Am I monster for wishing I'd never had children? The confession that fills a mother with shame



The turkey was roasted to perfection, the wine was flowing and my family was gathered round the Christmas table last year catching up on the gossip in a happy spirit of celebration.



As I looked around at them, I should have felt a sense of pride that my husband of nearly 30 years and my two grown-up sons were together for a few convivial days.



Instead, I felt a stab of disappointment that this gathering was the sum total of what I have achieved in my life. One husband, two children, reasonable cooking skills. Not much to show for my 50 years.

Trying: Not all mothers bond with their children, some finding the years they devote to motherhood difficult

Which is why I know I would have had a better and fuller life — had I never been a mother.



Even expressing that thought fills me with shame, but I cannot change what I feel.



And I have decided to share my experience here (under a pseudonym) because I suspect there are many other women who harbour such feelings of regret about motherhood, but dare not talk about it.

My friends and I routinely share our most profound emotional secrets. But I have learned, over the years, that there is one place a woman will never ever go – an admission she will never make.



However difficult her experience of motherhood, however crushing the sacrifices she has made for her family, a woman will never say that she wishes she had not become a mother.



Sometimes they’ll bemoan their lot, often complaining about the day-to-day frustrations of raising a family.



But to admit that becoming a mother was a mistake? Not something I have ever heard a woman do.



Which leaves two possibilities: that no other mother shares my experience, or that some of them dare not admit the truth.



So let me say it for all those who will not or cannot: I regret having had children.



Does that make me a monster? A freak? Or just more honest than others in my position?



Before you rush to judge, let me explain a little more about my experience of motherhood.

Daunting: The author felt all spontaneity had left her life when her children were born

From the moment I had children, I felt I was in a slow drift away from myself.



It seemed as if any spontaneity in my life was gone, any future possibilities limited to the small world I had established for myself in a suburban home.



Most perturbing of all, these narrow horizons were exactly what I had once wanted. The only future I ever envisaged for myself was as a wife and mother.



I wasn’t especially good at anything at school, and I was never going to have a career nor did I have any ambitions to one.



In the small Northern town where I grew up, working-class girls like me who didn’t leave for bigger things got married and had families, which is what I did.



I was 21 and working as a teaching assistant when I met Mike at work. He worked as the school groundsman.

He was fun, very keen on me, and within two years we were married and had bought our first house.



We had a son, Tom, three years into our marriage, then a second son, Steve, three years later. I gave up work for five years to concentrate on the children.



A husband, a home, a family. All reasons to be happy. And yet I wasn’t.

I found the early years of motherhood dull and lonely, the middle years fraught and challenging, and the last few — when my boys were difficult teenagers — often miserable.



When I went back to work, I began the juggling act of job and family, always falling short on both scores, and feeling more out of touch with myself as the years passed.

I would complain, as most women do. Too much to do, too few hours in the day, kids playing up, husband not involved enough in family life, money tight.



But I was lucky to have had two healthy children and a strong marriage which, in most people’s eyes, put me in a privileged position. I should be happy, shouldn’t I?



Not well-received: We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

And yet... when I look back now, I can see that I found much of my two decades of motherhood a boring and isolating experience.



I know that many mothers reading this will contradict me, shrieking that motherhood is the most enriching experience available to women. All I can say is that for me, motherhood was, in large part, a gruelling, largely thankless slog in the dark.



(I was not surprised when a study earlier this year revealed that young, married couples who have not started a family have the happiest relationships — while couples with pre-school children were the unhappiest.)



For all its joys, parenting can stunt and sometimes kill our relationships with our partners, squashing them under the tonnage of sleeplessness, stress and the daily grind of raising a family.



It sucks us dry. It inhibits our growth as individuals, saps our strength and takes away our confidence in ourselves.



It also forces us into singing the praises of a role which, if we only dared to be honest about it, leaves many women feeling suffocated.

I am a member of a small book club, and suggested we read Lionel Shriver’s honest and unusual book We Need To Talk About Kevin, which tells the story of a mother’s inability to bond with her troubled son.



When we met a month later, not one of the ten women in the group had liked the book. In fact, they hated it. Too dark, too ‘unrealistic’, too shocking, they said.



‘What mother could ever feel like that about her child?’ one woman asked.



‘What does Lionel Shriver know about children?’ another argued.



I listened to their objections, not surprised by them, but felt disappointed that this fascinating book hadn’t sparked a more nuanced and honest debate about the nature of motherhood, rather than a censorious and aggressive defence of it.



Why are women so afraid to talk honestly about the negative side of being a mother? We talk freely enough about the parlous state of our marriages, so why can’t we do the same about having a family?



I am not suggesting I am typical, nor that every mother shares my disappointment with the path I chose. But I do think my feelings are far more common than most imagine, and that we would all be stronger for admitting that motherhood can be a very mixed bag.



' Will my sons be my comfort and support as I head towards old age? I cannot say'

Please don’t misunderstand me: I love my children. Even now that they have left home, their presence is felt every moment of my life, not least in my worries for them both — a parent’s lot.



My youngest son, Steve, 21, left home last year and is living with his girlfriend about 20 miles from us. He is happy in his relationship, has a good job in sales, and I have no doubt he will marry and start a family soon.



Tom, now 24, is travelling round the world. He loves life, and is a hard worker.



Will my sons be my comfort and support as I head towards old age? I cannot say.



These days, I hear very little from Tom: he phones and emails occasionally but we are not close.



Despite my private feelings, I think I have been a good mother. I have always tried to be fully engaged with the boys, to give them my all. I don’t think my secret resentment affected them, though of course I can’t be sure.



The way I saw it, I had committed to family life and so I had to work hard at it, which, together with Mike, I have done.



I don’t believe either of my boys or their father ever suspected how gruelling I found family life. Maybe if I’d had daughters, it would be different. Perhaps we would have been closer and shared more confidences.



But as it is, I must shoulder the burden of disappointment and regret alone, haunted by what my life might have been like if I hadn’t become a mother.



I’m not saying I would have changed the world, or even that I wanted a high-flying career. But I would have loved to have gone to college at some stage in my life, to have continued my education, to have worked somewhere or done something that made a difference to people’s lives.



Maybe I would have done some teaching for a charity in the developing world — I would have loved that.





'It is not a contradiction to be proud of the lovely children I have raised while still wishing I had used the 20 long years I devoted to them for something else'

I would like to have seen more of the world, to have read more, and spent less of what should have been the best years of my life feeling dizzy with tiredness.



I would have enjoyed an identity outside the home, a voice in the world, however small, a meaning to my life beyond being Mike’s wife, or the boys’ mother. In essence, I would like to have had more time to myself.



Of course, it would hurt my husband beyond measure to share these feelings with him. It would seem so disloyal — and taint our marriage with regret.



He would interpret what I was saying as some kind of particular disappointment with the way our sons have turned out, which is not the case.



I believe it is not a contradiction to be proud of the lovely children I have raised while still wishing I had used the 20 long years I devoted to them for something other than motherhood.



At 50, I am young enough to make up for lost time, I know, to make a fresh start now that the boys have flown the nest. I wish life were that simple.



I have worked as a teaching assistant all my life: the idea that I would retrain now to do something different is unrealistic, not least financially.



As for making other changes: I love Mike and I can’t envisage life without him after all these years together, and he is happy to live in the same house, in the same town, and for us to have the life we have always had together.



He recently retired on the grounds of ill health. I would never leave him; I made my choices, and I live with them.



But if I had my time again, I would do it differently. And I’d bet that a lot of mothers are feeling the same way, too.



I read a study recently which found that today 19 per cent of British women arrive at the menopause without having had children. Indeed, there is an entire generation who seem to have opted out of motherhood altogether.



Another study found that nearly half (43 per cent) of college-educated Generation X women — those between the ages of 33 and 46 — are childless.



Even if we allow for the likelihood that a large number of them would like to have children, but fate has thus far conspired against them, then that still leaves a large number of modern women who are electing not to become mothers.

