The Question I Only Asked Myself at 3 a.m.
The kitchen was a disaster zone. Sticker flakes from a princess activity book covered the table like confetti, the dog was eating a crust of toast off the floor, and my six-year-old was crying because the purple cup was dirty, even though we have a perfectly clean blue cup right here. My three-year-old was hanging off my leg, demanding something I couldn’t understand because she had a fruit pouch in her mouth.
It was 6:15 in the evening. I hadn’t sat down since I got home from work. And a thought slid into my head, quiet and matter-of-fact: I wish I didn’t have kids.
Let me pause right there, because if you’ve ever had that thought, your stomach probably just dropped. Mine does too. We don’t say that out loud. We say “I’m tired” or “I need a break” or “Motherhood is hard.” We don’t say the actual thing, because the actual thing sounds like a confession of criminal activity. It sounds like you’ve somehow failed the biology of being a parent.
But I think it’s time we talked about it, not because it’s a shameful secret, but because it’s a surprisingly common, transient experience. And the way we handle it, both internally and with our kids, matters a lot more than the thought itself.
That evening, I didn’t do a big emotional release. I didn’t cry in the bathroom, which is apparently the official parental stress relief station. I just disengaged. I picked up the purple cup from the sink, dried it off, and handed it to my daughter. I stopped trying to reason with my son about why the stickers should go on paper and not the furniture. I let the dog have the crust.
Then I sat on the floor. Not to be one of those “gentle parenting” influencers who do a downward dog and serene deep breathes. I sat because my legs hurt, and I was tired of the effort of everything.
My daughter stopped crying and looked at me. “Why are you sitting, Mama?”
“Because I need a minute,” I said. That was it. I said it out loud, to her. Not a whiny “I need a minute” or an angry one. Just a fact.
She went back to her stickers. My son sat next to me, his head against my arm. For a few minutes, nobody needed anything.
The Difference Between Regret and Overload
In that quiet, I remembered something a grief counselor told a friend of mine once. “Feeling isn’t believing,” she said. “Regret isn’t a decision. It’s a symptom.”
That, I think, is the key to understanding the “I regret having children” feeling. Very rarely is it an actual assessment of your life’s trajectory. It is usually a red flag that your resources are depleted. It’s the emotional equivalent of a low battery warning. You don’t throw away your phone because the battery is blinking red; you plug it in.
But when we internalize the feeling of regret, we treat it as a fact. “I regret having kids,” we think, “therefore I’m a bad parent.” Then we feel guilty about the thought, which creates anxiety, which depletes our battery even faster. It’s a vicious cycle, and the poor kids are stuck watching us spin out emotionally.
Here’s what I’ve come to believe: Real regret about having children—the kind that persists for months, that isn’t situational, that’s accompanied by a loss of connection—is real. It’s a mental health issue, and it deserves compassion and, sometimes, professional help. But the fleeting regret, the one that hits you at 6:15 p.m. amidst the sticker debris, is just data. It’s a message about your current capacity, not your core identity.
What Actually Helped
Since that night, I’ve gotten slightly better at catching these feelings before they completely hijack me. It isn’t about toxic positivity or pretending I love every second. It’s about giving myself a literal, physical move when the thought comes. Because I can’t stop the thought, but I can change my location.
1. The Bathroom Break (But With a Plan)
We’ve heard this one a million times, but we do it wrong. We say “I need to go to the bathroom” and then stand there feeling guilty and stressed while the kids bang on the door. The trick I found is turning it into a mundane errand, not a dramatic escape. I literally go, wash my hands, look at my face in the mirror, and think: Are we safe? Are the basic needs met? Is anyone bleeding? If the answer is no, then the crisis is not real. It’s just overwhelming. That takes me from a screaming nervous system to a functional operating system. It’s stupid, but it works.
2. Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud (Using the “I” Language)
When I’m about to snap because the kids are being chaotic, I used to say, “You kids are driving me crazy.” That’s an attack. Instead, I started doing what the school counselor told me to do with the kids. I started narrating my reality without blaming them.
“Mommy’s brain is feeling really full and noisy right now. I’m going to be quiet for a minute so I can think.”
Saying that out loud neutralizes the lie. If I’m in the habit of being honest about my transient state (“I’m feeling grumpy,” “I need a break”), then the “regret” thought loses its power. It just becomes another feeling: I am feeling overwhelmed right now. And because I’m feeling it, not becoming it, I can let it go.
3. The “This Is Temporary” Anchor
On really hard days, I look at my kids’ sneakers. Not them. The sneakers. They are scuffed and untied and they smell vaguely of cheese. And I think to myself: These shoes are a size 10. In two years, they will be a size 12. I will never have to tie these specific shoes again. That sounds bizarre, but it works. It’s specific. It reminds me that the phase, the exhaustion, the neediness—it all physically ends. Children are a moving target; they outgrow their struggles just as they outgrow their shoes.
The Quiet After the Clutter
That evening in the kitchen, after a few minutes of sitting on the floor, I stood up. I didn’t feel a wave of gratitude. I didn’t look at my kids with sparkles in my eyes and think “This is all worth it!”—that’s a Hallmark card, not real life. I just felt slightly less annoyed.
I put the stickers on the table for them to keep using. I put the dog in the other room. We ate a low-effort dinner of pasta with butter and broccoli, and nobody complained, which felt like winning the lottery.
Later, as I put my daughter to bed, she hugged me and said, “Mommy, your heart is beating fast.”
It was. Maybe from the stress of the evening, maybe from the two root beers I had, maybe because I was still wrestling with the ghost of my own dark thought.
“Yep,” I said. “It’s just tired.”
Do I regret having children? I honestly don’t know if that question has a single answer. Some days I think I wouldn’t do it again if given the choice, purely because I’m selfish with my time and energy. Other days, they do something that reminds me of the sheer wonder of watching a human being form, and I feel like I’ve won a prize I didn’t know I entered.
I think the regret comes and goes, like the weather. What I’m learning is that I don’t have to pack a suitcase for it. I can just look out the window, let it pass, and wait for the sun to show up again—or at least for the kids to fall asleep. The purple cup remains washed. The stickers remain stuck to the furniture. And for now, that is the life I live. And that’s okay.
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