Kyle Kittleson
I regret having my kid. My son is 11 and I still regret it every day. I’m 31 this year. I just missed the huge amount of young women opting out of having children, and I wish I knew it was an option. Hi there, I’m Kyle Kittleson with MedCircle. This is Spire.
I recently discovered a group of parents who regret having children and admit this regret through a variety of online anonymous forums. While some of these people recognize their regret, they still maintain their commitment and their love for their children. But others have no qualms about sharing their desire and their intention to remove themselves from their kids’ lives and start a new child-free life.
There’s no shortage of communities for these regretful parents. For example, here’s a Facebook group called “I regret having children.” The group boasts 74,000 followers. Users of the group send messages to the admin using a fake or an anonymous Facebook account, and then the admin of the Facebook group simply posts those messages inside the group for others to see.
Messages such as: “I regret having my kid. I’m a single mom. I hate it. I never wanted this life, and I really just hate it with every bone in my body. She gets on my nerves, and I can’t wait until she’s older. I wish I could leave her with my parents and move away, but they aren’t able to take care of her fully. I don’t believe in abortion for myself, or I would have done that. I hate my life—every single part—and I can’t tell anyone without feeling judged.”
On TikTok, the topic and hashtag “regretful parents” is used quite a bit.
Speaker 3
“Consider myself someone that stands ten toes down on the fact that I regret motherhood. I regret being a parent. Now before you come for me, please hear me out. No, I am NOT giving you a safe place to talk about how you don’t want to be a mother.”
Kyle Kittleson
And there are many people talking about those who leave these comments online, anonymously.
Speaker 4
“You just have to have kids to have a life that’s worth living. Just gotta have so many kids.”
Kyle Kittleson
But perhaps the most famous or infamous digital community for regretful parents is the subreddit thread called “regretful parents.”
Speaker 4
“And then I found this subreddit ‘regretful parents.’ Regretful parents. Regretful parents.”
Speaker 5
“Regretful parents subreddit, which has always been kind of a fascinating subreddit that I try not to read too often because it makes me sad.”
Kyle Kittleson
Now in June of 2022, the group had 44,000 members. But as I record this video, the group has 133,000. And it shows no signs of slowing down. Every day there are new messages, new posts, new confessions.
Messages like: “I wish women our age or older—I’m 33—were more honest. I really would have opted for child-free. I’m so sick of hearing it over and over again. ‘Oh, it’s so rewarding. It’s so great.’ Well, I’m sorry, but I see nothing rewarding about it.
“No sleep, no rest, no breaks, constant screaming, constant demands, no freedom, starving all day because there’s no time to cook anything other than what the kids want. Cleaning literally all day, working all day, and then tending to kids right when you get home. Headaches all day, yelling all day, guilt all day, and watching your friends who were not as stupid as me and didn’t have kids live their lives and are so happy while I sit and cry every day wishing I had made better choices with my life.
“My son is 11, and I still regret it every day. He is boring, annoying, rude, and I can’t stand to be around him. I just want to live my life alone with friends. I’m counting down the days when he finally leaves my home. If I could afford boarding school, I would.
“It’s school holidays. So this week, I’m taking him to a water park, then to football practice, and then to the air show. None of these things I would personally enjoy. I genuinely don’t enjoy my son’s company at all.
“I sobbed in the bathroom yesterday because my days off from work have never been days off. It’s just hell. From when I wake up to when the kids go to sleep, I want out of this.
“I hate when people tell new parents to ‘cherish every moment.’ What kind of unrealistic BS is that? And then new parents feel bad when they aren’t cherishing every single nighttime scream fest, poonami, toddler punch, tantrum, endless requests for food, endless tidying, all the ‘I hate you’s,’ all the ‘no’s.’
“There’s so much to not cherish. Let’s normalize that.”
And the response? 99% of it is decidedly “not cherishable.”
Now, I’ve been reading through this subreddit for hours, and the parents have kids from five into their 30s. Reading or hearing these comments can incite a lot of “How could they?” and “What bad parents they must be.” But you have to remember that keeping those thoughts to ourselves can be detrimental—not just to us, but to the kid that we’re trying to raise.
Here’s triple board-certified forensic and neuropsychologist, Dr. Judy Ho.
Dr. Judy Ho
“It’s so easy to want to just judge that person right away. But I think that being able to just say, ‘Even if I don’t understand why, that’s okay.’ It’s not for me to judge. It’s not for me to necessarily understand and agree with. You don’t have to agree with them. You worry about whether or not they’re really focused on parenting or if that resentment is going to make its way into their parenting practices in some way.
“But if you’re willing to at least talk about it out loud, there may be some hope you’ll find some kind of solution that will allow you to not act like a resentful parent. Children really sense that. But if you’re keeping it all bottled up inside and not telling anybody about your true feelings, I think that the risk might be higher.”
Kyle Kittleson
It’s hard to conclude, for so many reasons, an exact percentage of the population that has these types of thoughts or feelings. But there is some research in the area. In a Time article from this year titled “The Parents Who Regret Having Children,” author R.O. Kwan notes that a 2013 Gallup poll asked Americans 45 and older how many kids they’d have if they could go back in time. 7% of the respondents with children said zero.
In a more recent 2023 study, it was estimated that up to 5 to 14% of parents in so-called developed countries, including the United States, regret their decision to have children.
I also found a survey by a company called YouGov. They polled 18,644 Americans in 2022. They found that 28% of adults think parents often or somewhat often regret having children, while 53% think parents regret it not often or not at all.
Regardless of its prevalence, for the people experiencing these thoughts, it can be anxiety-provoking, stress-inducing, and result in negative impacts on mental and physical health.
I would suggest—of course, this is just me talking—that expressing regret about having children can often be a very healthy way to help manage and process this regret.
But what happens when these thoughts and feelings turn into action, and those actions have a detrimental effect on these children we’ve brought into the world?
When you search “run away” in the subreddit, you get more results than I was willing to count. But are any of these parents actually going to run away from their children?
Take a look at this:
“I finalized my plans. I’m leaving my family in January. I’ve been thinking about running for years but held on to the hopes that things would get better with time. I’m now beyond regret and into full hatred of my life. I won’t miss the kids. I will absolutely miss my partner, though. I’m pretty sure that we’re soulmates, but they’ll hate me after this.
“No one knows that I’m leaving. I’m moving to a place with no connections to me, and I have a bit of a reserve to keep me going until I find a job and get on my feet. I’ll miss the love of my life, but I’ll be happy knowing that I’ll be living my life how I should have always, and my kids will be surrounded by nothing but the unconditional love they deserve.”
I want you to keep in mind that at least according to what I saw written across pages and pages of this subreddit, the vast majority of users are only expressing their feelings of regret, and many users discuss their commitment to raising their children the best they can.
