Do people actually regret not having children? Possibly not [View all]

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Do people actually regret not having children? Possibly not
Arwa Mahdawi

New research suggests people who are childfree by choice are pretty happy with their decisions, while some parents are not
Sat 22 Apr 2023 09.00 EDT


(Guardian UK) You’ll regret it if you don’t

You’ll be lonely. Nobody will look after you when you get old. You’ll miss out on life’s greatest joy. You won’t ever be truly fulfilled. Your life will be meaningless and shallow. Everyone will pity you. If you choose not to have children then you’ll end up regretting it forever.

Pretty much every woman who has ever been on the fence about having kids has heard variations of the above. Either from other people or from a little voice inside their own head. There is, to state the bleeding obvious, an intense societal pressure for women to become mothers.

But do people actually regret not having children? New research suggests they don’t. Last summer researchers from Michigan State University found that one in five adults in the state, or about 1.7 million people, didn’t want to have children. This was followed up with another study, published earlier this month, which looked more deeply at people who are childfree by choice. Turns out they’re all pretty happy with their decisions. “[W]e found no evidence that older child-free adults experience any more life regret than older parents,” Jennifer Watling Neal, the co-author of the study, said in a statement. “In fact, older parents were slightly more likely to want to change something about their life.”

This isn’t the first study to suggest that it’s the people who have kids who might be the ones who end up regretting their life choices. YouGov data from 2021 found that one in 12 British parents (8%) say they currently regret having kids. Younger parents aged 25 to 34 (one imagines the most sleep-deprived group) were the most likely to feel regretful, while those aged 55+ were the least regretful. Similarly, a 2013 Gallup survey found that around 7% of American parents older than 45 wouldn’t have any kids if they “had to do it over again”. And parents seem remarkably unhappy in Germany: a 2016 YouGov study found 19% of German mothers and 20% of fathers say that if they could decide again, they would not want to have any more children. ..............(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/22/adult-happiness-kids-children-childfree