People Explain Why They Regret Having Kids In 30 Honest Posts

I never wanted to have a kid. I don't like children. I was too far along (or so I thought at the time) when I found out I was pregnant that I couldn't get an abortion. I ended up giving up the rights to the kid. My parents adopted him and I haven't seen him or talked to my parents since just before the kid was a year old.

Edit: As a response to a comment that apparently doesn't exist anymore (I went to reply and got an error message) I will post it here:

Why feel sorry for the kid? He has a great life with parents that wanted to take him and who can afford him and who indulge his extracurricular activities. I can do none of that stuff. Better to be with people that love and want you than someone who doesn't. I didn't try to get pregnant, it was a birth control failure.

I never wanted kids but I got pregnant on birth control. I wanted to terminate the pregnancy but was convinced by a close family member I'd go to hell if I did. I wish I would have just ignored her and done it.

Let me preface this with the fact that regret seems like a little strong of a term for how I feel- and a lot of it I’m sure is frustration.

My whole life I didn’t particularly want kids. I had s****y parents growing up and I saw having kids as a hinderance to the type of life I wanted to live. I wanted to be able to travel often and be a workaholic.

When I was 22 I married my (now ex) husband and he made it very clear that he wanted kids. I, wanting to be the diligent wife, obliged and spent a long time trying to get pregnant. When I was 8 months pregnant, he began an affair with an ex girlfriend that kept going until I found it six weeks after giving birth. At the time that I found it, I was DEEP into postpartum depression that lasted until my son was a year old. Going through a divorce, being thrusted into single-parenthood, and not even knowing how to be with my son without wanting to kill him or myself was the worst experience I had ever been through. I was miserable, endangering my son, and furious that this man had put me through all of this.

The postpartum depression has now gone and I’ve healed from the anger, but my ex husband is barely in my son’s life so I am constantly the only parent he has physically, monetarily, and emotionally. I love him more than life itself, but I can’t exactly say that if I could do it all over, I would still choose to have gotten pregnant. I still daydream of the life I wanted on a daily basis.

I got pregnant at 18 and was convinced by an abusive man to keep my daughter. I endured one of the worst births possible, 3 years of abuse, and becoming a single mom at 22.

I gave up a full ride scholarship to a prestigious school after finding out I was pregnant. I worked my butt off to get that scholarship, beating the odds as a child of an addict. I wanted to be a journalist who traveled the world.

I have realized I am too selfish to be a parent. My daughter does not go without the necessities. Am I emotionally invested in her like in the movies? Nope. I am more focused on my teaching career and making ends meet. Maybe I'm just a product of the bad economy.

I even asked for multiple doctors to just take out my uterus because I'm terrified of getting pregnant again. I realized I don't have mother instincts because of my upbringing after years of therapy. Do I want to fix it? Eh I've tried.

I am very lucky my daughter seems to have inherited my fierce independent and responsible personality. I don't think she'd survive me being her mother otherwise.

Again, my daughter never goes without anything. Everyone tells me I'm a great mom, but am just too hard on myself. Maybe I am too hard on myself. Who's to say?

I speak for myself and most of my friends that are also moms with this comment. But a lot of the regret people hear about or suspect isn't completely directed at having kids specifically, but all the other changes that come with becoming a mother.

I will also note that I'm one of those women that didn't know I was pregnant for a while, so I didn't have much time to prepare or really think about anything.

But one big shock was how my boyfriend who had respected me for working 2+ full time jobs and being a total workaholic switched to thinking I was totally happy to stay at home and not go back to work. He also seemed to think I was naturally some domestic goddess that could cook and clean and stay on top of everything.... But really, prior to going on leave/giving birth I had never really cooked at home or kept my house clean... Because I was never home and always on the go! Giving birth did not suddenly grant me the knowledge of all these things mothers are apparently supposed to know.

That leads into the next thing, which was daycare. There was no daycare. They exist, sure, but the waiting lists are YEARS long so if you didn't apply before you even got pregnant, you're s**t out of luck. So if you're like me and LOVE working, you feel pretty f****d over.

So there I was with a 18 month old, maternity leave was up (which paid $800 a month, yay), no daycare, and a boyfriend that totally did not understand why I wasn't thrilled to stay home with a baby, never have to go anywhere or make my own money.

And then there was society in general s******g on me for not appreciating my own personal hell of isolation? Like how dare I, as a woman, not enjoy being a prisoner of my own home and a personal maid?

And then when I did manage to be able to get back to work, it was the opposite where I was apparently horrible for leaving at a daycare instead of "raising him myself".

Basically, I was expected to apparently just not be a person anymore and instead be a mom.... And that's it. I love my son but I also love myself and having my own goals and s**t going on. All of this I mentioned plus more makes me have some regrets, but there's really no preparation I could have done anyway.

Also my son is 5 now and I managed to go to school quite recently and I just finished, so everything is improving.

Am I allowed to answer from the dad's point of view?

I love my kids very much and regret is probably too strong of a word, but I do regret having them in my early to mid twenties, which has denied me alot of things I wish I had done in my life.

I regret that I have to stay more or less tied to my ex when it would really be healthier for us to make a clean break. We're getting a divorce and it is actually quite amicable, but I think we both kinda wish we could say our goodbyes and move on from one another.

I dislike the city I live in for my kids. We moved here for my ex-ish wife to be near her family. I don't care for it and if not for our kids I would be gone before the ink dried on the divorce papers. But we have kids together. I am not okay with leaving my kids and going away without them. I'm not going to try and take the kids with me and deny them their mother. Mom will never leave this city. So the only solution is to stay here and suck it up, at least until they are old enough to travel by themselves.

On the positive side though; 50/50 shared custody is possibly the best thing to happen to mom and I'm parenting. The kids spend a week with me and a week with their mom. Having that week off from being a dad, when I can go and destress and have a drink with coworkers or go on a long motorcycle ride or whatever makes my week of having my kids *so much* easier. No matter how rough parenting gets, you always know some alone time is just a few days away. And mom and I get along well enough to tweak if one of us has something come up during our time with the kids and we don't mind taking the kids an extra night.

I love my children, but I regret having every single one of them.

I regret having to hold back trained responses and failing. I regret risking my life on multiple occasions to have them. I regret the loss of income from having them. I regret being told that I don't deserve my meagre stipends I use to raise them. I regret every day I am away from home, working a piecework job I hate, because my soon to be ex husband doesn't want to pay enough child support and wants to work at a just above minimum wage job so he doesn't have to pay child support. I regret every moment I spend with them when they are yelling at me about how horrid of a mother I am. I regret that I have to put their needs first, even if my needs would benefit them. I regret how I had to bury one that didn't have a chance at life. I regret that I had to have another because I didn't have the option at the time to abort a child conceived of marital rape.

I regret being told that my children are my responsibility, but that if I don't live up to standards that are financially beyond my reach to make, I'm hurting my children and should have never had them in the first place. I regret every moment where their father uses his paternal rights to bully me into making them visit him, or when I'm forced to obey his edicts or he'll send child services after me if I don't.

Then I look at them... the artist. the writer. the mechanic.

and I think...

I must have done something right.

I don’t regret having my son—he’s the light of my life—but I do regret that I’m tied here to this s****y town and job and ex-husband until he’s 18. Only 5 more years to go, though!

I don't actually regret my oldest, but at the same time I do.. Kiddo was concieved during an abusive relationship. He raped me repeatedly. I got pregnant 3 times, he demanded an abortion every time. First pregnancy I kept, which resulted in kiddo. I was too far along for an abortion, which he claimed was an excuse because I wanted to ruin his life. Being pregnant and having kiddo made ex more abusive. Pregnancy no2 ended in an abortion after he kicked me down 2 flights of stairs (and all over the floor between the 2 stairs) to make me miscarry. When I didn't start to bleed straight away he tried to strangle me. Pregnancy no3 I found out I got chlamydia from him, not sure if it's because of medication or just bad egg/sperm but the fetus stopped developing and I had to have it removed. 3rd pregnancy also happened after he left, he raped me when he would come "visit" kiddo. Strangely ex started to hound me about the "abortion", claimed he wanted the pregnancy even though he'd demanded an abortion 2 weeks before.

I love my son. I really do. He looks and acts a lot like his father. He reminds me of my rapist and that's hard for me. Kiddo can't help it and I feel horribly guilty. I can't help but think that I'd love him more, not regret his creation, that we'd have a better relationship if he had a different father or came from a different kind of relationship.

I am not a mother, I am staunchly childfree, but I did obtain guardianship of my niece and that has basically made me a foster mother to this little girl.

I don’t necessarily regret being her guardian, because I couldn’t live with myself leaving her in the situation her mother put her in, and I have a lot of support from my boyfriend and his family taking care of her, so that makes it possible for me to go on knowing she’s safe and well provided for...and not in a foster/group home.

But I do hate being a parent.

Pretty much from the start, I’ve always known I’d be a “good parent” because I can provide financially, stability, and consistency. But I do not enjoy children at all whatsoever, and I really only want to give and receive affection from my boyfriend, and children like my niece REALLY need all the love and attention they can get. I have to force myself to be affectionate with her after hours of rolling my eyes.

The annoying, constant, questions, attention seeking behaviors, trying to “be cool”, always thinking they’re so clever and funny when they’re just mimicking other cringey people they watch on Netflix and YouTube...it irritates the s**t out of me. Throwing pity parties and feeling sorry for themselves when they don’t get their way or are disciplined for doing something wrong instead of accepting the consequences for their behavior...it’s like...ugly to me? I don’t know how else to describe it.

Don’t get me wrong, I know good and well I was an annoying child too. But I was also a quiet child, and rarely tried to reach beyond my abilities to be funny to make adults pay attention to me. That was just me. And I get that kids today think trying to be entertaining 24/7 like a YouTuber is what’s cool and wanted now. Doesn’t make it any less aggravating, though.

So, I love my niece dearly, and I’m glad she can express herself and has the confidence to be as annoying as she is, but this experience has for a fact solidified my decision to get sterilized 10000000%

I always tell people, if you think you dont want kids, you dont want kids. I thought I wanted kids, had one, still on the fence. She's great and all, but I'm really not a patient person and parenthood has not taught me any patience at all.

Because children tie you to males. Glad I’m older. It’s good to be free.

Regret is a strong word for how I feel. I love my daughter and I would never *ever* change my decision to have her.

I had the worst pregnancy imaginable. I had a rare condition called TRAP sequence which only occurs in 1 in 40,000 pregnancies. I lost one of our identical twin girls very early on, but this condition causes the passed twin to keep growing until the end of pregnancy. It was diagnosed very late at 26 weeks which made me EXTREMELY high risk as it was too late to have a cord ablation. The literal day I was diagnosed I was admitted to the hospital for the rest of my pregnancy. 59 days straight I stayed there until my planned c section at 34 weeks. I had preterm labor stopped 3 times and because I’m sensitive to stimulants the drug they used almost stopped my heart. I almost died as my husband watched in horror. Full cardiac work ups etc. Our little girl was much sicker than we expected at 34 weeks. I didn’t hold her for a week. Her left lung collapsed at 24 hours old and they had to cut her chest to put a tube in. I still grieve over her sister. I grew both, I carried both, and spent 59 days unsure if I would get to even go home with one baby. After 25 days in NICU she got to come home. A part of me died in that hospital after so long in near total isolation. It was maddening. We were young! It’s should have been easy, but it wasn’t. All my friends have had textbook pregnancies and I envy them. Hard. I didn’t even get to have a baby shower. However, I would do it all over again 100x just to see her smile.

That being said I wish for like one week every 6months where it is just me and my husband again. I’m tired. It’s not even her that makes me tired honestly is the cumulation of being a working mother. I thought I was exhausted as a SAHM mom, but my god. Working 40-50 hours a week, plus keeping up with our home, plus being a mother, plus being a wife, plus being a full time student etc. I’m freaking tired. I’d give anything to be a SAHM mom again for a week. I don’t even know who “me” is anymore. I want to know her. I’m trying. From the moment I wake up to the moment I go to bed I’m NEVER alone. I feel like giving my all is never enough. My mental health has been shi*e lately. However, I now recognize it and am taking steps to better my mental health and changing jobs by this fall to help myself. I wouldn’t say I have regret, but I want to find me again. I miss her. It’s been a long time.

Same preface as everyone else, I love my children, but I had them way too young. I was raised Mormon, and good Mormon girls get married to a righteous priesthood holder and find their life’s purpose when they have children. So that’s what I did. I had my first at 21, second at 24, and third at 27. I had severe postpartum depression after my first, that I treated with diligent scripture reading and prayer. It didn’t work. Looking back, I think I depressed for most of my twenties.

My husband and I both had a faith crisis almost immediately after I gave birth to my third. It was a horrendous, hormonal whirlwind of a year, and when I got through to the other side, I told my husband I was going back to school. We had a bit of a rough patch redefining our roles after Mormonism. A lot more family responsibilities became his job, which triggered depression for him.

After that major life transition, we both agree that we were much too young to have children. Neither of us spent our 20s doing the typical 20s things. As a young mom, I didn’t feel like a really person, I was an appendage to everyone else. I didn’t get the chance for self-discovery that I think is crucial. My twenties were just a blur of coping with the demands of very small children. Sometimes I resent that. Being a SAHM was incredibly damaging for my mental well-being, and I think that has really affected my daughter. She has a lot of my anxious tendencies, and we’ve gotten her to a good therapist to help her cope with the ways I think my young parenting affected her.

I don’t regret my kids, but I hate that I had them so young. Being pregnant wreaked havoc on my body and my mental health. I hate parenting babies and toddlers. I hate feeling so tired all the time. I hate that I’m 31 and still in school/trying to “find myself”. I hate that I don’t really find motherhood fulfilling. I hate that 80% of my favorite things involve me being away from them. I don’t regret them as individuals, I actually think that are pretty amazing little humans. I just regret that I feel like our society portrays motherhood as a certain thing, when I found it to be be something very different. I also hate that I don’t feel like it’s societally acceptable to say that motherhood probably isn’t my cup of tea but I’m doing the best I can.

First, I need to begin by saying that I adore my children and would do anything and everything in the world for them. That being said, I now know that I'm not cut out to be a mother to young children.

My children are two and four and I left my job to be a stay at home mom when I was pregnant with my second and it felt like I lost a sense of my identity when I did that. Because of my husband's job, I don't have the flexibility to go back to work until they're both in school and that makes me feel like my children are trapping me in my own house. On top of that, they still need me for a great deal of things, so it feels like my entire existence is solely for the purpose of taking care of nothing but them. I have very little in my life to call my own. It feels selfish to feel like this, but I've made my peace with that.

I hope and believe that once they're in school and my entire day doesn't revolve around them I'll be able to slowly do things for myself again and perhaps not feel like this. I see myself enjoying my kids more when we have separation during the day. But for the time being, I do find myself wishing that I never had kids.

I don’t regret having my kids per se. But I do get where you’re coming from. I had my kids when I was fairly young (compared to how I wanted life to be) and people were expecting me to have them. So at 26 I got married and had 2kids. Fast forward 12years later, divorced from my kids’ father, I realized that I have no maternal instinct at all. I had a period when I resented having them but that went away already. It was a conscious effort to change my perspective. I draw strength from my kids now. But sometimes I can’t help but wonder what life would be like without them. I feel a wave of shame whenever I think of that but it is what it is.

When my mother had me, her only child. Her post partum depression never left, her entire life since my birth has been medicated (30+ years)
I feel her pain so deeply, I never figured I would have exactly the same experience.
My kids are good people, I do the best I can for them.

However, if I had my time again I would do it kid free... it may be worth feeling this intense love, but not losing your mind, body and soul over.

Hindsight is an amazing thing

I am so so so dang relieved I'm not the only one.

I never wanted kids. I always felt awkward around them and quickly would be bored by friends who only talked about them.

And then I got pregnant, became incredibly depressed, experienced crippling postpartum depression, and had two more.

I still don't want kids, and it makes me feel guilty for thinking about if I could go back and do it again... I wouldn't. I love them deeply, but I have never been one to express outward affection or to enjoy constant touching.

Somedays it's really freaking hard to not scream and run away.

I don’t regret having kids but I do dream about that elusive world wherein I had my current resources and wasn’t tied down by motherly duties.

I have a great career and I make good money, but my husband an I live in another country than our family which implies that we don’t have much support if we ever want to take a break. Yeah we can hire a babysitter every now and then for a date night but the thought of even taking a weekend trip together is laughable. We are so prudent about our vacation days as kids fall sick or school holidays etc and we often have to save time off for such exigencies.

I haven’t ever spent a night without my kids and even the thought of it exhausts me.

I want to preface this by stating that I absolutely love my child and will not ever regret her, as my child.

But there are days I do regret the decision. Especially now going through a divorce and seeing how bad of a father my ex really is. On top of that, I feel like I completely suck as a mother and just fail at doing motherly things. I tend to disconnect and try to teach her to be more independent - more so she will do things on her own and just leave me alone. I know she's only 5 and she is at the age where children are pre-wired to test every single button that you have....but sometimes I just want to run away from it all and go back to not having any responsibility over any human being.