Recently, our Parenting Taboos series looked at what is perhaps the most unacceptable of all parenting taboos – regretting your decision to become a parent.
In the article, we spoke to parents about why they felt this way, and whether they might do things differently, given their time again. Many readers got in touch to share their views on the issue.
Here is a selection of the responses we received.
‘I can’t be the parent I know I could have been’
Russell, Co Wicklow
It’s not parenthood that I regret. It’s the sheer lack of support parents get from government. It’s the fact that, in entering the paid workforce in huge numbers, the laws of supply and demand have determined that two people now need to work to sustain a family, where previously it was far more possible with one single average income earner.
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If men had left the paid workforce in the same numbers as women entered it, it would have been fabulous. Social fabric would have prevailed. To add to the strain, many of us have begun families a decade later than our parents did, because we didn’t have the financial means to do so when we were the age they were when they started. The hardest thing about being a parent now, for me, is being unavailable to my children because I have to work so hard to feed and clothe them. And the constant strain that both of us are under as relatively older parents working in relatively low-paid sectors, without younger grandparents to lend hands-on support, and without financial assistance from the government in the form of childcare or other supports, creates a breeding ground (pardon the pun) for stress-induced bickering and discord and near-constant exhaustion and sleep deprivation, which makes you feel even more s**t as a parent.
Not to mention trying to maintain the inhumane pace of work and household management in the information age. The regret is that I can’t be the parent I know I could have been, if I wasn’t working myself into an early grave in the attempt to support my kids.
‘Feminism let me down’
Fergus, Co Galway
I was one of the ones, male, that listened to feminism and what it was going to do for women. What I myself took from it that women – many – might not want or never have children.
I married in the early 1980s. Had I discussed all this with my new wife? I think not. But as the marriage went on, I was aware that she would want children. I still didn’t. My viewpoint or vision, if one might call it that, was the two of us being so besotted with each other, that children would be a hindrance.
After a few years, the marriage went by the boards. The one I felt sorry for was her, and this idea that feminism threw at us that women would not be interested in bearing children. I, for one, feel that feminism let me down, dragging me on a course I should never have gone down. I, of course, subsequently, did do further reading on it all – the fact that women biologically would like or seek motherhood. It was not allowed for at all by those early feminists. So, there it lay. I still see very “young” mothers, presumably quite content with their new baby 40 years later.
‘Looking forward to meeting my grandkids’
Brian, Cork
I am a separated/divorced father of two, boy/girl kids, who are now 27 and 30 years old. I lived 16 miles away from them and I drove that road two to three times a week for 20 years to be with them and to try and stay close. They were never driven the other way to see me. I made all the effort and was happy to do that. I still love my kids and never regretted being their dad. My regret is not seeing them every day of their lives growing up. That left a void. Looking forward to meeting my grandkids some time soon.
‘A source of pleasure and pride’
John, south of France
I have one daughter. She has never been anything but a source of pleasure and pride to me and her late mother. It’s all a matter of nature and nurture, our children are to a large degree what we made them. Those that are unhappy with the way their children turned out need a long look in the mirror.
‘Easy enough to navigate’
Linda, Dublin
I’m the opposite. As a mother of two in their early 20s and still living at home, I find/found being a parent easy enough to navigate. When I’m with women and the subject of difficulties around parenting come up, I listen but don’t say much. I’m concerned about appearing as though I want to sell myself as the glossy magazine idea of the perfect mother – which I am definitely not.
‘I’m quite fond of the childless cat ladies’
Desmond, Co Dublin
I don’t have children. It wasn’t deliberately planned that way, just the forces of circumstances (and perhaps, in our case, medical incompetence and neglect). But I certainly don’t regret not having offspring now. There are enough people in the world as it is, after all; and enough strained intergenerational parent/adult child relationships to go around. It’s also less responsibility for me, with the bonus that I can get to feel good about it by dressing it up as concern for the distribution of the planet’s dwindling resources. Besides, the urge to replicate one’s genes is an impulse I have never really understood. If it happened, it happened: it didn’t.
There still exists, however, considerable familial and societal pressure to reproduce, particularly for women. This is wrong. It should be a choice freely undertaken. Personally, I’m quite fond of the “childless cat ladies”. I’m not sure if the feeling is reciprocated.
Beckett called all parents criminals, and even non-poetry lovers can quote Philip Larkin’s famous This Be The Verse by heart. Both were childless, by choice. Today they would be referred to as “happily child free”. Or unhappily, as the case may be – though not necessarily because they were ‘without issue’. To each his, or her, own.
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