myself into. Long story short, I was a selfish, idiot teenager and didn’t give my children any kind of good start in life. My husband only married me so the kids could have his name, then he left. I raised them while on welfare, and I know I never gave them the attention and care that they needed.
I love my children, don’t get me wrong, but I should NOT have had them when I did. I ended up giving custody of my youngest three to my mother, then their father, but got them back when he passed away. I had a fourth before getting my tubes tied (best decision ever!) and I did keep him, and he’s turned out well. The other three, not so much. No surprise there.
It took me YEARS to figure out why I kept getting pregnant when I insisted on using condoms. My late ex-husband had to have been poking holes in them. It never once occurred to me at the time. I was such an idiot.
If I could have had my children in my late 20s, when I began to really mature as I remember it, I wouldn’t regret it at all and would have given them such a better start in life and raised them with so much more attention and concern for their future. As it is, all I can do now is help them as much as they’ll let me. I certainly understand why they don’t want much to do with me.
#11
Yes I do. My child deserved a better life than I could give. While I did the best I could, it wasn’t enough. Society doesn’t support families let alone single ones. (My partner is deceased) Managers made work hell, medical bills were crippling. My health seriously declined from the pregnancy and stress. It truly takes a village and there just is not one. Image source: Sara Beth Parker#12
Image source: Lance Berg, freepic.diller
Of course I did, and I find it hard to believe you can find anyone who didn’t.
At some points.
Children are an enormous drain on you, physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, financially. Pregnancy is miserable, and if you’re a man, the fact that your wife is miserable is also going to make you miserable, and you don’t get the hormonally charged rewards, nor do you have the hormonally charged brain mechanism that makes you forget the misery. (If the latter didn’t exist, the human species would die out, as no woman would have more than one child)
Once the child is born, you’re up feeding every two hours, and struggling to perform all the functions for a helpless infant who cannot even communicate their needs… even their one communication channel, crying, is also used merely for exercise, so it doesn’t even communicate that there is certainly a problem to solve!
This combination of stark terror, utter confusion, and extremely poor sleep goes on for months, and only gradually tapers out. When they are thirty, you’re still going to be feeling some degree of it.
But that leads to the opposite complaint; there’s an awful sense of loss that is continuous, as your child gradually grows away from you, away from needing you for everything, to needing you for some things, to needing you less and less… and it’s SUPPOSED to work like that.
The flip side of the coin is, it’s very rewarding, particularly if you had them on purpose, which suggests you have the sort of personality that WILL find it rewarding. I would not give up the experience for anything and ON BALANCE do not regret any of what it cost me.
But I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t regret some of the costs.
#13
I absolutely love my child more than life itself. They are the most amazing beautiful person I have ever known and not even 5 yet. With that said, I absolutely regret having brought them into the world. This place is awful and the people are terrible. It's only going to get worse as time goes on. More than anything, I wish I weren't so tied to the mother. If their mom weren't in the picture, I doubt I would feel so strongly, but I live in a part of the country I don't want to be in, surrounded by people I don't want to be near and I worry that it shows to my kid. Don't forget that having a child means you are stuck with that other parent for 18 years too. It's a whole new meaning to Paradise By the Dashboard Light. Image source: Sean Hertzsch#14
Image source: Stephanie C, The Yuri Arcurs Collection
I’m a mother of 5 daughters. I was married to a true psychopath. I was uneducated about mental illnesses like that, & I married too young (18) to someone 8 years older - it was basically an arranged marriage. He was very abusive & moved me all the way across the US from my family. I was raised in & a devout member of a very strict religion (cult) that kept me in a horrible situation for many years. That cult that teaches that women are just baby-makers & are supposed to stay home & have kids & make their husbands happy.
My oldest daughter died at age 6 from an extremely rare & fast growing/untreatable brain cancer called a “bilateral thalamus gliobastoma”. She died 3 mo. after being diagnosed. When she passed, I also had a 4 year old & a 7 month old. My 4 year old grew up seeing me grieve & came to the conclusion that I loved her sister more than I loved her, which wasn’t true; I was just grieving hard, as any loving mother would. She has carried some resentment & estranged from me. The daughter who was 7 months old got SA’d by her dad, half brother & a neighbor. I personally believe that’s why she got into substances & is now paranoid-schizophrenic. She has been estranged from all of us for years. My 4th daughter is a joy & a true gift from God (her name means gift from God) and she truly is. She has been diagnosed with a rare condition and will need surgery soon. She also has a malformation in her back call Scheurmann’s Kyphosis that causes her to have a “hump back” appearance & back pain. She is very loving & kind & sweet. She’s 19 now. It’s heartbreaking to see her suffer though. My last daughter is very close with my 2nd daughter, so she doesn’t want very much to do with me. No matter how hard I try to connect emotionally with her, she blocks me out emotionally. I’ve learned this is a thing in familes where estrangement has happened with older siblings, it just spreads.
If I could have known how things would go for me with my children I don’t know if I would have chosen to have children. I truly love them all! However being completely honest, it’s been an extremely emotionally painful & sad life for me. I never judge anyone who doesn’t want kids. I sometimes feel jealous of people who didn’t have kids & can afford to do things I could never afford, & I see how they have freedom to do what they want.
P.S. I got out of the cult & the abusive marriage. I have worked my butt off to provide the best I can for my girls. Luckily their abusive “dad” has stayed away since 2016 but not before doing A LOT of damage. I love all of my daughters with all my heart. It’s been very challenging to juggle “all the things” by myself. My kids don’t have all the things other kids have & I can see how hurt they’ve been by not having a good dad. I feel sad a lot about how things went for all of us.
#15
I never thought I would confess this but my daughter just turned one and over the past year it has been very hard on my wife and I. We are both early 20s and have had little time to ourselves and our relationship before our daughter was born. I wish we could still live a responsible free life. Things aren’t bad but I catch myself thinking things would be better if we didn’t have a daughter. Now don’t get me wrong I still love my child and am prepared to give her the best life. I just wish she came later, so me and my wife could still enjoy each other in our youths. Image source: Hayden Lange#16
Yes and no. Hear me out. When I was younger and having children I was managing multiple disabilities but I had no idea how bad they would become. I didn’t even recognise them as such at the time. Seriously I was medically gaslighted for years and it got worse as I aged; this is also true of their father unfortunately. I don’t regret having them for the love/how awesome they are part. But our children have manifested some of these disabilities and they have some worse than we do. So I regret they have pain, suffer and they manifested much younger. They themselves have stated they won’t have bio children so as not to pass it along. We all have ASD and other neurodiversity, Ehrler's Danlos (myself) and at least three children, endometriosis (myself and my two bio daughters), bipolar (partners) at least one daughter, possibly two in the children. None of these would I wish on an enemy, but here we have innocently given it to our offspring and it’s tough on them. I just wish medical science was such that we could all live healthfully and be fulfilled, but sadly some of the children won’t necessarily get all that joy. Image source: Anathema Violet Harris#17
I did. Being a mother did not come naturally to me. I was neglected and abused as a kid and to say my childhood was traumatic is putting it lightly. As an adult I still feel like a kid and the responsibility of a child was almost too much to bear. When the doctors put him in my arms I was shocked to see my own face. He looked just like me. I felt unconditional love immediately but i also was struck with extreme fear. How am I going to do this? I had to force myself to get up to feed him, play with him, and care for him. Which I did but felt guilty and inadequate. I would see other mom's loving mom life while on the inside I felt regretful. Jealous. Thinking I had this child and with a mother like me , he has no chance. My son is almost 17 now. I love him dearly and he loves me just the same. He's amazing. Smart, funny, and very compassionate. I'm so proud of him. He's perfect. In retrospect I realize that I was supposed to be his mom. And even if I was regretful , he's the best thing that ever happened to me. Image source: KateisIrate#18
I’m going to answer truthfully and say yes! I do regret having children. Growing up I had a really rough childhood. I had a lot of things happen to me by the hands of family members and some strangers. I grew up with a lot of trauma and ptsd. I never felt loved by anyone and was really insecure. I became obsessed with having a baby. Someone to love me . Someone that would see me for me.. it never happened while I was a teen thank goodness but when I had my first child at 27 I thought it was going to be a breeze! I knew I wanted to break generational curses and never allow my child to suffer. I have 2 children now and motherhood has been the hardest thing to deal with. My 3 year old is language delayed and may be on the spectrum (waiting for diagnosis) she has strong emotions and she screams from the time she wakes up till when she goes to bed. She will ask for something and since she lacks in receptive language if you say “yes” she will still scream and stomp around. It’s the most stressful thing to deal with. She just never seems happy. I’ve had to quit my jobs because she would scream in the back of every phone call. We can’t go out in public or she will scream and cause a scene. Dealing with my childhood trauma and being hyper vigilant makes this excruciating. I always feel drained and depressed. Also I don’t have a support system aside from my childrens father. Neither of us have family that we can trust. so I never get a break just cooped up in the house all day over stimulated . Before I had kids I was such a free spirit. I joined plays and filmed alot. I was so creative. My appearance was always up to par. I had friends and everything. I start feeling low when I think about my daughters journey and I get sad for her thinking about the obstacles ahead. With all this said yes I regret having children . If I knew then what I know now I wouldn’t have had any. I don’t want them suffering like I did. I love them dearly tho and couldn’t picture my life without them now. Image source: Savannah Lanice#19
My two daughters are 12 and 13 now, and both live with me fulltime. I love my kids , they are the best thing that has ever happened to me. However I have found myself wishing sometimes I hadn't actually had them. Due to no fault of theirs or mine. I had a terrible couple of years due to abuse towards my kids from their mother and her partner. There was worries from me for quite a while , I knew something wasn't right and my kids became quite withdrawn. But they wouldnt really tell me any details like they were scared. My youngest ended up getting upset at school one day and told a teacher everything, it turned out they had been physically and emotionally abusive towards them especially my youngest, as she would try and stick up for herself. And he had on a number of occasions sexually assaulted her, she was 10 whilst this was going on. The police and child services were called and there was a police investigation for a couple of months, and the kids stayed with me fulltime. I'm a cautious person by nature so I asked the authorities early on what will happen if they are charged and if they are not. They assured me even if they are not charged child services will play a part. When they started staying with me full time, I could see they were both anxious, especially my youngest. And I soon noticed sick in her bin in the bedroom, and the smell of it around sometimes. It turned out she had started making herself be sick and self harming for a while, so she started seeing a therapist. After a couple of months the charges were unfortunately dropped, and the child services just basically told me the kids can't be forced to go back to their mums if they don't want to, but they were dropping out also . Literally the next day I had the mother turn up with 4 people demanding her kids back. I had to phone the police. All went quiet for a couple of months and then I got a court summons through from family court. And shede filled out a complaint form about me saying I was abusive in the relationship, I had manipulated the kids into making up lies, I was keeping them against their will. And a bunch of other ridiculous things. I'm going to pause a moment to explain something about myself. I am not a brave or tough person. I'm quite a quiet person really who keeps himself to himself, and trys to avoid drama. I found attending court very difficult, and very stressful. I had never took medication before. But I ended up on anti anxiety pills. I ended up getting eczema due to stress. Had persistent nightmares which caused a lack of sleep The kids were assigned a guardian due to the serious abuse allegations about the mother and her partner, and they were interviewed a number of times over a long court case . And finally they were given full custody to me and had a protection order put in place Happy ever after right? Not really. My eldest has managed to stay okay on the whole. But my youngest unfortunately has suffered to much. She battles an eating disorder and self harm. A close freind she had confided in unfortunately after a fall out. Told a load of other kids about the sexually assaults. So she started getting a hard time at school with kids making horrible jokes and things Unfortunately she tried to take her own life after a particularly tough day at school. She sees therapists and some other professionals. I only hope she does start to come out if it. I cannot begin to explain the heartache and stress that comes with this type of situation. It's a living nightmare I love my kids, and can't imagine life without them. But at the same time, if I could go back and decide to not have them would I? Yes, ide definitely consider it Image source: Sean D#20
Image source: Joel Wexler
Oh yes. I wish I never met their mother. Then years later, her thieving, lying husband joins them in making my life miserable after I tried to help them all. If I had a single life with a couple dogs even half as good as my companion Gussie, I’d be happier today.
Tips:
Don’t lend money to adult children. Unlikely you’ll get it back, even if you’re sick and unemployed, and they’re running a business (shady as it is). And their spouse, the businessman, won’t even say “thanks old man”.
Don’t cosign graduate school loans for 30 somethings no matter how much they swear they won’t dump it on you. Not only will they, but they also won’t tell you and let a default appear in your mail. This cost me my security clearance, and thus my job of 41 years. Thanks, pal, if you come across this.
When the ex-wife’s sleazy husband tells you has an annuity you can buy (because at 60+ years old he’s broke and needs cash), DON’T DON’T DON’T . When the payments show up in the hands of this jerk, he’ll tell you he can’t give them to you. He’ll make up lies. He’ll use the grandchildren as extortion chips. And when you lose patience with the lies and deception and start badgering and insulting him (and I was as vile as possible towards him), HE will threaten YOU with being a bad loan collector, even quoting a US federal statute. Loan? Now he’s calling my guaranteed annuity a loan. I would sooner give this guy a testicle than a loan. I knew he was a bad businessman; I didn’t think he was a liar and a thief. And get this - idiot’s company is retirement advice.
All this could’ve been avoided. Just say no.
#21
Not about me (f 17) but my mum in her late 40s. She regrets having my two younger siblings (f 13 & m 8) and me, and would constantly complain about it. She would say how we ruined her body, how she's ‘sacrificed’ her career as a banker and sacrificed her life being tied down to a loser like my dad, despite the fact that he earns more than the average person, is nice and quite the submissive one as opposed to her who controls everything and everyone. Our family is quite well off with my father working and my mother at home. We have a maid and a driver so she doesn't do much but go on her phone, golf, shop, and overall just distance herself from us, which personally I don't mind as she always has something negative to say about me and would assume things. She has not a single maternal bone in her body and I don't hold that against her except for the fact that she denies it. If anything I feel bad for her as I do feel she would've been much happier being single without her family holding her back from whatever it is she is seeking. She definitely has the potential to be a ruthless CEO tbh. But the simple truth is some people are just not meant to have kids and that is totally okay. Image source: Layla Rose#22
Image source: Jokes, Humour & Funny stories ????, freepik
YES!!!! YES, I have. Please don't judge. I'm being very honest here. It's been a week and third attempt, editing and retyping my answer…Worried of all the backlash, hate comments and adverse reactions. But you know what… this week I learned, I'm not alone. Many of us parents who have adult or young adult children DO FEEL THIS WAY! Many are afraid to say the truth…but this IS THE TRUTH! We (yes, including me) are the reason why so many of our elderly parents have lost that light of joy, that twinkle in their eyes.
I tried my BEST to raise my children differently than how I was. I knew exactly what went wrong with our upbringing…I was determined to make the change… Brake the cycle, put an end to that chain link. I've kept the communication lines open. No subject was off the table. And I wouldn't allow myself to get mad or upset when bringing something to it I've been honest, patient, respectful, and VERY open. Speaking to my kids, from a tender age, the facts of life…no lies (being mindful of their ages of course), I figured… I figured we had this in the pocket. Learning from my past mistakes and other's, why and how to avoid them, growing and learning from them together. Not judging anyone but try to put ourselves in their shoes. We all seemed to be on the same page. One big happy functional family. “Relationship goals" family.
And then, one day…it's like a slap on the face and the floor mat gets swiped away from underneath your feet. You are now standing across, face to face, to a complete stranger. Someone who has fooled you for such a LONG time. Thinking now, that the young adult children you have raised, devoted your time, life, energy, EVERYTHING to them… are not who you thought. They run fast away from what we raised them. I’m staring at my 6 year old son, with tears rolling down my face, as he's sleeping asking myself, are you guys really worth it? was it really worth it? What did I do wrong with his older siblings? Where? When?
#23
Image source: Anonymous, EyeEm
My kid is 7 1/2. I began to realize it at the age of two, when I realized that I was never going to be able to relax ever again while he was still a child living in my house. The first two years I was riding high on the whole baby thing. But then I realized that it was never going to improve. Like he stopped crying all the time but now he was talking all the time following me around asking asinine questions, and getting into everything. Just systematically going through the house, opening stuff up tearing it out looking through it. And for a while it was cute, like always just a curious little raccoon. But it never stops. And the more he talks, the better he gets to talking, the more questions the more detailed questions, the more you have to listen to. From the moment he wakes up to the moment he actually falls asleep, my husband and I are constantly dealing with him in someway. Learning from home didn’t help, obviously. And I don’t think he’s developmentally delayed. Just very very needy. Get me a snack time I shoes I’m bored I’m hungry I stubbed my toe I don’t understand what’s happening at school I don’t know where my folder is I dropped my pencil on and on and on. When he’s not bothering the cat or the dog or rifling through my husband‘s tools or my paperwork. He’s just 100% all “id.” The concept of sitting quietly and doing something by himself just doesn’t exist. And I get frustrated and spend most of my time trying not to lay my hands on him or tell him off. Most of the time I succeed and not letting my hands on him but telling him off is a problem. But I figure if telling him to go away is the only alternative to throttling him then I’ll just tell him to go away.
And you’ll go broke - health insurance, toys, clothes, kid food and babysitters. Now with Covid we’re back to finding some type of nanny or babysitter for him or in the alternative quit our jobs and sell the house because we can’t work while sitting next to him all day every day assisting him through basic tasks like writing his name on his work assignments and answering questions and picking up his pencil.
So in short, if you ever want retire with money in the bank, read a book, take a bath, enjoy cooking and eating a meal, watching an adult show then having a kid is not for you. Because you can kiss it goodbye for 18 years.
#24
This might be the most personal answer I’ve written here on Quora, though I look at it as catharsis, and cheaper than therapy. In a word, the answer to the question is yes. I was 20 years old, and being so young, didn’t know my ass from my elbow, as the saying goes. My steady girlfriend suddenly turned up pregnant, after a weekend getaway when she told me I didn’t need to use a condom. Like I said, young and stupid, and I was there too, so equally my responsibility. Fast forward to finding out, and I was handed an ultimatum, marry her or she would have an abortion. Now I didn’t have any religious compunction holding me back from such, however I just felt it was wrong personally, it was my child and so I capitulated, went up the aisle two weeks shy of turning 21 and four months preggers, already filled with regrets and still somewhat bitter about being blackmailed into it. That said, I tried to make it work as best I could for a young stupid kid, but we were doomed from the start. Not to say that the birth of my son wasn’t amazing, and I strove to be the best dad I could be. There are moments I can remember like yesterday, bringing him home from the hospital, and so many other childhood memories of my boy. Of course it didn’t work out between his mother and I, and 15 months after we were married she emptied out our apartment while I was at work at a new job. She moved in with her parents, took all the furniture my parents had gifted us and put it in storage, and threatened to take my son to Florida to live with her girlfriend. By then I was hip to her manipulative bluffs, and I arranged to pick up my son that weekend, setting the pattern for what followed for years. Even after she got remarried when my son was 5, I still had him on weekends and holidays, paid child support, and made sure I stayed in his life as a relevant father figure. At one point I had a chance to move to California to take a job with a growing software company (you might have heard of Adobe) but turned it down because I couldn’t countenance the idea of only seeing my son a few times a year, or letting him be raised solely by his mother, who wasn’t always consider with what was best for him, especially after she remarried and had more children. Point is, I sacrificed a good deal of my life in my 20s and 30s to be his father. I don’t deserve any pats on the back for that, it was simply a responsibility I took seriously, and I never thought I would live to regret it. However, my son grew up to be an angry young man, full of excuses and learning early on how to manipulate people and making them feel sorry for him. I won’t get into all the nasty details, he never got into heavy usage or anything, though he lost a number of friends to that scourge. Its just that he was bitter constantly, and in spite of his innate intelligence, has mostly been a failure in life, which means I failed as a father. He turned 40 recently, has never had much of a steady job, never had his own roof over his head, and is constantly couch surfing with friends or family, until he wears out his welcome and moves on to the next gullible person. The final straw for me was a few years ago, when he never showed up during his grandmother’s illness, nor bothered to come to her funeral and memorial service, in spite of everything she had done and tried to do for him over the years. At that point I closed the book on him, sadly, and realized my life would have been better off probably without him in it. Image source: Joe Nevin#25
Yes, and my children are very successful. However, they blame me for their anxiety. I was a single mother putting myself through school, working multiple jobs, while not having any help from anyone. Somehow, the three of us struggling with making ends meet and the fact that I had expectations for them and encouraged goals was not something I should ever have had for them. I held them to the decisions they made yet they hold that against me. As I said, they are very successful and financially secure. I should never have had children, as I believe they will never forgive me. That alone makes me very sad. Image source: Bishop ReynoldsDE
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