The Thought You've Never Said Out Loud: Parental Regret

You're not a bad person. You might just be profoundly unsupported.

There is a thought that lives in the back of many parents' minds — quiet, sharp, and wrapped in shame. It surfaces at 3am when you've been up for the fourth time. It flickers through during a meltdown you had no patience left to hold. It visits you in the shower, one of the only places you're alone.

What if I made a mistake in having kids?

If that thought has crossed your mind, you are not a monster. You are not a bad parent. And you are far from alone.

Parental regret is one of the most taboo experiences in our culture — and one of the most underacknowledged clinical realities in the therapy room. Parents carry this in silence, certain that something must be fundamentally wrong with them for feeling it. But what I've come to understand, both as a therapist and as a mother, is that much of what gets labeled regret is actually something else: exhaustion, isolation, and a system that was never designed to support you.

We Were Never Meant to Do This Alone

In her research for her bestselling book, Hunt, Gather, Parent, journalist Michaeleen Doucleff discovered something that stopped me in my tracks: across cultures around the world, the average number of adults caring for a single child is approximately six. Six. And in the contemporary American family, that number is closer to one or two — for one child, sometimes more.

We have taken one of the most physically and emotionally demanding roles a human being can take on, stripped it of its communal scaffolding, and handed it to two people — or sometimes one — while also expecting them to hold full-time careers, maintain a marriage, care for aging parents, show up for school events and sports games, run a household, and perform wellness.

This is not a personal failing. This is a structural crisis.

When I sit with a parent who says in desperation, I don't know if I was meant for this — I don't hear someone who regrets their child. I hear someone who is sleep-deprived, chronically under-resourced, and holding a weight that was never meant to be carried by so few hands.

What Gets Buried in the Process

Modern parenting in a capitalist society asks parents — and mothers in particular — to continuously shrink. The things that made you you before children: your creative life, your spontaneity, your solitude, your ambitions, your friendships, your body as your own — so much of it goes underground. Not because you chose to abandon it, but because the math simply doesn't work out.

And when that much of yourself disappears, it makes sense that part of you would rage against the thing that seems to have taken it.

That grief is real. That anger is valid. It doesn't mean you don't love your child. It means you are a full human being who is losing pieces of yourself and hasn't had space to mourn that.

The Many Faces of "I Regret This"

Parental regret doesn't always look the same. Sometimes it shows up as:

• A persistent fantasy about the life you might have had

• Resentment toward your partner, who seems less diminished by parenthood

• Numbness or disconnection from your child that frightens you

• Rage that comes out of nowhere and leaves you flooded with shame afterward

• A deep, lonely grief — especially if you spent years wanting this, and now feel confused that it doesn't feel the way you imagined

That last one is particularly painful. If you dreamed of being a parent, planned for it, longed for it — and now find yourself thinking I don't want this — the dissonance can feel unbearable. Like you've betrayed yourself twice: once by having children, and once by not being grateful enough.

But feelings don't follow a logical script. And the fact that you wanted this doesn't make the hardness of it any less real.

You May Have Never Said This Out Loud

Maybe this thought has lived only inside you. Maybe you told your partner once, and it didn't go well — anger, defensiveness, a door closing on something tender that needed more room. Maybe you're terrified that saying it out loud will make it more real, or that someone will use it against you, or that you will be seen as the parent you fear you are.

The shame of parental regret is thick. And shame, as researcher Brené Brown has written, needs secrecy and silence to survive. It cannot live in the light of honest, compassionate witness.

That is exactly what therapy is for: “Shame dies when stories are told.” (Brown).

What Therapy Can Hold

The therapy room is one of the few places where you can say the unspeakable — not to be fixed, but to finally be heard. In our work together, this might look like:

Naming what has never been spoken. There is something profoundly relieving about saying the thing out loud for the first time in a space where it won't be weaponized, minimized, or met with alarm.

Unpacking what's underneath. Regret is rarely just regret. Underneath it, there is often grief, rage, loneliness, loss of identity, unmet needs, and sometimes the echoes of how you yourself were parented.

Exploring your inner process somatically. Where does this feeling live in your body? What does it need? Somatic approaches help us access what words alone can't reach.

Developing self-compassion. Self-criticism traps us in fight-flight-or-freeze. Self-compassion is not only a mental-emotional practice, but it also physically releases feel-good hormones and endorphins that allow our brains to function from a more integrated state.

Grieving. The life you didn't take. The version of yourself that went quiet. The gap between the parent you imagined being and the parent you are on your hardest days.

Learning to actually thrive. Not just survive. We work on deep processing and also on practical skills and tools, so that you can find grounded meaning and fulfillment in your new reality.

A Final Word

If you are carrying this: you are not broken, and you are not alone. The thought that lives in the back of your mind is not evidence of a terrible truth about you. It may be evidence that you have been doing something impossibly hard with impossibly little support — and your nervous system is maxed out.

You deserve a place to tell the whole story. That place exists. And it starts with a conversation.

Eve Arbel is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT #121154) specializing in perinatal mental health, matrescence, and the identity shifts of life's most transformative seasons. She works with individuals, couples, and families virtually across California. If this resonates, learn more, reach out, or schedule a free consultation.

This is your epic hero’s journey. You were built for this moment. And if you don’t feel that way now, I’m here to help you you climb the mountain.