I Regret Having Kids — The Thought Nobody Admits

"Is This Normal?"

It's the question that runs in the background of every parenting day. "Is this normal? Am I doing this right?" The honest answer is almost always yes — and here are the few specific signs that mean it isn't.

Here is the evidence-based, non-anxious view of this specific situation. What's typical. What's unusual. When to worry.

The Thought You're Not Supposed to Have

You're at the playground on a Saturday morning. The sun is out. Your child is laughing on the swings. And somewhere underneath the surface, a quiet thought forms: What would my life look like if I hadn't done this?

The thought arrives uninvited, stays for a few seconds, and then the guilt hits so hard it takes your breath away. You look at your child — this person you love so fiercely it physically hurts — and you feel like a monster for having thought it at all.

You are not a monster. You are a human being who is carrying something you were never given permission to talk about. And there are far, far more of you than anyone is willing to acknowledge.

What the Research Actually Says

In 2015, Israeli sociologist Orna Donath published a study that sent shockwaves through the parenting world. She interviewed 23 mothers who said that if they could go back in time with everything they now know, they would not have had children. These weren't women who hated their kids — most described deep love for their children. What they regretted was the role of motherhood itself: the erasure of identity, the relentless demands, the life they had given up.

Donath's research, later expanded in her book Regretting Motherhood, was met with fierce backlash. But it also opened a floodgate. Within months, the hashtag #regrettingmotherhood was trending in Germany, with thousands of women sharing that they felt the same way but had never been able to say it.

Subsequent research has confirmed what Donath found. A 2021 YouGov poll found that approximately 8% of American parents said they regretted having children. A German study from 2016 put the figure at around 20% for "sometimes regretting it." And a 2023 survey by the Pew Research Center found that while the vast majority of parents call parenthood rewarding, a significant minority also described it as overwhelming all or most of the time — with the overlap between those groups being larger than expected.

The numbers vary because the question is sensitive and the shame is immense. Researchers believe the true prevalence is higher than any survey captures, because admitting parental regret — even anonymously — feels like confessing to a crime.

Why This Happens — And Why It's Not About Your Kids

When you dig into the research and the clinical literature, a clear pattern emerges. Parental regret is almost never about the children. It's about the conditions of parenthood — the structural, emotional, and identity-level costs that nobody warned you about or that turned out to be far heavier than you expected.

Identity Erasure

Before children, you were a person with hobbies, ambitions, a social life, a body that belonged to you. After children — especially in the first few years — much of that disappears. Psychologists call this "identity disruption," and research by Dr. Aurélie Athan at Columbia University's Maternal Psychology Lab frames the transition to parenthood as a developmental stage as significant as adolescence. She coined the term "matrescence" to describe the physical, hormonal, and psychological transformation of becoming a mother — and noted that while we give adolescents years of patience and support through their identity changes, we expect new parents to adjust overnight.

For many parents who experience regret, the core wound is this: I don't know who I am anymore. They haven't lost love for their child — they've lost contact with themselves. If this resonates with you, you're not alone, and our guide on parental burnout explores the connection between identity loss and chronic exhaustion in depth.

Unmet Expectations

Society sells parenthood as the most fulfilling thing a person can do. The social media version is golden-hour photos and first steps caught on camera. Nobody posts about the 45-minute bedtime negotiation that ended with everyone crying, or the Saturday that disappeared into errands, tantrums, and laundry.

When reality is relentlessly harder than the expectation, the gap produces resentment — and that resentment feels like regret. But often it's not regret about the decision to become a parent. It's anger about having been lied to about what parenthood would actually be like.

Chronic Exhaustion

Tired people don't think clearly. Tired people don't feel clearly. When you've had broken sleep for months or years, when you haven't had an uninterrupted meal or an hour alone in weeks, your brain starts producing escape fantasies — because that's what exhausted brains do. The thought "I wish I hadn't done this" may not be a genuine assessment of your life choices. It may be your nervous system screaming for rest.

A 2022 study in the Journal of Child and Family Studies found a direct, linear relationship between parental sleep deprivation and the intensity of regret-like thoughts. Parents who slept less than five hours per night were four times more likely to report wishing they could "undo" major life decisions — including having children. When those same parents later improved their sleep, the regret thoughts decreased significantly. If you're in the trenches with a baby who won't sleep, our sleep schedule by age guide offers responsive, gentle approaches — no cry-it-out, no guilt.

Relationship Strain

Research by Dr. John Gottman at the Gottman Institute found that 67% of couples experience a significant decline in relationship satisfaction after the birth of their first child. When your partnership — which used to be a source of energy and connection — becomes a logistics operation punctuated by arguments about whose turn it is, it's not the child you resent. It's the loss of the relationship you had.

This is particularly acute for mothers who feel they've absorbed a disproportionate share of the mental load, and for fathers who feel shut out of the parenting process or pressured to earn more. Both partners can end up grieving the same thing from different angles. Village AI's co-parent sharing features can help you split the invisible work more evenly — from tracking feeds and naps to sharing developmental observations — so neither parent is carrying it all alone.

The Shame Is Worse Than the Feeling

Here is the most important thing this article will say: the thought is not the problem. The silence is the problem.

When a parent has a moment of regret and can talk about it — with a therapist, a trusted friend, a partner — the feeling usually deflates. It loses its power. It's just a thought, born from exhaustion and identity disruption, and it passes.

But when a parent has that thought and immediately buries it under shame, something dangerous happens. The thought doesn't go away — it goes underground. It festers. It becomes a secret that colors everything: the way you interact with your child (overcompensating with excessive attention because you feel guilty), the way you see yourself (I'm defective, something is wrong with me), the way you relate to other parents (they all seem happy, I must be the only one).

Clinical psychologist Dr. Philippa Perry, author of The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read, writes that the most damaging thing about parental ambivalence is not the ambivalence itself — it's the refusal to acknowledge it. Parents who can sit with the full complexity of their feelings ("I love this child AND I grieve my old life") are actually better parents than those who force themselves into relentless positivity. Why? Because emotional honesty models emotional health. And because parents who deny their difficult feelings eventually leak those feelings sideways — through irritability, withdrawal, or resentment their children can sense even if it's never spoken.

Tip: If you can't say it out loud to anyone yet, write it down. In a journal, in the notes app on your phone, anywhere private. Research on expressive writing by Dr. James Pennebaker at the University of Texas has shown that putting difficult emotions into words — even when no one else reads them — reduces their psychological intensity and improves wellbeing within weeks.

What Actually Helps

If you're in this place right now — if you're reading this article at 2am with a sleeping child on your chest and a knot in your stomach — here's what the evidence says works.

1. Stop Punishing Yourself for the Thought

A thought is not an action. Having a moment of regret does not harm your child. You are not a bad parent for feeling this. Repeat that until it penetrates the guilt: a thought is not an action. The worst thing you can do is build an identity around the shame. You're not "a parent who regrets their kids." You're a tired, overwhelmed human being having a normal psychological response to extraordinarily demanding circumstances.

2. Identify What You're Actually Mourning

Regret is usually grief wearing a disguise. When you sit with the feeling, what are you really missing? Freedom? Your career momentum? Your body? Your relationship? Your social life? Sleep? Naming the specific loss is the first step toward addressing it — because many of those losses are at least partially recoverable, even if it doesn't feel that way right now.

3. Reclaim One Thing That's Yours

You don't need a spa weekend or a solo trip to Europe (though those sound nice). You need one small, recurring thing that reconnects you with the person you were before parenthood. A weekly coffee alone. A run. A book you're reading just for you. Thirty minutes of something that has nothing to do with being a parent. The research on burnout recovery consistently shows that even small doses of autonomy protect against resentment and emotional depletion.

4. Tell One Person

Not social media. One person. A therapist is ideal, but a partner, a sibling, or a close friend who won't judge you works too. The sentence "Sometimes I wonder what my life would be like without kids" is not a confession of monstrousness — it's a bid for connection. And more often than not, the person you tell will say, "I've thought that too."

5. Get Practical Help

Sometimes what feels like existential regret is actually a logistics problem. You're drowning in mental load, you're managing every appointment and meal and emotion for the entire household, and your brain is producing "I want out" because it's overloaded. The fix isn't a change of heart — it's a change of workload. Talk to your partner about sharing the invisible work. Ask for help. Accept help when it's offered. Use tools that reduce friction — Village AI's tracking, scheduling, and AI guidance exist specifically so that you don't have to carry everything in your head.

When It Might Be Something More

For most parents, regret is situational and temporary. It spikes when you're exhausted, isolated, or going through a particularly brutal developmental stage (hello, terrible twos). It fades when you get rest, connection, and a reminder of why you chose this.

But sometimes parental regret is a symptom of something that needs clinical attention. Consider talking to a professional if:

• The feelings are persistent and intensifying — not just moments but a constant state that colors your entire day
• You're feeling detached from your child — going through the motions of care without any emotional connection
• You're having thoughts of harming yourself or a pervasive sense that your family would be better off without you
• You've lost interest in things that used to matter to you and feel numb or hollow most of the time
• You're using alcohol, substances, or compulsive behaviors to cope with the feelings

These may be signs of postpartum depression (which can appear up to two years after birth) or clinical depression. They are treatable, and reaching out for help is not a sign of failure — it's the bravest thing a parent can do.

Tip: If you're not ready to talk to a therapist yet, try starting with Mio. Village AI's AI assistant can help you process what you're feeling without judgment, and can help you figure out whether what you're experiencing is within the normal range or something to bring to a professional. Sometimes just saying the words to a non-judgmental listener is the hardest step.

What Your Children Need to Know (And What They Don't)

Let's be clear: children should never be told that their parent regrets having them. That is a burden no child should carry. But children absolutely benefit from seeing parents who are honest about difficulty. "Mommy is having a hard day and needs a few minutes alone" teaches emotional literacy. "Dad feels frustrated right now, and it's not your fault" models healthy communication.

Children of parents who pretend everything is fine develop anxiety about their own negative emotions — because they've never seen an adult navigate difficulty honestly. Children of parents who acknowledge that parenthood is sometimes really hard, while also showing up for them with love, develop a more realistic and resilient understanding of what it means to commit to something challenging.

You don't owe your children perfection. You owe them presence, honesty, and a genuine effort to show up even on the days when showing up feels impossible.

Related Village AI Guides

For deeper context on related topics, parents reading this also find these helpful: fostering independence by age, how to raise a confident child, the ordinary tuesday that matters more than christmas, the sentence that ends every power struggle. And on the parent-side of things: emotional regulation complete guide by age, how to be a good enough parent, fostering independence by age, how to raise a confident child.