I was wondering about the same thing. It seems like a story that fills a page in a newspaper because it has a sensationalist undertone.
For a couple of decades now, I’ve seen articles about “non-traditional families.”
While I was in a waiting room at a doctor’s office some years back, I write an article that highlighted a handful of different families. There was the traditional family with two or three kids (I think they had three). Then there was a family that was more like the Brady bunch. They brought in kids from previous relationships and marriages and had decided to have one new baby on their own. There was one couple who claimed they loved each other, but were no longer in love with each other. They wanted to be there for their kids, though, so they mutually agreed to have an open relationship. They slept in seperate rooms and dated other people. Their intention was that when their youngest turned 18, they’d get a divorce. Then there was a couple who willfully decided not to have children and their article was about defending their choice to be childless. Then there was an article about a homosexual couple with adopted children. The purpose of the article seemed to be about “educating” people on the concept that “the family” exists beyond the traditional form and to legitimize these alternative choices.
My guess is that this article is along this line. Culturally, there is still a tendency to view married couples who willfully remain childless as selfish. Many people insist that once you have your own child, you’ll feel differently. My guess is that this article was to refute that claim. Thus by highlighting the idea that a woman can regret being a parent, it defends the notion that some couples may indeed have good reasons not to become parents.
I had a coworker who had kids and was very open about the fact that she regretted having children. The reality was, her kids were out of control teenagers. They were getting into legal trouble, cussed at her and ultimately did not respect her at all. From my conversations with her, she seemed to believe that getting angry and yelling at them was a form of discipline. She also seemed to be a bit of a helecopter parent. I think she was stressed out because she saw it as her job to fix their mistakes and bail them out of any trouble they got into. Thus she resented them because they didn’t appreciate all she did for them. She advised every woman in the facility to never get pregnant. She would go on about how desperately she wanted to be a mother before she had children and how terrible the reality of parenthood was. She openingly admitted that the reason she worked was to get away from her children.
I think a few things go into not enjoying parenting. First, there is having a bad attitude about it. A bad attitude can ruin anything you’re pursuing. If you’re engaging in negative self talk while doing an action, you won’t find the joy that might exist within that action. In a Christian sense, this can be about striving to do everything in love rather than merely going through the motions of it. The second thing can be in failing to take care of yourself. If you view life as being about finding fulfillment as exclusively satisfying wants and needs, when it comes to caring for your children, you may see your goal as satisfying their wants and needs exclusively. Basically you view yourself as a consumer and you view them as a consumer. If you’re busy spending all your time helping them to consume, then you have no time to consume yourself. As such, the children’s needs are perceived as an obsticle toward your own needs. If you can see that fulfillment is not merely just about consumming things to make you feel fulfilled, than it can be easier to recognize that in taking time out for yourself can also be good for your children. Not giving your kids everything they want is a good thing, and showing them that you’re not their servant is also another good lesson. Till you understand that life doesn’t revolve around your wants and need, you won’t understand that life also doesn’t revolve around your children.
Unforunately, we live in a world that teaches us that having children is like having a pet. You have one because you want one. Its a part of consuming. But whether she wanted a child or not in the beginning isn’t an issue because wanting a child does not guarentee that you will enjoy being a parent.
She should have received mental healthcare for the sake of those kids.
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