Why I sometimes regret being a parent

It is, at the very least, a reprieve from the feeling that parenthood should be a constant delight

- Miguel Macias

NEW YORK - When friends ask me how I'm feeling 18 months after having a baby, I usually tell them that it has been wonderful.

Sometimes, though, if I'm feeling particularly confessional, I will smile coyly and say: "Well, this is not the life I wanted. But the life I had before was not the life I wanted, either."

I say it in a cheeky, half-joking way, hoping the gravity of the comment will go unnoticed. But it's not a joke.

Since my daughter, Olivia, was born, I have cycled through a huge range of emotions. I expect many of them would be familiar to any parent: joy, exhaustion, deep love, confusion, wonder, exasperation, happiness, sadness.

But there is another, quieter, emotion that comes up every now and then. It's a feeling that's so difficult to talk about, so universally taboo, that I feel nervous expressing it even to the people closest to me: regret.

Since I was a teenager, I knew I did not want to have kids. I did not budge for decades, and I had quite the battery of reasons for feeling this way, from the emotional to the practical.

The biggest one being that there were simply too many things I wanted to accomplish in life, and a baby would surely get in the way.

When I was young, I dreamt of becoming a famous film-maker, travelling the world making documentaries. It hardly seemed like a good way to raise a kid. But I also just never had any interest in babies or kids.

Rather, I felt resolved, ironclad in my conviction that I would never be a father.

But things change. I settled down. And at 47, my life didn't look like the one I had once envisioned for myself. To be clear, I have a lot to be proud of. I do work that I care about as a radio producer and reporter, and I've been fairly successful.