The Two Reasons Parents Regret Having Kids
Updated at 11:30 A.M. ET on August 31, 2021
Carrie wishes that she’d never had children. She spent a few years feeling satisfied as a mother, but now locks herself in the kitchen and wonders, Who am I? What am I doing here? She can’t pursue paid work, because she has to shepherd her 12-year-old and 10-year-old to school as well as to therapy appointments for their disabilities. Carrie, who lives in the U.K., told me that she often fantasizes about visiting her friend in Hawaii and never coming back. Her words felt so taboo that she asked to be referred to by only her first name. But sentiments of parental regret are less rare than one might imagine.
When American parents older than 45 were asked in a how many kids they would have if they could “do it over,” “fully” agreed with a statement that they wouldn’t have children if they could choose again (11 percent “rather” agreed). In a published in June, 8 percent of British parents said that they regret having kids. And in two recent , an assistant psychology professor at SWPS University, Konrad Piotrowski, placed rates of parental regret in Poland at about 11 to 14 percent, with no significant difference between men and women. Combined, these figures suggest that many millions of regret having kids.
