Posted on 12/19/2016 11:29:40 PM PST by MoochPooch
It's unthinkable, and it's definitely unspeakable, but women all over the world are coming forward to say it: I regret having my children.
Here's the thing about realising that you shouldn't have had kids," says Laura*, 37, a journalist based in Los Angeles. "You can't take the decision back."
Laura once believed that she wanted to be a mother. She had little direct experience with children—no siblings young enough to need tending to, no babysitting jobs—and when she and her husband decided to start a family, she wondered if she knew enough about what that meant. "I asked some friends if we could get the basics from them and they ran us through the general infant care stuff in maybe 45 minutes," she says. "In retrospect, it was laughably insufficient. I really didn't know what I was in for."
Laura got pregnant easily. But once her son was born, she was overwhelmed and frustrated, prone to lengthy crying jags, and consumed by boredom and dissatisfaction.
Some might call this postpartum depression, but the cloud never lifted. Laura knew there was a different force at work. "The regret hit me when the grandmas went home and my husband went back to the office and I was on my own with him," she says. "I realized that this was my life now—and it was unbearable."
(Excerpt) Read more at elleuk.com ...
After having a child with medical risks I regretted not having many more. I even wanted to adopt one of those Haiti babies after the earthquake but was told I was too old. Too old?! I was like 42.
Now I just really enjoy raising my child. Everyday she gives me a kiss and a hug and says she loves me.
Everyday. :)
(Then we do a fist bump routine, that slightly gets altered about every week.)
JFK’s brother-in-law, the Brit-American Peter Lawford—the “Brother-in-Lawford” was one who grew up with a mother who called him a “mistake”. Lawford loved his father and barely tolerated his mother. The former MGM star destroyed his health with drugs and alcohol but made it to age 61 before dyeing from organ failure.
I can’t help it wonder with her experience as she describes it, how her son turned out. I have a friend much younger than I whose Mom sounds like this woman, and this poor person grew up never feeling they were valuable.
We have five and God has blessed us every single day of our lives.
I just moved to Sierra Leone for a three year tour and all five decided to go with us. Two of them now have jobs in the embassy here in Freetown and all five of them are living with us in a big house provided by the embassy.
Every evening we have dinner together and every Sunday they are helping me in the church I am ministering in.
God has blessed me beyond anything I could have ever imagined when I was 18 and starting out.
Thank you for sharing your story and I'm happy for you. Five kids! I was 18 once, naive and not knowing what life I had ahead of me. I consider myself lucky and blessed that I made it to my senior years with kids and grandkids who make me proud. No kidding, all five together went with you, you are certainly blessed.
Typical, really. Many women treated babies as possession, as something to have that gained them attention. Once that was out of the way, they didn’t want them anymore. My best friend’s wife is that way. She lost any motherly instinct once the parents and sisters went back home.
Yup. Some people are in no mindset to have them and some have no temperament for it. If they are self-aware of which they are, so much the better for all.
Seriously, kids know if the parents want them or not. Whether theynsay it with words, or other ways.
The media does decide what to parade around per their current and future agendas.
I’m in a group with five other ladies — all between 65 and 75. Often I hear, “I love my kids, but if I had it to do over again I wouldn’t have any.”
I don’t have any — “for the sake of the children”. I’d have been a terrible mother. Terrible. Some day I expect to regret the decision; we’ll see.
...and He wasn’t kidding, and I would add, if you aren’t fruitful and multiply, you are literally contributing to the demise of your kind. Demographics will consume you as it is doing right now right this minute in many nations.
What a warm picture of love you’ve created in my heart!
Step 2 in the movement to legalize post-birth ‘abortion’ - Make mothers in to victims.
Thanks. I was just going to look for that passage. End times indeed. As in the time of Noah...
My personal opinion is, men surely ought to know when their opinions are NOT needed, unless or until they carry a baby to term, birth, and spend 24/7 caring for a child. First off, the body in pregnancy is flooded with hormones that some days takes over 'sanity' to the point of exhaustion. I have three children, and I have never felt regret.
However, I do remember the first time (in the 80's) when I was no longer gainfully employed, about to give birth, (my body/brain was no longer mine) reality smacked me. I wrote a check and was asked for workplace phone number... When I said I did not have one, the 'gal' said, oh, you do not work. I literally wanted to disappear, embarrassed beyond words.
What I read this woman to say was
"The regret hit me when the grandmas went home and my husband went back to the office and I was on my own with him," she says. "I realized that this was my life now—and it was unbearable."
I have no problem with her reality, because 'Western society' really does NOT value motherhood. It is one of those mindsets of 'woman' do your job.. and that job is 24/7. Look at tax law. IF mom and dad hauls off the child/children to daycare, there is a tax deduction... But if either parent does the daycare job there is no tax deduction. Last memory, of my deductible worth, was $2,500 a year, caring 24/7 for three children.
They have been taught to be selfish. Having a child means being selfless. Also, our society does not allow the mother to stay home because we need two working parents to support the welfare class and illegals.
I have a niece who has two children and is constantly whining about how American companies aren’t giving her and her kind six months of maternity leave.
I’m sure there are far more women who regret not having children. Maybe not in their 30s and 40s, but in their 50s and older when they turn around and ask themseleves what was the point of it all?
I consider myself to be quite fortunate to come from a loving, supportive and stable family, and to have realized at a very early age that marriage and having children weren’t for me. I’m lucky in the sense that I didn’t have to go out and marry a woman, get her pregnant and later realize I’m in a situation where extraction would be painful.
Don’t get me wrong, I think marriage and families can be a wonderful thing when the right people can deal with the give-and-take required of all healthy relationships. if people want to get married (the traditional form of marriage that is) and raise a family, I think it’s great.
But I must have been blessed with an unnaturally early dose of wisdom when I came to realize I was simply too self-centered to make a good husband or father. I knew I could get into a situation like that and be good for an indeterminate amount of time, but I’d eventually would want out.
My now-deceased aunt suggested I liked playing the field, but I told her it wasn’t that which made me stay a bachelor. It was the fear of being in ANY situation I couldn’t get out of. And I would not want to hurt anyone by breaking up a family.
I didn’t mean to be so long-winded about myself, but it was necessary to point out why I say that women who regret bringing babies into the world are either too narcissistic to not know they are narcissistic, or should be extended some forgiveness for their unintentional or inadvertent ignorance.
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