Confessing to Reading “I Hate Being a Mom” Confessions
At least ten of you have sent me the link to the I Hate Being a Mom – Secret Confessions site by now, and I’ve been avoiding it. Sort of in the same way I’ve been avoiding seeing the Exorcist. Because although I know these horror stories probably wouldn’t happen to me, they’d still scare me to death.
I was right.
If you have the emotional fortitude to read through these stories and be unaffected, then by all means, clear your calendar for an evening and settle down with some sweatpants and a bag of Pirate’s Booty, and really dig in. If you don’t have the time or the Seasonal Affect Disorder lamp required to do so, here are some of the comments I pulled out that really resonated with me for one reason or another:
- I am the mother of a beautiful, funny, intelligent 4 1/2 yr old, and I can’t STAND being around her for more than 5 minutes!
- I find myself tuning them out some days and resenting them for taking away who I was.
- I love my kids but I am exhausted and everyday is like Groundhog’s Day over and over again.
- In the morning I find myself counting the hours to nap time then after nap time I am counting the hours to bedtime!
- I can’t eat, sleep, shower, even go to the bathroom whenever I want, it’s when my baby allows me to, and hey, when you’ve lived your entire life doing the basic things in life whenever you wanted it shocks you, annoys you just a little bit.
- I have absolutely no maternal instincts whatsoever, and even when the kids are hurt I find myself going through the motions without actually caring about them much.
- On the drive to school, she bangs and bangs the top as she asks nonsensical questions. I keep thinking, “Almost there. Two more miles. Just get there.”
- I cannot stand when people cling to me. I feel like I am suffocating.
- I don’t really love my job, I’m just so happy to get out of the house and away from my child and he can be someone else’s problem until 5:00 rolls around.
- I used to look forward to the weekends…now I look forward to Monday.
- I cannot make myself volunteer for one more bake sale, eat lunch at the school, go to Mcdonalds or play outside when I hate being outdoors.
- No one ever told me that the minute she was born, who I was would die.
- I have never been able to identify with this type of behavior (even as a child myself) and expect my daughter to act and REACT as an adult would.
- It’s been so long since I got to indulge a hobby that I don’t really know what I like to do.
I didn’t make it through all 2,000-plus comments on the site. But I read through enough of them to be completely transported back to my babysitting days, with some of these sentiments echoing my own so eerily (particularly those about suffocating and drowning), they made me shudder. I can distinctly remember doing an elaborate dance routine in the shower before every babysitting job in the desperate hopes I would fall and smash my ankle to smithereens and be unable to fulfill my duties. The idea that I would break the shower glass and have to be found naked by my family members à la Meg Ryan in When a Man Loves a Woman never occurred to me, so great was my desperation to avoid babysitting. I don’t, by any means, have an explosive personality, but I’d spend hours in other people’s houses feeling like I was going to scream or break expensive pottery or lose my mind or sprint out the front door and never come back. Though I would never in a million years shake a baby, I could wholeheartedly understand how it happened. In short, I felt exactly like these women on the site. The day I turned 15 and could legally take a job at Burger King was the happiest day of my life. And that’s saying something – those navy pants were terribly unflattering.
I’ve since been told roughly 4,000 times that “it’s different when they’re your own.” And I’m sure that’s true for many people. My mom is one of them. She loves (and always has loved) being a mom of three, but can’t stand to be in the presence of other people’s kids. We’ve ungracefully exited nearly every dining establishment in the greater Indianapolis area at some point or another when kids were found to be within a 100 foot radius of our table. She and many others assure me that these feelings would never apply to my own kids if I had them. But isn’t this site direct proof that for some people, those feelings DO apply? These are just the ones who happened to have stumbled onto the site by Googling something like “I don’t like being a mom” – who knows how many others are out there, feeling the same way, but without even the time to Google, or feeling too guilty to actually type the words!
It’s in our nature to try and classify these women in some way, find some common denominator that can be blamed for their stark unhappiness. But read through just a few pages and you’ll find yourself unable to put your finger on it. Many seem to be quite young, with several kids before 30, but there are others who waited until their mid or late thirties. Quite a few are either divorced or have remarkably unhelpful husbands, but some have great relationships with the dad – or at least had one before the baby. Some are stay-at-home moms who miss the rewards of 8-5 office work, but others are the primary breadwinner or at least have jobs they love. A few have serious financial constraints, while there are others for whom money is no object. Some pregnancies were unintentional (the result of birth control failure or being strong-armed by a partner or family), but others had always dreamed of being a mother and were downright shocked to find how miserable it made them.
So what’s the common denominator here? The predictor of parenthood happiness? Because it seems like you can have a fabulous partner, all the money in the world, a rewarding career, a true desire to have a child, and you might still hate being a mom! Maybe it’s this “mommy gene” that’s been making headlines lately – maybe that’s the one true predictive measure. But until that becomes something we can screen for, how are Fence-Sitters ever going to feel good about taking the leap when we can see how terrifically unhappy it might make us, even with all our ducks in a row? I suppose this is where someone says something like, “There are no guarantees in life.” But these are the same sorts of people who also say, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” If you’re truly happy with your life right now, should you really risk trading it in? Maybe you’d be even happier…but maybe you’d find yourself with carpal tunnel from typing all your manifestos on the Confessions site. Is it worth the gamble?
76 Responses to Confessing to Reading “I Hate Being a Mom” Confessions
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I don’t doubt that all the authors of these confessions felt the truth of their comments when they wrote them. And probably many are quite unhappy. And if a parent can’t describe a crappy day recently then they are lying or have a dissociative disorder. But I’m just going out on a limb here, to say that the common denominator for these parents is simply that they had access to internet and a few minutes of keyboard time to record their thoughts at a particular moment when they felt like the world needed to care about them. I think to try and find a more clever link, or to connect their stated unhappiness at that moment to PMS, depression, isolation, lack of support, hatred of bake sales, or whatever is futile (as you say, it’s in our nature to classify them but I agree, it’s not possible).
Sounds like you really just have a different way of reacting to kids than say, the Duggars, and that’s ok! I have to say this is one part of the internet-era that chaps my hide – so 2000 people confess something on a webpage (in this specific context we don’t know who they are, how many are repeat ranters, what percentage of parents they represent, what the true numbers of happy and unhappy parents are) and it permeates our consciousness as truth. Thank you internet, for contributing to the decline of our analytical skills. There are actually a few nice, empirical, peer-reviewed studies that do actually get at happiness and unhappiness.
I get a bit chappy about that as well with regards to the internet. But I’m not sure I agree that these confessions are simply the result of internet time being available. Many of them echo a very DEEP unhappiness where they describe feeling like they’re suffocating or drowning or serving an 18 year jail sentence. I’m sure you’re correct that the moment they wrote it was probably a product of needing someone (even unknown, online someones) to care about what they’re going through, but I think it speaks to a much deeper, pervasive unhappiness than just a momentary need to vent. At least, most of them anyways – I’m generalize of course.
Yeah, they are pretty awful, although many sound really whiny to me. So your kid asks a million questions in the car? Tell them to stop talking. You got pregnant by a loser drunk? Give the kid up for adoption to someone who wants a baby. That entry you had in your blog about the guy who sat down with the clueless parents whose kids were annoying everyone in the bagel shop? Can you imagine that mom, sitting down at her computer and writing, “I resent my kids because I can’t take them anywhere.” You would tell her to shut the F up and discipline her kids, right? Those people who are feeling sorry for themselves do a disservice to the other people who are really in despair.
I think that when we humans feel backed into a corner, it is often easiest to blame things we have the least control over. It’s easier than blaming things we actually have control over because then we would have to change them. And change is hard. So rather than get a divorce, quit a job, sell a house, stay off the internet, start a masters program, quit a masters program, etc., it’s easier to just channel negative energy to things we can’t change – and kids are the most permanent of responsibilities. Deflect negative energy onto your kids for a couple years and of course they will become suffocating.
I do see what you’re saying, but I still think there are many mothers who are in great situations (good husband, job, money, etc.) with great kids…but they can’t stand being around them because they weren’t cut out to be mothers. And that surprises the heck out of them. And it’s obviously not how they want to feel, it just IS how they feel. I do agree with you that we have a lot of control over how we choose to feel about most things in our lives, but we also have a great deal of power to change those sorts of things (get a divorce, change jobs, etc.) – having to be around your kids is something that you just can’t change, unless you give them up for adoption at an older age. Which would bring about a whole new wrath from society and level of guilt and self-loathing, I can only assume. The ones I feel most sorry for are the ones who really wanted kids and prepared well for them, but are now shocked to find that they don’t like motherhood. That’s got to be a very difficult conclusion to arrive at.
Thanks for humoring my discourse. I find the topic fascinating and could go on forever.
Of course – that’s what this blog is all about!
Swap “job” (or be more detailed – “Executive job at blue chip company”) for “kids” and various co-workers etc for the people named in these, you’d see and hear the same stories, the exact same underlying despair even from people who worked hard throughout college to get that job, on other sites about work and in people’s blogs and private email.
Does this mean nobody should work? Work is evil, etc? Even if you think you’d like a job, once you’re in it it will grind the life out of you? You personally will never be able to be happy in a job? Of course not!
I’m not trying to tell you what to think, just remember confirmation bias and all those little cognitive tricks our minds play to defend status quo and avoid having to face alternative viewpoints.
Hmmm… I am afraid that what you\’re doing here is belittling their experience. Sure, it would be nice to think that these women just happened upon the site on a day they needed to vent, but to do so ignores that these women are talking about feeling this way all the time. Can\’t stand to be around their perfect child. Who they were *died* when the child came along. Count the hours \’til naptime and \’til bedtime.
Those aren\’t the words of someone who has had a bad day – they\’re the plaintive cries of a person who made a terrible choice, and is now dealing with the awful repercussions.
Thankfully you feel different. I hate every moment of it
and I hate myself even more for hating being a parent… I thought my feelings would change but in the past 15 months nothing has changed I often wonder why the people who enjoy parenting do.
My life was perfect before and it is slowly crumbling before my eyes – my baby was a totally planned baby. I definitely knew it would be a life-change but nothing prepared me for the life-sentence I feel I have been given.
My baby has failure to thrive even though we feed him 1000 calories per day and he was breastfed every 1 hour as a newborn, he constantly cries and I mean constantly, every Dr we have been to says they can see it is not normal but we should wait and see (wait and see what), I have alienated myself from my family and friends because I am so sick of the judgement when it comes to my babies weight, I am morbidly unhappy. This coming from someone who had an amazing life and wanted to share that amazing life with a child… I often fantasize about running away and I wish very often that he was not born.
I’m so sorry to hear that, Anon.
I hope you’re able to find a more supportive group of friends as you’re going through this (maybe by connecting to others who are going through the same thing)? Or at the very least, an empathetic counselor who can help you work through it.I hope things turn around soon…
Oh man…this site is a rabbit hole of despair, isn\’t it? I checked it out awhile back and pretty much all of my greatest fears about having children were confirmed…and I can picture myself having these SPECIFIC reactions to my own kids…which is kind of eerie! For me, I feel pretty strongly (despite everyone telling me that I would make a great mom) that I would be one of these women. Partially because I think my mother was one of these women. Also, I have step-kids and seeing how I feel around them at times (nothing nearly as bad as listed above, but I\’m only around them part of the time and they are dependent on their own parents…not me!), has solidified how little I might enjoy being a mom. For me, I\’d rather play it safe and not regret having children. It\’s not worth the gamble. For me.
I can see how it would be worth it to other people. People claim children are some of the greatest joys in life! They must be, or would people keep having more of them?
I agree – it was the specificity of the reactions that resonated so clearly with me. I just had an overwhelming sense that would be me, exactly. But truly, you just never really know until the kids are there, as evidenced by some of the women who were previously so excited to be a mom. Which is definitely the scariest part of all.
I’ve often assumed that people who talk about how rewarding parenting is are just trying to get more people to do it, so that it continues to be what the majority do. After all, “if *everyone* makes the same mistake, it’s not a mistake anymore, right?!?!?!” – you’ll have to imagine the hysteria I’m trying to impart, there.
We are wired to want babies, most of us, and then our brain chemistry changes to make us believe that it was a good thing we did so that we’ll do it again, because anyone in their right mind would stop with just the one, and we’d not have the population we do today…
\”I can distinctly remember doing an elaborate dance routine in the shower before every babysitting job in the desperate hopes I would fall and smash my ankle to smithereens and be unable to fulfill my duties.\”
That sounds pretty well decided to me
Yes, having your own would probably be different – but even if you enjoyed their company a lot more than that of the kids you babysat, it\’s balanced out by the fact that they\’re yours, 24/7, for the next 18+ years. And of course, there\’s the added stress/expense that would lower your natural coping abilities.
Then again, what do I know.?
I lean pretty heavily on the side of \”no kids\”, but I could probably still be swayed if I met a man who really, really wanted them AND who would be a good enough dad that the work wouldn\’t all fall on me. Even then, it might take the promise of a nanny to make me feel secure in the idea that I wouldn\’t be giving up everything that makes me \”me\”. I look at people like Betty White who are ancient and very happy with their decisions to stay child-free and it reminds me that you can have an extremely fulfilling and happy life by staying true to yourself and having time to pursue your interests.
Ooh, Betty White is a great person to add to my Childfree Celebrity Spotlight series! I’ll add her to the list – thanks. Well, even though my babysitting woes make it sound as though I’m decided…I’m still not. That’s the insane thing. I can think of a thousand “signs” like that of why I shouldn’t have kids, but there are probably just as many for why I should. I just need one giant, trump-all sign to come and smack me in the face.
Dear Maybe-Lady,
I\’ll be home at 5:30.
-The Trump-All Sign
Don’t forget Helen Mirren and Cameron Diaz, also fierce and decidedly unapologetically child-free women. Thank God for these women who aren’t afraid to speak out and show us you can have an amazing life, with or without kids in it. It really is a viable choice people!
I know, Cameron Diaz’s comments on this subject always crack me up!
Don’t forget that poster child for selfishness, Mother Teresa. She chose not to have children, the hateful party animal.
No one ever told me that the minute she was born, who I was would die.
That sentence sent such a shiver down my spine.
It’s Huggies or Gerber or something that has the commercial tagline “Having a baby changes everything.” I’m sure they mean it in a warm, fuzzy way. However, when I hear it, I hear something more akin to that mother’s confession.
Haha – I bet the ad execs who came up with that campaign never in a million years thought that tagline would be associated with the I Hate Being a Mom site!
The mom that wrote that was likely suffering from clinical post-partum depression. I feel, cough cough, qualified to speak on the matter. It’s no joke. People abuse their kids or stuff their babies in trash cans if it’s really bad. And as with many aspects of depression and other mood conditions, it’s probably not wise nor respectful to extrapolate out of context internet statements to our own experiences. And FWIW, I think that Huggies (?) ad you’re talking about is so dumb. Probably doing as much to fuel the regret problem as anything. Maybe instead there should be some PSA’s with the eggs in the frying pan like the drug commercials from the 80′s and the mean lady from The Goonies saying, “this is you life after having kids… Grrr…”
I imagine loads of anxiety and depression heaped especially on mothers who are stuck at home with no help from husband, family, or hired help. I’ve known plenty of women who have been in a really tough place with no outlet and no respite. Even in the foster system, which does not have tons of resources at its disposal, there are mechanisms built in for foster parents to be able to get away for a couple nights, because sometimes YOU JUST HAVE TO.
I have so much compassion for people who are stuck between the daunting responsibility of being the best parent they can, and of having no one to really offer support.
Having said that, embarking on raising a child as a team can be a particularly powerful experience, I think. Like climbing Mount Everest with your best friend, or being stuck in an elevator for a day with them (I’m not actually sure which would be harder), these kinds of moments often help people find meaning, help them tap into things that are sometimes harder to find in less pressure-cooked situations. If you get knocked up and you’ve got a deadbeat significant other, then damn, that’s hard to be positive about.
But I’m someone who has always thought it was way cool to work with my wife to create meaningful things, whether starting a small business, or writing a book, or building a house. Having a kid is like those kinds of things…there’s no guarantee everything will work out in the end, but if you go into it with the right intentions, and with realistic expectations, and powerful commitment to each other, it frequently makes me feel like we now have something that is our very special, intimate, heartbreaking and joyful secret, that no one will quite understand except my wife who is doing it with me. I can imagine looking back with her and saying, “we raised a child” with the same sort of feeling as saying “we constructed the Sistine Chapel.” We did it ourselves. We lifted each other up. We learned to sacrifice for and support each other. And the whole time, we were creating a work of art.
‘Course, other times I just want to slam my head really hard between the doorjamb and the door. Right now Addison isn’t sleeping well, and my how I miss sleeping as a child-free person.
Your finding-meaning-while-stuck-in-an-elevator comment makes complete sense to me – I’ve always felt that some of my best memories are ones that came from totally-less-than ideal circumstances. Like freezing your butt off camping. Or getting stuck in a bad thunderstorm looking for your car at Disneyland. It’s strange how that happens, and it’s definitely something I want to write about here in the context of raising kids, so thank you for reminding me.
Of course, it’s entirely possible to get those kinds of team-experiences WITHOUT having kids. Also, the difference between, say, starting a business that you’re not sure will succeed and having a kid if you’re not 1000% sure you want one is that in the first example, you’re only hurting yourself. In the latter case, you’re also risking ruining your kid’s life. I’d much rather regret not having kids than regret having them.
Too true. Can you imagine doing Everest WITH kids? I shudder in terror.
I think the existence of an “I hate being a mom” website is just abhorrent. That someone would actually seek something out and write things so scathing about their own flesh and blood just makes my skin crawl. And it’s not even anything that bad that all these people are complaining about. Nobody on here is saying that they’re tired of dealing with their kid who has downs syndrome or is deaf or has to be taken to the hospital for some condition that can never be cured. Are there days when I hate my 5 and 6 year old asking what they have to eat for the 1,000th time? Yes. Are there days when I hate that it’s raining? Yes. Get over it. You have kids, you may need to get on the floor and play with them for a couple years until they grow up and want nothing to do with you anyway so it’s time to stop feeling sorry for yourself, understand that the world doesn’t revolve around you, that your kids also may not want your narcissistic, whiny, self-centered, poor excuse for a parent either but they have no choice and just get off the internet and move on with your life. There’s worse things in life than looking back and saying that you put some of your own wants and needs aside to raise a person who is caring, contributes to society and that you’re proud to be best friends with not because you’re their parent and they have to be but because they WANT to be.
Wow, you know I’ve touched a nerve when the family starts commenting!! While I see your point Andra, I do think many of these moms ARE sucking it up and doing the best they can. Just because they take a few minutes to share their experience with others doesn’t mean they’re not doing the best job they can as a parent the rest of the time. And honestly, them sharing their experience is helpful to Fence-sitters who almost never get to hear the other side of the coin with regards to parenting – because these women would never be able to say these things out loud to their friends and family. So up until now, Fence-sitters have only heard that all the hard work is absolutely always worth it. But it seems that for some, it clearly is not. And I wouldn’t have really known that without a site like this.
These women are at the end of their rope and they need a place to turn where they can be anonymous and get these feelings off their chests. The idea of the site may be abhorrent to you, but it\’s probably the only relief these women get for their feelings. It\’s clear that, overall, you like being a mom. You feel it\’s worthwhile. These moms don\’t feel that way. They probably want to, but they don\’t. It\’s not really fair to invalidate their feelings because you don\’t have the same ones. Hating the rain is several orders of magnitude less significant than hating being a parent.
These websites were extremely valuable to me to confirm that it, in fact, isn\’t always \”different when they\’re your own. I don\’t want kids and haven\’t for a while, but there was always that pesky \”different when they\’re your own\” comment to contend with. Well, clearly it\’s not always different and I\’m nearly certain it wouldn\’t be for me.
When you go online and write on a public internet site that you despise the very existence of your own child then I’ve got free reign to invalidate their feelings. A person need only go as far as the grocery store checkout line to bitch about how annoying their kids are (speaking from experience) so I still stand by my comments. If one really feels that awful about being a parent then maybe it’s time to visit the “what’s wrong with me that I want to abandon my own child website” for some help instead of the one that makes it okay to voice their disgust with their child.
We can agree to disagree.
I think what some of us are asking is:
Consider the possibility that there really IS nothing wrong with someone who feels disgusted by her kid.
What if, in fact, this is actually a not uncommon, normal feeling?
I was thinking the same, and wondering just how many mothers throughout the ages have had these exact thoughts without the ability to voice them? How many of our own mothers felt this way and didn\’t feel they could express it? I bet it\’s a more common feeling than we realize, hating motherhood, and it\’s only with tools like the internet that these mothers are finally able to voice their true feelings. And what\’s wrong with that? Nobody\’s perfect. We all have struggles. This website is not one you would come across unless you\’re specifically looking for it, and still a lot of the comments are anonymous. These mothers are clearly ashamed of feeling this way. I wish we, as a society, could talk about this MORE without it being so taboo, because I think it might help both mothers who are struggling with their feelings, as well as younger generations (in general, but especially fence sitters) make the best decisions for them.
I have read that site back to front (compelling, nail biting, car crash sort of reading…) and these Moms don’t despise their kids…in fact they love them deeply…there in lies the anxiety and frustration.
They just sometimes HATE THE JOB. A Mom who hated their kid wouldn’t grind themselves into a hysterical hormonal mess looking after them every second…the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s apathy. If these Mom’s despised their kids, they wouldn’t look after them at all. They are frazzled, tired and sad…and feel a little duped by a society that collectively went: “You must do this! It’s the bestest thing ever!”
I love my husband, adore him actually.
Do I love picking up dirty socks and underwear and cleaning up a gross house after him? Ah…not so much. Magnify that by a zillion and that I can only imagine is what some of these parents feel. Love the person, hate the job.
My heart goes out to these frustrated, sad Moms…what they need is support…and I feel nothing but gratitude to them for breaking the silence about the fallacy of motherhood being the greatest thing ever. It might be for some…but for people like me who are on the “meh” side of the fence…it is an eye-watering honest account about how some women really feel. I too feel like “oh sweet cheezus…there but for the grace of god, go I. That so WOULD HAVE BEEN ME IF I HADN’T READ THINGS LIKE THAT.” I might have succumbed to the guilt and pressure too instead of following my gut.
How about a little love for the sisterhood instead of the high and mighty judging?
I just love that \”it\’s different with your own\” bingo. Yes, it is different–when they\’re your own, you can\’t get away from them!
Another site I\’d recommend where you can easily lose several hours (years) of your life is Truu Confessions. They have a mom section, but also a wife section, office section, etc.
I decided long ago to be childfree, and reading stuff like this (and knowing it\’s not uncommon, regardless of what parents will admit to your face) makes me even more certain that I made the right choice. While I agree with Marie that, for example, if your kids are talking too much you can just tell them to stop, that\’s kind of the point…who wants to be dealing with that all the time? It would make me miserable. The mental and emotional energy I would have to spend telling them to stop talking (in addition to every other annoying or dangerous thing I\’d have to stop them from doing) is energy I\’d rather spend elsewhere. I think this is where a lot of parental unhappiness stems from–not realizing just how all-encompassing parenthood will be, not just in terms of changing diapers or driving to soccer practice, but emotionally and mentally, 24/7. There\’s just so much energy I have to go around each day, yanno? I would resent anyone who regularly gobbled up significant amounts of my already limited reserves.
Also, I\’m not sure if this has been mentioned on here before, but for anyone on the fence about having kids (or really, just anyone interested in the subject), I highly recommend the book \”I\’m OK, You\’re a Brat.\” It\’s extremely readable, written by a woman with grown children about all the cultural myths surrounding parenthood and why they\’re all bullshit (she devotes the longest chapter in the book to skewering various bingos. It\’s a good read.)
Hmm, it seems the formatting of my post got a little screwy, with back-slashes taking the place of quotation marks and apostrophes. Apologies, all.
Sorry, WordPress quirk that’s being corrected with the next update!
The funny thing is that you assume the kids WOULD stop talking so much if you asked them to! They may not – you just never know what kind of temperament your kids would have until they’re here – and that’s the REALLY scary part for me.
Well, yes, I just assumed it went without saying that the request may not actually work! I was contrarian enough as a child (and now, as an adult) that with my luck, my kids would take after me and never listen. My mother used to say, whenever I acted out, that she hoped I had a child just like me. Even at age 10, I recognized it for the threat that it was. I’m also scared by the possibility of having a kid with a personality/values/etc. completely opposite to mine. I’m always amazed by how much people seem to assume that their kids will be just like them (and get super-offended when that turns out not to be the case), as if everything is determined solely by genetics. I remember a quote from that book I mentioned in my first post, something to the effect of “some people were born to be parents, but not to the children they got.” This was definitely true for my parents, and I don’t care to play russian roulette to find out if it would also be true for me.
Russian roulette is the perfect way to describe having no idea what you’re going to wind up with in terms of kids!
I don’t understand the impulse to write a long paragraph telling other people to quit whining about their lives. Someone unloads her feelings about her life on a website, and that’s cause for anger? That requires someone else telling her to shut up? Telling other people to shut up on the internet just strikes me as weird behavior.
Anyhow, I think there are good questions about how representative this confessions site really is. It’s one site on one corner of the internet.
What I think IS very notable, however, is how MUCH traffic the “I Hate Being a Mom” confession gets compared to all the other kinds of confessions. It is far more popular than all the other confession threads. It’s going strong at 2000-something. The next “hottest” confession thread is probably about 100 entries. The Secret Confessions site has all sorts of new confessions all the time, but none of them has anywhere near the staying power of the “hate being a mom” thread, which may get as much attention as all the others combined. Maybe moms who hate being moms are pretty rare, but if the whole website is any indication, there are 10 times more moms who hate motherhood than there are married people having affairs.
The thing that kind of sucks is that we’ll really never know how representative the site is. Because we’ll never be able to take a poll of all parents and have people truthfully admit when they hate being parents or regret having kids. Maybe some would come clean, but I feel like the majority would feel too guilty even responding to a poll with that information.
“It’s different when it’s your own.”
The fine print: But, if it’s not different when it’s your own, then there must be something wrong with you. You must not be doing it right. It must be PPD or some sort of pathology. Perfect circular argument: you’ll feel differently when it’s your own, and if you don’t you should.
I think that’s one of the big reasons why so many of the Moms on that site feel SO depressed/alone – they assume the problem lies totally within them and is something they should be able to fix.
This is precisely why in the middle of the Baby Boom and the \”Leave it to Beaver\” era, the number of alcholic moms skyrocketed. The valium prescriptions for housewives went through the roof, and Betty Friedan wrote about \”The Problem that Has No Name.\” I don\’t get why this sense of SAHM despair is so surprising to people. We\’ve seen this all before in America…. The sexual revolution didn\’t just magically make every woman happy to be a mom.
I know, everyone seems to have conveniently forgotten that in the Era of SuperMommy.
I totally agree, Scott. Some people seem to think that it’s against the rules to dislike parenthood, and to dislike it strongly to the point where you need to vent anonymously on a website. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to suggest that disliking “the most difficult job on earth” is against the rules and means something is wrong with you. It actually would seem pretty expected. Which is why it amazes me how casually so many people treat the decision to become parents. I, personally, never want to turn to a website to talk about how desperate and depressed I am about a choice I made. That’s why I won’t be having kids.
I’m with Louis CK on this one: “Any job you can do in your pajamas is not the hardest job in the world.”
I suppose the name of my blog is the spoiler alert for on what side of the fence I fall. Lucky for me I never had any maternal instincts so my boxing match was like Muhammad Ali in his prime (booze & freedom) vs an actual baby.
Glad we were introduced on Twitter! (I thought I had followed you but it said I hadn\’t, so I corrected that…)
Good luck!
I would’ve thought I was following you too and was surprised I wasn’t! Glad we’ve connected – your site is hilarious!!
Regarding the \’it\’s different when they\’re your own\’comment, I always respond: \’But I don\’t want it to be!\’ I was in teaching for a year – that\’s how long I
lasted – and I saw those kinds of parents who were somehow immune to the noise and chaos their kids created. They would smile at them beatifically and then if the teacher even hinted at their child\’s bad behaviour, the lips would tighten and the eyes narrow. Who wants to be that mother or father, unable to see how annoying that kind of behaviour really is? I want to be annoyed by it! I would be worried if I wasn\’t. I disagree with Marie also – it\’s clearly not just a case of 2000 women venting for five minutes. There are hundreds of sites where mothers and fathers have posted about this, explaining how every minute of their day is ruined by the knowledge that they can never get away from their roles as parents. See also \’Childfree and Loving it!\’ by Nicki DeFargo – the chapter \’Honest Parents\’ features testimony from parents whose kids are adults, reflecting on how it was 18 years of hell for them before the kids left home: and their kids weren\’t even badly behaved, these parents just did not want to be parents.
Haha – that’s an excellent point that you wouldn’t want to be immune to how others might be perceiving your kids! I really never thought of it from that angle. And yes, I agree there are much more than the 2,000 on the Confessions site. There are many more who haven’t heard of the site, don’t have time to type anything out, or feel too guilty even admitting it anonymously.
First and foremost what is Pirate’s Booty?
Second, my mom told me the same thing that yours did. She totally hates kids that aren’t me or my 2 brothers. I’m hoping it’s true that it’s different “when they’re yours” cause I’m right there with her. Kids running around grocery stores and diners get my glares and my hopes that they trip (but not hurt themselves! I’m not heartless) and run back to their parents while leaving me in peace.
Ps- Let’s hope that she one day likes the kid that I’ve promised to my boyfriend!
It makes me sad that you don’t know what Pirate’s Booty is! It’s the most amazing melt-in-your-mouth cheesy-popcorn type thing. Kind of difficult to describe. You simply must try it!!
This topic, what happens to parents (mostly moms) who fall into this despair/depression/malaise/loneliness/whatever after they have children is actually a serious issue and it’s sort of a shame I think to see it devolve into a conversation over whether it’s acceptable or not to vent horrible thoughts about your children anonymously on the internet. But the point of a blog is never to publish empirical, peer-reviewed analysis in the first place. When blogging crosses paths with very serious topics, the mismatch is obvious.
What is the real problem here? It does help to have been a parent to really understand this. Families need lots of support. Being a family is hard. The real problem here (don’t shoot your arrows at me all at once) is that there is very little support available to families in our country, yet our expectations of families are quite high. And that incongruity is a back-breaker.
We have no national paid maternity leave yet we know that very young infants require more care to thrive than a daycare center can provide. Our culture treats depression as a weakness and PPD is no different, contributing to moms’ sense of despair. We think it’s a good idea for women to stay in the workplace yet we have a traditional school calender that is totally out of sync with most parents’ work schedules. In fact schools are set-up to serve families with either a non-working parent or one with a super-flexible job, or one that can afford a nanny who drives. In many families, two incomes are required not for ski vacations and fancy cars, but simply to afford special treats like a fun birthday outing or new clothes instead of hand-me-downs or, you know, to pay the mortgage or rent. We often live apart from the support structure that our extended families can provide so parents operate without vital mentors/role models/relief caregivers. Even the term “stay at home mom” contributes to the problem as it communicates this idea that a non-working mom’s job is to stay home – very isolating. And as Gen-X’s and Y’s, we are generally used to having what we want, when we want it. And if that doesn’t work out, if having a kid is different that our vision, however well-intentioned, we are kind of pissed.
Are there people who should have thought more about whether children were right for them? Sure. Are there people who had children for the wrong reasons – maybe to get attention or they wanted to please their parents or because they too needed to experience the wonders of stroller shopping? Of course and those people will always exist along with their unfortunate baby-hangovers. But they should not be lumped in with those who genuinely wanted children and are being let down by our “fend for yourself” society. If I had known about this Confessions site when i had my kid I probably would have been on it too. I actually told my husband I wanted to give her up and I thought about leaving her to cry for hours so I could watch TV. That is a bit abnormal, wouldn’t you say? Through a lot of effort I figured out what was going on and righted my ship. But not everyone is able to. I feel the pain of those women. If we had proper support for families, I suspect that a great many of those women would have just the little extra they needed to tip their scales back to hopefulness and satisfaction with themselves and their kids.
To answer MaybeLady’s original question, “What is the predictor of parenthood happiness?” I would say if your goal in having children is to fill up a hole in your life, or your life kind of sucks and you think a cute baby might be the solution, then I would predict a negative outcome. If you see having children as a way of enriching your already satisfying life, a life that you would like to share with more than just yourself or your spouse, then I would predict a positive outcome.
I definitely agree that the corporate structure in America is failing families and wish it were different – both for parents, and for the Childfree who simply want more time to pursue more of the “life” part of work/life balance. And I’m sure more attention should be being paid to PPD – many of the women on the site are truly, deeply unhappy in a way that can’t easily be fixed, but some of them may simply be suffering from PPD, which is (a little) easier to tackle. But I’m not quite sure about the end of your comment – that those who think having a child can enrich their already-positive life can expect a positive outcome. Because many women on the site had great lives and had babies for all the right reasons and still ended up miserable. And I have a wonderful life and would be having a baby for (I think) mostly the right reasons if I chose to have one, but I still have a sneaking suspicion that I would feel exactly like the women on the site. Maybe I would, and maybe I wouldn’t, but I don’t think it’s as black and white as just going into it with the best intentions. Unfortunately.
Agreed! I\’m very happy to have Marie\’s point of view represented on this website. For those of us considering parenthood, it helps to hear from someone in the pro-baby column who admits that it\’s hard, but is making it through. But not everyone that dislikes motherhood is suffering from PPD. Some financially comfortable people with tons of support from spouses, families and even nannies just don\’t like being a parent. Unfortunately, it\’s impossible for any of us to know beforehand if we\’ll end up in that group, no matter how well-prepared we think we are.
I\’m reading Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert. I\’m hoping for a little insight into the baby decision, but beyond that, for insight on life in general. I\’m not very far into it, but the gist is that we, as human beings, are terrible at predicting what will actually make us happy. Like those well-prepared, baby-wanting mothers, sometimes we get it wrong. I\’ll let you guys know how it goes!
Please do, Stacey! I keep hearing about that book, I’ll have to check it out.
\”I would say if your goal in having children is to fill up a hole in your life, or your life kind of sucks and you think a cute baby might be the solution, then I would predict a negative outcome.\”
Hell yes to this whole last paragraph.
Just because we are commenting on a blog doesn\’t mean we don\’t take this seriously and you do not have to be a parent to understand this. When my friend was going through something similar, she said I was her only friend who understood: I\’m also the only non-mother friend she has. The other mothers judged her horribly. I\’m glad trumomconfessions exists because it seems it\’s the only way the truth will out: we live in such a pronatalist society, you simply aren\’t allowed to discuss these things openly. I\’m an academic and I can\’t imagine asking for research money on this topic and getting a positive response (not that it\’s my field). People would be aghast. Regarding the \’support\’ that you suggest for mothers, we have most of these things in the UK; very generous paid maternity leave for one. We have centres that parents can drop into at any time and leave their kids for a bit of free time of their own, all paid for by childfree tax payers as well as parents. However, studies show that parents in the UK are more disillusioned than ever. The sense of entitlement just keeps going up among parents in this country. We need to be able to say publicly that parenting is not always what it\’s cracked up to be – but until we can say these things, we\’ll have to rely on data from confessions sites.
Wow, that’s interesting that even with those added bonuses in the UK, you still have serious issues there. No easy solution, I suppose.
I said it \”helps\” to be a parent, not that one \”has\” to be a parent. Sheesh!
* so sorry, I had to proofread this and repost…*
Thank you SO much for writing about these confession sites. I am so grateful for the Internet and the existence of social media, because of sites like these—they allow voices and sides of the story to be heard, that we would never hear otherwise.
I read similar confessions in Scary Mommy (http://www.scarymommy.com/confessions/). It was really depressing, but I could just not stop scrolling down these desperate women’s words. Seriously… what did people do with these feelings before the Internet? Tell their priest? Suck it up? Tell their husbands? It is because of their honest perspective that *we,* the undecided, can really get the full picture, and confirm our beliefs that parenting is not for everybody.
I must admit I was also surprised by Andra Gibbons’ comment above, about the “abhorrent” nature of these sites. I think these confessionals have the potential of saving lives (and children). Saying that such thoughts should be concealed, to me, is the equivalent of silencing suicidal individuals’ cries for help. Please read about the way Scary Mommy blogger, Jill Smokler, handled some desperate notes she noticed in the threads of her confessionals–some moms confessed not being able to feed their children, on top of other difficult life circumstances (abusive spouses, children with a disability, long-term unemployment). Jill decided to act, and she asked fellow imperfect mommies/blog followers to donate and support those who had confessed being in financial distress. Thanksgiving dinners have been provided, and her foundation continues to support these women, only able to utter the unpronounceable “i hate being a mom… i have failed at being a mom…” in online forums. And yet, they face the never ending judgement online as well. How dare they.
Yes, scary confessionals help us, the potential childfree-to-be, to validate and confirm our worst fears. However, these confessionals also point to the multiple factors and circumstances that shape the parenting experience. They demistify the “children are a blessing” narrative we are bombarded with.
Wow, I hadn’t been on Scary Mommy, but that’s incredible that she was able to actually help those women. Maybe that’s the missing piece from the other confessionals site – it’s just a dumping ground for misery, with no links to resources on how they can help pull themselves out of it (at least somewhat)!
Yeah, it surprises me not at all that the US has not cornered the market on parental unhappiness. I\’m sure all the things in Marie\’s post would make many parents\’ lives much easier and more bearable, but that\’s not the same thing as making them happy with parenthood. In order to be actually *happy* being a parent (as opposed to just tolerating it and making it through the day), you have to be unequivocally willing to make certain sacrifices that, most of the time, are just painful to make, regardless of how much help you\’re getting from the government or family. State-funded daycare centers may make it less stressful for me to have kids and a career at the same time, but it won\’t help me get some damn time to myself once those kids come home at the end of the day. Family members helping out? I think I\’d rather raise a dozen kids on my own than live in the same city as my parents again.
There was never a \”golden age\” or \”golden country\” where parenting was easy and didn\’t involve a large amount of putting your own life on hold. Kids are needy, in every way. They always have been, even when it was socially acceptable to shoo them outside for the whole weekend or when family lived nearby and could help out (assuming they wanted to help out–why is it always assumed that the grandparents, aunts/uncles will be interested in it or good at it?)
I think the reason women especially are feeling a crunch now (if indeed this is something new, which I don\’t think it is) it\’s because unlike 100 years ago, we have more options available to us now other than just getting married and popping out kids. When you\’re used to having a satisfying job, a social life, an equal relationship with your partner, disposable income, independence, etc. I\’d imagine adding a completely dependent little creature into the mix would be quite a shock to the system. Our grandmothers\’ generation may not have felt the need to Have It All, but that\’s because that was not an option to them in the first place. If (big \”if\”) they were, on the whole, more satisfied with motherhood than women today are, it probably has a lot to do with the fact that they didn\’t have much else going on–parenting didn\’t have to measure up in awesomeness to all the other options women had, because there weren\’t any. As Daniel Gilbert said in his study of how having kids tends to make people unhappy, if you only have one source of happiness in your life (i.e. your kids), it\’s bound to be the biggest one.
Haha – I love your thoughts on living in the same city as your parents! I’m sure that’s an enormous contributor to the rise of the Childfree population – we’re much more scattered from our primary families than we were in prior years. I’d be much more inclined to have kids if I knew I had grandparents that I could easily (and guilt-free) drop the kids with every now and then. But I just don’t. And moving back to Indiana to do so…well, let’s just say I echo your thoughts on the subject.
Thank you for your comment. After skimming over all of the confessions and comments. What you wrote actually helped me understand why I feel the way I do. I have an independent mentality and it is constantly clashing with raising my 2-year-old. Like many of these mothers I feel like she took away who I was. I resent the nature of society who decided men could just leave their children behind and continue to live their lives exactly how they choose while women like me are permanently lost.
You stated that it ‘does help’ to be a parent to ‘really understand this’, suggesting that a non-parent can never ‘really’ comprehend this situation – that our understanding must be limited or shallow. I disagree: I have a marvellous imagination and more empathy than most of the mothers I meet!
Alex, I agree wholeheartedly: the reason that parenthood seems so hard these days is not because it’s changed so radically but because women and men now are leaving it longer and when they have children they have to leave a lot of things behind. In the UK this week the papers have been full of columns about a new study on alarming new drinking levels among parents – middle class parents with fewer money worries than many of us, who simply cannot cope with being parents and so down a bottle or two of wine every night. Some of the confessions that have come through in letters to the newspapers have been full of complaints from parents: I have to get home, make brownies for the bake sale, sew the hem on my son’s trousers, take my daughter to piano … part of me just wanted to say so what? This is what you signed up for! It’s what my parents did every night and they never drank! But then I remember that these parents had a full and meaningful life before children whereas my parents’ generation pretty much got started on babies immediately because ‘that was what you did’ (my mother’s words).
Hopefully they’re drinking AFTER they’re done baking, sewing and driving their kids around. Making brownies while drunk never turns out well for anyone.
Have you read Prometheus Unbound? “What the thinker thinks, the prover proves”?
Because if you want to find proof of anything, especially with the internet, you WILL find it – and if you want to balance your experience, why not find a forum where mums talk about their sick kids, and how much they love them and want them to be back to their noisy rambunctious selves, or a site where women talk about being infertile and desperate for kids (especially the ones who already have a child and want more) and see how they feel as well?
That might read as a bit interrogative, I’m just saying try assuming yourself into a different place and go looking for proof, it’s out there for that as well – kids are wonderful, kids are death to the soul, kids are worth spending tens of thousands in IVF to give a little brother or sister to the existing one… try all those because they’re all as heartfelt and sincere.
Also, question how you feel about (for example) this reply, and anyone else’s replies on here – do you prefer replies that validate and approve choosing to be childfree – or do posts that make any comments favouring motherhood (and backing that up in some way that you can relate to) make you feel better?
That’s a great question, but unfortunately, the answer to it seems to swing from one side to the other, depending on where my baby-or-not pendulum is at the moment!
35 year old here-about a year a half into marriage-Married a wonderful man who would make an Amazin father. I got to see him around a baby this weekend while we went on a trip with a couple with a two year old. Magic hands is what everyone was calling him this weekend because the kid would just melt in his rocking hands. Cute. I’m doing my research though. I’m reading the Maybe Baby books and its looking like Im about 95% Sure were NOT going to bring another life into this crazy world. He’s fine without kids. His brother and mine have already put some little people on this ice berg meting over populated earth so some form of our DNA is out there!
ha ha. I’m a teacher – a specialist that sees over 350 children a week and Holy Good God – there are lots of problems children are faced with today. To me being child free looks and feels like a warm hot beach with pink or white sand and clear blue water with soft crashing waves. To have child looks like jumping out of a plane – without a parachute. You need a whole lot of support around you to safely land.
Well good for you! If you do remain Childfree, you’ll have even more energy to devote to the kids you work with, and will no doubt leave an important footprint on this earth. And your hubby will remain everyone’s favorite uncle since he can give them his undivided attention!
I have been plagued with the having a baby not having a baby syndrome since I turned about 27 – I’m now 37 and no closer to deciding if its something I want. One thing I have learned over the last ten years is that getting married or having a partner and having/adopting a kid is creating a family – and hardly any of us stop to consider if we are cut out to create a family – if we even liked our own family – if we would be happy being in a family for the rest of our lives.
I always find that startling. Its a major life decision – but social pressure being what it is makes us think its a ‘next natural step’ on the path of adulthood.
Whatever. I say there is more than one way to live and so we should consider our options carefully.
The fact is not everyone is cut out to be a parent and that’s absolutely OK. Its the way we have been conditioned to think that having kids is an expectation – rather than a choice or privilege – and that something is ‘wrong’ with you as a woman if you don’t want them. Kids are great, but kids are also annoying as hell. I’m a middle school teacher and I work with the darlings. They are the best part of my job, and the hardest part, too. We don’t need to make them into little angels – or demonize them – but I think we should be starkly honest about the fact that it takes an enormous amount of patience to deal with children and most of us, being human, are not so full of patience that we couldn’t stand to have a little more.
I guess I just think the social-pressure women are under to get married and reproduce is shameful. Men have it, too, but its not nearly as extreme. My friends actually have wondered aloud in front of me ‘What’s wrong with her?” because I’m not married with a child. Or they have accused me of being ‘stuck’ in party girl mode (uh, Im a teacher. I work all weekend and don’t have a social life!) Its really insulting. All my other achievements dont seem to matter as much or be as fulfilling as this socially acceptable role of wife and mother would be.
So anyway – that gripe aside. I sympathize with the women who genuinely suffer after giving birth and find they cant get into the role of motherhood. I dont think they are alone. I think its more common than we like to admit to ourselves. Because think about it, if a lot of us stopped creating families our whole social structure would probably change in a pretty drastic way – and then what? So women’s voices are silenced again for fear of social collapse. Ugh.
I always love hearing from fence-sitters like you who work with children for a living. I think we all assume that means you’d naturally want to have a kid, or at least KNOW whether you want to have a kid, but there are many instances where that’s not the case. It just goes to show how truly complex this decision is.