What happens when mothers regret motherhood

Envision yourself as a woman in your 30s — the years you were promised to be your “glory days.” You finally get home after a strenuous day of work only to discover the sink is overflowing with dirty dishes and chocolate ice cream has been spilled all over your white, overpriced, Restoration Hardware couch that you worked tirelessly to buy.

On this couch, your husband lays asleep while your four kids kick and scream over whose turn it is to be “Princess Peach” in the new Nintendo game. The rest of your night will now be spent trying to keep the peace, scrubbing the couch stains, cooking dinner that your kids will complain about, and hoping to seize a couple hours of sleep at the end of it all.

Although you’re fed up and pushed beyond the point of exhaustion, you still love your kids, right? At the end of the day, is this how you dreamed of spending your life? How could a mother not!

That’s not always the case. The Canada Project reports that 43% of Canadian mothers have at some point wished they decided not to have kids.

However, due to its taboo nature, this is not a conversation many find appropriate: shaming mothers into hiding their true feelings about motherhood. This is a difficult issue to tackle. It can be very isolating for mothers whose decision to have children have made their lives miserable because there are other feelings involved: the children’s.

In 2021, most women can incorporate topics regarding sex, politics, professional life, or even a yeast infection into conversation, but the the conversation stops at a woman mentioning her slight frustration or resentment towards her job as a mother. 

In a BBC interview, Rachel, a mother of three, expresses her true feelings in regards to motherhood. She says, “I felt so alone. I felt like there was something wrong with me. Had I been able to talk about it and somebody understood, I may have found it easier actually to cope with motherhood.”

Society and the media have perpetuated this issue by pushing young girls and women to believe that they need to have children in order to please their husbands, be unconditionally loved, and lead a fulfilling life. So, since women are bred to believe they need to begin a family, they do! Motherhood is not the future meant for all women, and many naively surrender themselves to societal pressures and have children.