N o one regrets having a child, or so it’s said. I’ve heard this logic often, usually after I’m asked if I have children, then, when I say I don

The Parents Who Regret Having Children

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2024-04-24 12:30:08

N o one regrets having a child, or so it’s said. I’ve heard this logic often, usually after I’m asked if I have children, then, when I say I don’t, if I plan to. I tend to evade the question, as I find that the truth—I have no plans to be a parent—is likely to invite swift dissent. I’ll be told I’ll change my mind, that I’m wrong, and that while I’ll regret not having a child, people don’t regret the obverse. Close family, acquaintances, and total strangers have said this for years; I let it slide, knowing that, at the very least, the last part is a fiction.

It is, unsurprisingly, a challenge to get solid data on the number of parents who regret having children. In 1975, the popular advice columnist Ann Landers asked her readers if, given the chance to do it all over again, they’d have children. Seventy percent said they wouldn’t; this result, though, came from a group of self-selecting respondents. “The hurt, angry and disenchanted” are more inclined to write back than contented people, as Landers observed in a follow-up 1976 column. But in 2013, a Gallup poll asked Americans 45 and older how many kids they’d have if they could go back in time. Seven percent of the respondents with children said zero. And in 2023, a study estimated that up to 5% to 14% of parents in so-called developed countries, including the United States, regret their decision to have children.

These studies align with what I've found in my personal life: While most parents don’t regret having kids, some do. Perhaps in part because I’ve written publicly about choosing not to have children, I’ve had people, especially mothers, confide in me about parental regret, and frequently enough I’ve lost count.