Ladies, We Need To Talk - _I wish I_d never had them_ the pain of regretting kids

0:00Yumi StynesHello, it's Yumi here, your parasocial best friend and professional podcast host. Now, I know you're into it, but do you ever wish your kids could discover the joy of screen-free podcast entertainment too? Some of the best, funniest and... CLEARS THROAT Secretly educational podcasts for kids are on ABC Listen. They'll unearth adventures with Gardening Australia Junior, explore big questions with Imagine This and learn about the world with News Time.

0:30Yumi StynesAll of those shows and a whole lot more are available for free in the Child's Safe part of ABC Listen. Just look for the Kids tab. And while your kids are busy with their new favourite podcasts, you'll be able to listen to one of yours. So settle in, my friend. ABC Listen. Podcasts, radio, news, music and more. Hi, ladies. A heads up before we start that this episode mentions suicidal ideation.

1:01Speaker 4The, I wish you weren't here, creates a space for the other life I could have had and the other path I could have chosen. They felt as though that they could perform as a mother and that was fine. They were doing the very best that they could. It was just this feeling of, I wish this child didn't exist. For everybody else, that's such a negative thing to think about not having our children. And for me, it mostly is, but there's that part that's, what if you didn't have them?

1:30Yumi StynesIt's too taboo. It's too much of a risk socially for people to admit this. This is the one thing that you can't talk about. Take it from me. There is nothing that anyone can say that can prepare you for how much your life will change when you become a mother. It's not just sleepless nights, the clothes that will never fit you again, the friends who drift away, and the new version of your partner that you've never met and don't know if you like.

2:01Yumi StynesIt's the fact that you experience an almost unimaginable loss of freedom. You are tethered forever. And you now have a huge responsibility in the shape of a whole entire human life that is all yours and will be yours without respite for literally decades. So yeah, it's not unusual to think, what the fuck have I done?

2:28Yumi StynesBut for most people these thoughts come but are offset with morning cuddles and gummy toothless smiles and delightful fuzzy heads and jokes and enough love to power a small car or at least a deep fryer. But what if the what have I done feeling isn't fleeting? What if it sticks around day after day, year after year?

2:53Yumi StynesWhat if your honest opinions on your kids makes you feel like a terrible person? I'm Umi Steins. Ladies, we need to talk about motherhood regret. The first thing that went through my head was, wow, I've never heard anyone ask that before.

3:27Yumi StynesMeet Hannah. She's a mum of two and lives in a small regional town where she spends a lot of time driving for work and listening to this podcast. When she heard we were looking for women who regret having kids, it stopped her in her tracks. Like, if someone else is saying this, if someone else is asking a question, are there other people out there that have these same thoughts? Hannah has never spoken about how she really feels about being a mum until now.

3:57Yumi StynesWe've changed her name to protect her anonymity and it's taken a lot of courage for her to speak on the record. Hannah got married to her high school sweetheart and they had two babies when she was in her early twenties. She didn't feel like she actively chose motherhood, it was just what you did. Being at home with two kids under two while her husband worked was overwhelming. I actually don't remember much of the first year.

4:24Yumi StynesI did have postnatal depression and for a long time that was untreated. It was mind-numbingly hard having two people belonging to me that much. I was drowning. Parenting very young kids is a demanding mix of profound hectic responsibility and unending boredom and drudgery. Hannah was not thriving and was stuck in survival mode.

4:53Yumi StynesAs much as I was not enjoying it, I knew I was doing what needed to be done. I was showing up, I was going through the motions, I was doing all of the things that they needed. The problem was I wasn't able to do what I needed at the same time. Going from being in the driver's seat of her own life to feeling like a maid, wet nurse, and being at the constant beck and call to two small children came as a complete shock to Hannah.

5:18Yumi StynesShe always worked a lot, two to three jobs at a time. She loved gardening. She was a runner and bike rider. When you become a parent, you understand to some extent that is another little human being. You can't control everything. But I certainly was not prepared for a hundred percent you lose control. You lose control of your choices, what you want, your thoughts, your feelings, your what do you want to have for dinner. That doesn't come into it. It's all about what they want.

5:46Yumi StynesDo you think that your experience of being a parent as a mum is very different from the experience of parenting as a dad? Yeah, I think so because it's all you. Breastfeeding and all of that, it's 100% mum. It's like as a mother, you're expected to know what to do from the very beginning. But the fathers are allowed to learn as they go. I remember when you get home from the hospital, the baby's 24, 48 hours old and you're sort of sitting there, I've got no idea what I'm doing.

6:16Yumi StynesMother's instinct, it's supposed to kick in. And it's total bullshit, you don't. How did you feel that that was as a setup for not just you, but for women at large? I think it's just ridiculous. It's such a massive job and massive pressure for one person. Even if you do get help coming in and things like that, you still need to make the decisions. You still need to tell them what to do. I think it's insane.

6:43Yumi StynesWhen Hannah sees photos of herself from that time, when her kids were babies, she's smiling at the camera. But behind that smile was an overwhelmed mum feeling desperately unqualified and who was starting to regret her decision to be a mother. Obviously, I'm pretty good at putting on a face. I'm really surprised at how happy I look, to be honest. Because your memories are not reflective of that. No. I can see you're having a lot of feelings right now. What's going on?

7:13Speaker 4I just... I hate that this is my experience of this because I feel like it's not supposed to be. Sorry. If we were in the same room right now I'd grab your hand. I'm sorry you're having this feeling. That's okay. I just hate that. I just hate that I felt this way for so long that I thought that I was broken. I thought that it was wrong. It's just... it's too taboo. It's too much of a risk socially for people to admit this.

7:49Yumi StynesThis is Ella Reed. She's a sociologist at Monash University where she's researching maternal regret. There's been hardly any research done on this subject, especially in Australia. But that doesn't mean it's not very real. Ella's research also hasn't been published yet, but she can share what she's found. I think for a lot of cisgendered women, we are supposed to aim for that goddess, that serene kind of all-giving, all-encompassing mother.

8:17Yumi StynesAnd then when we don't fit neatly within that box, the social kind of ramifications and critiquing that we would get from that is significant. As part of her research, Ella interviewed a small sample size of women. They were often scared to share their stories, and for most of them, Ella was the first person they'd spoken to about it. Some women were dealing with obvious hardships like violent partners and financial stress.

8:47Speaker 4But then there were women with seemingly ordinary lives who were looking around and thinking, this is not what I signed up for. We're trained from such a young age that this is what we're aiming for, that this is what we should be aspiring to. And then when it arrives, maybe it's not exactly what we were sold. As part of her research, Ella also had to define what motherhood regret actually is and what it isn't.

9:14Speaker 4There is sort of a clinical framework for postnatal depression, anxiety, psychosis. And for these women that I spoke to, they very much just felt like that was not the case for them. It wasn't depression. It wasn't anxiety. It was regret that they felt as though that they could perform as a mother. And that was fine. You know, they were doing the very best that they could. It was just this feeling of, I wish this child didn't exist.

9:41Speaker 4I love this child endlessly and I would lay down my life for them immediately but at the same time I wish I never had them. That's pretty big. Yeah and this was the space for all of them that they really sat with of that I do everything that I can for this kid every single day and I look at them and see this perfect little baby but I also if I could go back I would never have them.

10:07Speaker 4While Ella's research doesn't tell us how common parental regret is, it does give us an insight into this terrible taboo. She spoke to one woman who'd always wanted to be a mum. She said every decision she made, every health decision, anything that she put in her body, she would ask, is this going to impact my fertility? And if so, how? So she was like, I want to do a bang on 30. And found a partner that she really liked, also wanted to have children. Everything lined up.

10:36Speaker 4Yeah, just hit her like a wave. She was like, it's too late. And I just realized I don't want this. She then gave birth, went home straight away with the baby, didn't have to stay all that long in hospital. And every single day she's like, why did I do this? Wow. Why did I do this? Her story was very interesting because when I was talking to her, a child was a couple of years old now. And she just said, it's just every day. Had she shared this feeling with anyone else besides you?

11:03Speaker 4She half shared it with her partner just to kind of, you know, test the waters. And he also admitted that, yeah, maybe this wasn't for me either. But he was sort of of the more optimistic route of maybe this will get easier, maybe we'll feel more comfortable with this later on in life. But she thought this isn't going to get easier and it's going to feel like this forever. So the feeling didn't disappear after the baby came and then her partner's like...

11:28Speaker 4Yeah, me too. That's so hectic. Yeah. I mean, it speaks to these kind of unspoken conversations though, so strongly of that they were both living with this and they're both in the same household, having the same feeling, but they just didn't tell each other. Let's go to another story. The woman who actively tried not to become a mum, but couldn't access an abortion. She was married to a man that didn't want to have children either. And so she was like, cool. On contraception, actively not.

11:58Speaker 4trying to get pregnant. And then one day was just feeling sort of a bit sick and thought, oh, hang on, I think my period's late. And did a pregnancy test and was like, oh, whoa, damn positive. How did that happen? When I did all the proper blood tests and everything was 16 weeks. And it was like, okay, that's fine for the long that I thought it, but I'll terminate this pregnancy because it's not a child that's wanted. But At the time was just getting delayed and delayed and delayed and put on the back burner by doctors, by the clinics that she was visiting, which is something that is prevalent of doctors thinking they will regret this termination. A report published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology looked into delays for people seeking abortions in 2022.

12:48Speaker 4It highlighted the lack of options in the public system and the postcode lottery of access determinations. And then as the laws are in Australia, there are periods where it times out. Yeah, there's a cutoff. It's about 20 to 22 weeks, depending on your state or territory, and then she hit that period and they were like, well, all too bad, you can't have a termination now.

13:12Speaker 4And so, yeah, she got kind of back into a corner and then ended up having a baby she really didn't want. I was just so tired and frustrated. I remember just seeing down and looking at myself and just going, why the hell did I try so hard to have this child? This is Gee. They're an academic beach lover and they live with their 11-year-old daughter in Sydney. Back when Gee was married to a man, they were very actively trying to have a child.

13:40Yumi StynesSo number of miscarriages throughout the process, seven full failed cycles of IVF with nothing to be frozen. And then after all of that, she decided to turn up on her own. So you had a male partner at the time. You'd gone through five years of trying to get pregnant before you actually did. What did you expect parenting to be like?

14:04Speaker 2I don't know that I actually had an expectation if I was in a very heteronormative kind of situation and this is the logical step of what it is you do next. When she was first born, did you have that initial surge of love that people talk about? I think I was probably in a state of shock in some ways that it actually happened and she was actually here. Yeah, I think quite taken back is probably a better way to put it. I don't know whether it was this real sense of love. It was...

14:34Yumi Stynesa little bit of a, oh, wow, that's actually real. I can see you and I can touch you. And I remember I chalked my way into having an extra night in hospital because I was terrified to come home. Yeah, sure. Fair enough. Fair enough. Yeah, so it is overwhelming, isn't it? That first, they hand you the baby and you're like, what are you doing? Why are you giving me this whole ass person to look after? So tell me about when things started to get really tricky for you as a parent. Yeah.

15:02Speaker 2So I think I describe it as she's always a step ahead of me. And I want to preface it with saying, you know, I believe my job as a parent is to raise a good human. So I do love her. I do find her really challenging. But I think she was probably about two or three where I first just kind of went, I don't understand what I need to do to help you create the space to understand the lesson I'm trying to teach you. So.

15:29Speaker 2classic story of her. She was about two and we were in the kitchen and she was eating some blueberries and she just tipped the punted upside down on the floor and I looked at her and said, you can't do that. And she looked me in the eye and she said, no, mummy, I sit on the step for two minutes, you pick them up. And I'm like, that's not how this is meant to work. It was a small moment of a smart toddler upending the power dynamic and a preview of what was to come. Gee was physically and emotionally drained by parenting her child.

16:01Yumi StynesAnd the feelings of regret began to surface and those feelings were unwelcome. I felt a little bit sick because that's not how you meant to feel about your kids. And you describe your then husband as being not very present. What do you mean? He just had a theory or a feeling that she was quite young so there wasn't a lot he could do to help. But outside of that it was me who always did all of the primary caring which created this kind of really strong tight bond or

16:29Speaker 2almost dependency between her and I. I remember being at the GP in quite a state, depressive, really big low, and the GP looked at him and said, well, can't you just look after her and she can go and do the shopping? And he went, yeah, of course. And I think I'd been out of the house for 15 minutes before he called me and said, can you come back? Because I can't get her to stop crying. It was all on me. A lot of women have described that feeling of...

16:54Yumi StynesBeing the primary carer and being so deep in the trenches as feeling like they're drowning? Yeah. How would you put it? I think it was more suffocating and dark. Yeah. But similar. Sentimental drowning. Just an overwhelm. Yeah, absolutely. Gee eventually separated from the father of their child and repartnered with a woman. Five days at fortnight when Gee's daughter stays with her father, Gee gets to play in the sandpit of life without children. And sometimes Gee finds themselves counting down the days to this time.

17:25Yumi StynesI've just got to do two more nights. And then I only have to cook one dinner. I can go and hang out at the beach. I can sit down and do the research that I need to do. And I know that time when she's not there, I value really, really highly, I think for my own space. I think about it a bit myself is like, if I hadn't have chosen to have the two kids that are young and living with me now, because I've got older ones that launched.

17:55Speaker 2I could do so much stuff. I could travel so much more easily. I would have so much more spending money. I don't have any shame in fantasizing about that. Do you think about that? Does that parallel life exist for you? Absolutely. I think I'd be a lot thinner and a lot fitter. Nah. I think we're all the weight we're meant to be, in fact. But yeah, go on. It's different times suck, right? It's where you spend your time, what you do. No, traveling, absolutely.

18:26Speaker 2a different kind of cohort in social life, I guess. And I think when the weekends that she's not with us, it's how many movies can we get in this weekend without having to trek around for school sport and those kind of things. He became the full-time parent. And that was probably the best thing we ever did. This is Hannah again, our mum of two and longtime listener to this podcast.

18:51Yumi StynesWhen her kids were little, she felt oppressed by the endless responsibilities of primary caregiving. So when her husband stayed home and she went back to work, it felt like regaining a meaningful slice of her freedom. That was amazing. The requests and the expectations being put on me, I felt were more reasonable. The requests and things when you're home with little kids, you know, it's just, it's relentless.

19:18Speaker 3So what you're describing is at work you can meet the KPIs at home with two little kids. You're failing at meeting the KPIs because they're really fucking crazy. And they keep changing. And they keep changing. They come with tantrums. People shout at you, throw things. Yeah, you think you got it right one week and then the KPIs completely changed the following week. Whereas at work I knew what was expected of me. I knew what I had to do.

19:41Yumi StynesIt's hard for Hannah to talk about but if she lets her mind go there she also thinks about what her life could have been without children. For everybody else that's a horrible thought that's such a negative thing to think about not having a children. And for me it mostly is but there's that part that's what if he didn't have them? What would it be like if he didn't? It wasn't that they derailed their life in any way like we didn't have massive plans to

20:13Speaker 3travel or like they didn't interrupt their life in that way. But the financial hit that having children puts on your family and your life is huge. We've never been very well off at all, so that was always a pressure. What would I be like without them? What would my sanity be like without them? It's me to think that it might have been better. I hate thinking that I wouldn't have them. But if I'm being honest,

20:48Speaker 4I don't think I would. And I've never said that out loud before. Love and regret can coexist. That is something that sociologist Ella Reid found again and again in her research. These women were as fantastic a mother as anyone else that I know. And it was just their own internal struggle. It was really heartbreaking for them to explain to me in such great detail that, yeah, they can just look at this perfect child and be like, I wish that this child had a different mother. I wish that this child was being raised by someone that didn't feel like this. Ella reckons that there are deep societal forces connected to the motherhood fairy tale. I think everyone's obsessed with women having babies because it's easier to just shove it onto women. It's easier for us to pretend like women are monolithic and...

21:47Speaker 4That's our role in society. That's all we should want. And if we just don't examine that and we don't put any microscope over that, then we can just continue business as usual and not worry about it. So I think that obsession of women should want this is because we're still not comfortable with the idea of that maybe women want anything else. Maybe women want a really high-flying career or maybe women

22:12Yumi Styneswant to have different partners or go overseas and do other things. It's just not comfortable for some people to kind of grapple with that. Yeah. And if women in numbers admitted that motherhood is kind of shit, then the whole structure of our culture and our society would start to disintegrate. Absolutely. Yeah. If women really got together and started talking about the realities of it, like pregnancy, birth, you know, the whole shebang. Yeah.

22:39Speaker 4I don't think people are worried about women unionising. Yeah, we'd unionise. And it would go to hell. Ah, absolutely. We're seeing this now. Everybody panicking because the birth rates dropping in most countries globally and everyone's going, oh, my gosh, what do we do about it? It's like, why don't you just support people to have children rather than forcing them to and lying about it? Some of the women Ella spoke to felt ripped off by the motherhood load. This burden of parenting being so much heavier on mums than it is on dads.

23:07Speaker 4There was certainly an overpromise underdeliver with partners. A lot of them spoke to quite strongly about the concept of a village and then the baby arrives and they're like, where is this village? So it's this idea of like being sold this kind of promise of we'll help you, we'll make it easy. And also coming from wider society as well of even our parental leave expectations and...

23:33Yumi StynesAlso the idea of that childcare being available, which for a lot of people it's absolutely not, for some people they did feel kind of tricked. Even the fact that school finishes at 3.30 and work doesn't finish till 5.30, it's like what kind of trick is that? Exactly! It's not just the feeling of regret that these women carry. It's the guilt of having the feeling in the first place. And when those feelings are treated as taboo, women often suffer alone.

24:01Speaker 4I think getting rid of the judgement would certainly help. And getting rid of this sort of shock horror as well and just recognising that motherhood does exist in a spectrum. And all of those feelings are valid. It's such a life-changing thing for people. Of course, there's going to be something new that comes up. And if it's regret, that's okay as well. We just maybe need some digesting time. But also thinking that

24:27Yumi StynesThe more that we respond to this with shock and horror and anger, we're making people sit in shame and silence. She kind of went, ooh, it's a bit of a big one. What would you like to do with that? How can we work on that? Gee and their new partner were having deep chats recently when Gee said out loud that they've regretted having their daughter. And their partner responded with calm and open curiosity. Which was an amazing, really supportive response. And I think at that point,

24:59Speaker 2I was shocked myself and I kind of looked at her and went, I think I just want to put it back under the rock that I found it under and leave it there just quietly. Can you forget, delete that scene. And she was very respectful of that piece and sat with it and just waits for when I'm ready. And, you know, there are days, mornings, afternoons where I just quit parenting. What she means when they say they quit parenting is the really hard moments with their kid when they literally put their hands up in surrender.

25:28Speaker 2Like, no, I just, I've got to get out. The crazy, all-in, screaming tantrums, thumping around in a bedroom, lime out. Yep, the hands are in the air. I'm in another room, quitting parenting at that moment for sure. It's like, no, I just, I've got to get out. It's in these high emotion moments that G most regrets having a child. I think a lot of it is just this sense of not being able to reason with her. It makes it really hard. And yeah, absolutely. The ejector seat would be amazing.

25:56Yumi StynesAh geez, we all have our moments when we're right on the edge of chucking it all in, all wanting to. Once G had opened up to their partner about regretting having had a kid, they eventually took their concern to a professional. The therapist gave G a few books, but mostly she gave permission to have the feeling in the first place, and that helped. It made me feel really confident and okay. Yeah, right. That I was still a whole person. I wasn't an evil person. G...

26:26Speaker 2If there is joy in parenting for you, where do you find it? Certainly not in cleaning up the kitchen after she's done some cooking. It's in the little bits where you see the generosity that you've tried to instill in them, the thoughtfulness, the actions that she has towards her friends, towards my partner. I think that's the bit where it's like, yeah, maybe I just got that one right. Maybe I've got that bit in.

26:54Speaker 2Why do you think there's so much stigma attached to expressing regret around having kids? I think that really does just come back to that whole societal value piece. It's not what you're meant to say. It's not what you're meant to feel. It's not what you're meant to show. But if we don't create the space for being honest about what's happening for us, then what kind of society are we living in?

27:23Yumi StynesWell, this has been one hell of an episode of Ladies We Need To Talk with all the feelings and all the rawness. It's worth sharing with you that we had some trouble finding mums who were willing to go on the record to speak about their experience of regretting having kids. Plenty who wanted to talk to us about it, but few who were willing to go on the record. So extra big thank you to Hannah and Gee.

27:46Yumi StynesI had a chat with one of my adult daughters to talk about what was appropriate to say here and with her permission I can tell you that like Hannah and Gee, I love my children but if I had my time again it's likely I would have made different choices. And wouldn't it be nice if society backed off a bit and stopped pressuring us women to procreate? It is a choice and a bloody big life changing decision.

28:13Yumi StynesAnd then when we do make these babies, what about more support? Like, I don't know, free childcare? More equal partnerships so that we don't fall into a heap? And yeah, I know that the mum gig comes with a lot of rewards as well. But to even say the words, I regret this, or I've made a big mistake, is an act of insurrection. So if there's a voice in your head saying the same thing, that's okay. It doesn't make you a bad mother or a bad person.

28:42Yumi StynesIt makes you human.