When Someone Regrets Being a Parent

Duncan Jones recently issued a couple of controversial tweets: [This entry is bumped up from January 2019.]

I have 2 kids. 2 1/2 years and 9 months old respectively. I’ll tell you something I never see anyone admit... they are exhausting, frustrating and life-destabilizing. They are rarely fun. Sure, smiles are great, hugs are lovely, but it’s HARD and not obviously a good choice in life.

This is where people feel compelled to say “i wouldn’t change it for the world!” But you know... Of course I’d reconsider! It’s exhausting! Its banal! It’s like looking after a dog you can’t housetrain. What it is, is that it is. and they are mine. Hopefully they turn out ok.

Columnist Matt Walsh, conservative Catholic hubby and dad that he is, lit into Jones and those who responded in solidarity.

What's most concerning is the reaction these tweets provoked. In the 24 hours or so immediately after they were published, a sizable portion of the responses were entirely supportive and sympathetic. A bunch of parents decided to join the fray and register public complaints about their own children. Until saner voices joined the discussion, the thread was a long litany of unseemly parental bellyaching. And not just vague "parenting can be tough" type complaints, but much more specific and personal "my life is miserable and my kids are awful" type complaints.

Those are their experiences. Yes, they shouldn't say these things if they are using their true identity and thus their kids can find out about it. In some cases, it won't matter because the kids are already too far gone, but in most cases, sure. But let's be honest. Walsh isn't just upset that their kids might see this. People like Walsh don't want people speaking the truth about parenthood: that for some people, it brings misery. Some people aren't suited to it.

Let's not deflect from the fact that many people regret having children. Many of them aren't being great parents as a result. Let's encourage people to think very carefully about becoming parents, instead  of saying "Oh, it will all work out! You'll love it! Don't worry, just do it!"

Women who do this are told they're ignoring their motherly instincts. Men are told they're just immature.

As a parent of three kids — two five-year-olds and one two-year-old — I will offer the standard disclaimer that, yes, sure, parenting is a challenge.

He means it's really, really tough, but he wants people to have kids.

You don't get a ton of sleep, especially in the beginning.

You'll be an exhausted zombie. But he wants people to have kids.

And there's a lot of crying and a lot of noise and someone is always asking for a snack.

Constant crying and whining and yelling and noise and needs for food and drinks. But he wants people to have kids.

Things are generally expensive and exhausting and anxiety-inducing.

Extremely and constantly expensive. Extremely exhausting, frustrated, and anxious. But he wants people to have kids!

Nobody thinks, and nobody would claim, that parenting is some kind of non-stop amusement park thrill ride.

It's actually like one of those seasonal horror mazes at one of the big-time theme parks, only with real horrors.

It is, sometimes, much more like the line to get on the thrill ride.

You're captive and standing and not getting anywhere quickly enough. But everyone should have kids!

But "rarely fun"? Like "looking after a dog"? "Not obviously a good choice"? If you see parenting in those terms, it's because there's something wrong with you. That's a character defect, not a defect of parenting per se. The defect is easy enough to identify: selfishness. Also, immaturity.

Walsh is asserting that there can't possibly be other explanations for you having these experiences and feelings.

If you rarely have fun with your kids, it's probably because you haven't yet learned how to find joy in things that don't revolve completely around yourself.

Or maybe some adults don't like doing things that certain kids like doing?

Once you develop the ability to look beyond yourself just a bit, and push your own needs and desires just slightly towards the back burner for at least a few moments, it becomes extremely easy to have fun with kids.

If I didn't know better, I'd say Walsh is being sarcastic here. "Just slightly" is a severe understatement. When you become a parent, unless you're neglectful, your whole life changes. Everything is about the children either directly or indirectly. And that's no doubt what Walsh would tell someone who was neglecting their children.

Especially small kids, who are hilarious, creative, and energetic.

They certainly can be. They can also wreak havoc, and not in a good way.

In my experience, kids are the most difficult when you try to relegate them to the background so you can do something else with your time.

You know, like tend to your other responsibilities, like, oh, paying bills. You are damned if you do, damned if you don't. You're ignoring your kids! You're turning them into narcissistic snowflakes! Some people don't want to spend their life trying to walk the tightrope. Some people who really didn't think things through (because people didn't tell them the whole truth) find themselves on that tightrope and complain about it. And then they get trashed. Oh, and Walsh hasn't yet had much experience.

Of course, sometimes it is necessary to do other things, like sleep, or work, or have an adult conversation, or spend some time with your spouse, or watch a movie that isn't about talking animals or princesses. That's when they can feel especially frustrating and burdensome.

But everyone should have kids!

But if you find that your children are always frustrating, always a burden, "rarely fun," and generally "life-destabilizing," that's probably because you are trying to keep them in the background and out of your way far too often.

Well at least he used the word "probably", which allows for other possibilities. Children don't have to be always frustrating to significantly frustrating. They don't have to be always a burden to be an overall burden.

If you find no joy at all in parenting, it's almost certainly because you have made no effort to actually focus on your kids and invest yourself in them.

"Almost". You know, someone can find joy in being stranded, severely injured, on a deserted island. It doesn't mean that the overall experience is joyful.

You are trying to live as if they don't exist.

Does anybody really do that? No, not any parent with custody. Rather they are simply trying to keep at least some parts of their life going that aren't all about tending to children and paying bills incurred because of them.

Children will absolutely "de-stabilize" that sort of lifestyle, and rightfully so.

Children change everything. Everything. Not just the life of people you want to dismiss as immature, shallow, or selfish.

I'm not saying that we should be completely focused on our children all the time. They do need to learn that the world doesn't revolve around them. But it doesn't revolve around us, either.

Who does Walsh's world revolve around? He'd probably say Christ. But if we're honest, even the most devout Christian is living in a world where their walk with Christ is what is at the center of their world.

Sometimes (frequently, even) we need to break free from our self-centered bubble and go play hide and seek, or build a spaceship out of a refrigerator box, or give piggy back rides, or whatever other kid-oriented thing.

That's all fine and good, but we can do things without children AND he's leaving out things like... having to take your child to the emergency room because of something they did to themselves and then dealing with the subsequent paperwork, bills, and investigation by social workers. Or having to drive hours per day for a week or two to visit your grade school child in a secured Psych hospital. Or having to go to speak with people at school because your child attacked another kid even though you've tried to teach them not to do such things, and then having to deal with a lawsuit.

The main thing is just to be with them, in the room, in the moment.

Nope, not good enough, as countless statements from Wash and others have said. My goodness, if there is a screen in the room it will destroy your child!!! No, if you have one of those kids who won't entertain themselves with the "right" things, you have to constantly do it.

If we aren't willing to make that sacrifice — which isn't a very great sacrifice, in the grand scheme — parenting will be nothing but miserable for us.

Walsh is in denial or being very specific for himself, here. Maybe his pre-parenting lifestyle was already very similar to a parent's. But for most people, it is an enormous sacrifice of time, money, energy, freedom, and overall lifestyle, and you could still end up raising a serial killer.

The dirty secret is that just about every parent regrets being parent at some moments, no matter how fleeting. For some, though, it isn't fleeting. For some, it's a rational, reasonable, logical, lasting regret.

Some children literally torture and murder their parents. Or they rape, torture, and murder other people, including kids.

Do you really think it is unreasonable or evil for someone to regret having a child when that grown child is coming after them with a knife and stabbing them to death? Or when their child has just been proven to have brutally murdered a family?

But what about "normal" parenting challenges, you might be asking. Surely someone is a bad person for expressing regret for having to deal with those things?

If you're sincerely happy you had every child you had, well, that's great. But to insist something must be wrong with someone who didn't have the same experience is to deny the diversity of the human experience. People are diverse and so are children. Some children are perfectly pliable and docile and will make excellent cubicle dwellers some day. Other children are sociopaths.

For most of history, people had children because they were the natural result of sex. They kept healthy children because they could soon put those children to work on the family farm, or in the family shop/store, or the factory, or the mines. This isn't how life is anymore. If a parent is lucky and diligent, they might get children to perform certain chores around the house. Other than that, they're a money, time, and energy-suck. You might enjoy yours, but these things are true.

If Walsh regrets having children, we know he'd never say so publicly. If we all stuck to Walsh's insistence, very few people would have realistic warnings about the downsides of parenting. The solution is that people speak up anonymously or under a pen name, or if their child or children are so far gone (prison lifers, for example), that it doesn't matter if they are hurt by the statements.

One of the things that irk people like Walsh about regretful parents is that they go against "the narrative." These people want everyone to buy into the idea that if they get married and become parents, they'll be so happy with it and transformed into productive religious conservatives, the men "tamed" to be manly, responsible, dutiful hubbies. It is possible Walsh's problem with publicly expressed parental regret is he knows he can't say what's really on his mind, which is "Look, to be a good Roman Catholic who is not a priest or nun, you gotta get married and you gotta have kids unless you're infertile, and not use contraception. That's the way I have to live so by golly, everyone else should."

Some people don't like, and aren't suited to, dealing with a baby who screams all night, a toddler-safe residence, potty training, helping someone do their homework, getting the germs they bring back home, kids going through puberty, snotty teenagers, having someone totally dependent on them, or being forever tied to another adult (the other parent).

This is why we shouldn't pressure them to have children, or say stupid things like "You'll rise to the occasion." Maybe they will "rise" to being a good parent. Maybe they won't. And maybe they'll talk about, or express, their regret in a way their children can see.