The parents who regret having children

NO ONE REGRETS HAVING A CHILD, OR SO IT'S SAID. I'VE heard this often, usually after I'm asked if I have children, then, when I say I don't, if I plan to. I tend to evade the question, as I find that the truth-I have no plans to be a parent is likely to invite swift dissent. I'll be told that I'll change my mind, that I'm wrong, and that while I'll regret not having a child, people don't regret the obverse. Close family, acquaintances, and total strangers have said this for years; I let it slide, knowing that at the very least, the last part is a fiction.

- R.O. KWON

It is, unsurprisingly, a challenge to get solid data on this issue, but a 2023 study estimated that up to 5% to 14% of parents in so-called developed countries, including the U.S., regret their decision to have children. This aligns with what I've found in my personal life: while most parents don't regret having kids, some do.

Perhaps in part because I've written publicly about not having children, I've had people, especially mothers, confide in me about parental regret, and frequently enough I've lost count. Some of these parents talk about feeling utterly alone, like villains past all imagining. Several decline to be candid with their own therapists.

Meanwhile, I'm so often told I'll be a parent that though I'm sure I won't, I still prod at this ghost self, trying on its shape, asking what I'd do if I felt obliged to adopt this spectral, alternate life as mine. For here's the next question people tend to broach if I indicate I don't plan on having kids: What does my husband think? I find this odd, a little prying-do people think I didn't discuss this with him, at length, long before we pledged to share a life?-but the question also rings the alarm bell of one of my great fears. If I respond that he feels exactly as I do, here's the usual follow-up: But what if he changes his mind?

I have friends who long for kids, and I know the need to be potent, inarguable, as primal as my desire to go without. I've seen parent friends' faces open with love as they watch their small children sing to living-room karaoke, the adults radiating joy as laughing tots carol and bop. Should my husband's mind change, I can picture the rift that would open wide. Either I'd deprive him of what he needs, or I'd give in, birthing a child I don't want. Or, and this prospect is painful enough that it hurts to type the words, our lives would diverge. No bridge of compromise will quite traverse the rift: as King Solomon knew, no half-children exist.