There’s a peculiar silence that surrounds certain aspects of parenthood. We celebrate baby showers with joy, share adorable photos on social media, and exchange stories about first words and first steps. But there’s a shadow side to parenting that rarely makes it into polite conversation—the profound identity shifts that can leave you feeling unmoored, and the complex, often guilt-ridden feelings of regret that some parents experience.
These aren’t comfortable topics. They don’t fit neatly into the cultural narrative that parenthood is an unambiguous blessing, a source of pure fulfillment and joy. Yet for many parents, the reality is far more nuanced. The journey of parenthood can be simultaneously rewarding and destabilizing, enriching and erosive of the self you once knew.
It’s time we had honest conversations about these experiences. Not to discourage anyone from becoming a parent, but to create space for the full spectrum of parental emotions—including the difficult ones that too often remain unspoken.
The Great Identity Shift: When “You” Becomes “Mom” or “Dad”
Before you became a parent, you were a complete person with a distinct identity. Perhaps you defined yourself through your career—a teacher, an engineer, an artist. Maybe your identity centered on your relationships—as a partner, daughter, friend. You likely had hobbies, passions, and routines that reflected your individual preferences and desires.
Then you had a child, and everything shifted.
The transformation happens gradually at first, then suddenly all at once. The sleepless nights of infancy give way to the constant demands of toddlerhood, which morph into the scheduling complexities of school-age children. Through it all, your identity as “parent” expands, often consuming space once occupied by other aspects of yourself.
For many parents, particularly mothers who still shoulder a disproportionate share of childcare responsibilities, the identity shift can feel like an erasure. You’re no longer introduced by your accomplishments or interests, but as “Jackson’s mom” or “Emma’s dad.” Conversations at social gatherings revolve around your children rather than your thoughts, work, or passions. Your schedule revolves entirely around school pickups, doctor appointments, and extracurricular activities.
This isn’t necessarily negative—being a parent can become a central, cherished part of your identity. But when it becomes the only part, when every other facet of who you are gets pushed aside or forgotten, many parents experience a profound sense of loss. You may look in the mirror and struggle to recognize the person staring back—not because of physical changes, but because the essential “you” seems to have disappeared.
The Layers of Loss
The identity shift in parenthood involves multiple layers of loss, some obvious and others more subtle:
Loss of autonomy. Your time is no longer entirely your own. Simple activities that once required no planning—going to the gym, meeting a friend for coffee, reading a book—now demand complex coordination and sometimes feel impossible.
Loss of spontaneity. The ability to make last-minute plans, to follow an impulse, to change direction on a whim—these freedoms often vanish when you have children dependent on routines and care.
Loss of professional identity. Whether you step back from work entirely, reduce your hours, or continue full-time while juggling childcare, your relationship with your career often shifts. Promotions may pass you by, ambitious projects may become impractical, and the mental space required for professional growth gets crowded out by the demands of parenting.
Loss of partnership dynamics. Your relationship with your partner transforms from a two-person dynamic to a complex family system. Romance and spontaneity get replaced by logistics and exhaustion. Many couples find themselves functioning more as co-managers of a household than as intimate partners.
Loss of hobbies and passions. The painting supplies gather dust, the guitar sits unplayed, the hiking boots remain in the closet. The activities that once fed your soul and defined your interests become casualties of time scarcity and perpetual fatigue.
These losses are real, and acknowledging them doesn’t make you ungrateful or a bad parent. It makes you honest about the significant trade-offs that parenthood demands.
Navigating the Identity Transition
While the identity shift is inevitable, complete erasure of your pre-parent self doesn’t have to be. Here are strategies for maintaining your sense of self while embracing your role as a parent:
Protect time for yourself. This isn’t selfish; it’s essential. Schedule regular periods—even if it’s just an hour a week initially—dedicated to activities that connect you with who you are beyond parenthood. Whether it’s exercising, pursuing a hobby, or simply sitting in quiet solitude, these moments of reconnection with yourself matter.
Maintain relationships with your pre-parent identity. Stay connected with friends who knew you before you had children, especially those who don’t have kids themselves. These relationships remind you that you’re more than your parental role and provide conversations that extend beyond child-rearing topics.
Continue professional or intellectual pursuits. If possible, maintain some connection to your work or areas of intellectual interest. This doesn’t necessarily mean climbing the corporate ladder at the same pace—it might mean taking on a freelance project, reading in your field, or attending occasional conferences. The point is to keep that part of your brain engaged and that aspect of your identity alive.
Introduce yourself beyond parenthood. When meeting new people, resist the urge to define yourself solely through your children. Share your interests, your work, or what you’re passionate about. Model for yourself and others that parenthood is one dimension of your identity, not its entirety.
Reflect regularly on your evolving identity. Take time to journal or simply think about who you’re becoming. Parenthood changes us—sometimes in beautiful ways—but staying conscious of those changes helps you guide the process rather than feeling swept along by it.
The Forbidden Feeling: Parental Regret
If acknowledging identity shifts feels uncomfortable, admitting to parental regret feels almost transgressive. Our culture surrounds parenthood with such reverence, such assumptions of automatic fulfillment, that expressing regret can feel like confessing to a moral failing.
Yet research suggests that parental regret is more common than we might think. A 2016 study in Israel found that some parents, when given anonymity, admitted they would choose not to have children if they could make the decision again. These weren’t people who didn’t love their children—they were simply being honest about whether parenthood aligned with their authentic desires and whether the trade-offs had been worth it.
Parental regret can stem from various sources:
The gap between expectation and reality. Many people enter parenthood with idealized visions fed by media, social pressure, and selective storytelling from other parents. When reality—with its exhaustion, tedium, and challenges—doesn’t match those expectations, disappointment and regret can follow.
Loss of self. For some, the identity erasure discussed earlier becomes so complete that they feel they’ve lost themselves entirely. The person they worked so hard to become seems to have vanished, replaced by someone whose entire existence revolves around another person’s needs.
Lack of fulfillment. Despite cultural promises that parenthood brings ultimate meaning and satisfaction, some people discover it doesn’t fulfill them the way they expected. They may enjoy aspects of parenting but find it doesn’t provide the deep sense of purpose or joy they were led to believe was automatic.
Incompatibility with temperament. Not everyone is suited to the demands of parenting. Some people find the constant noise, touch, and demands on attention overwhelming. The intensive nature of modern parenting, which often requires near-constant engagement, can be particularly draining for introverts or highly sensitive individuals.
Relationship strain. The stress of parenting can fracture partnerships, leaving some parents feeling that having children destroyed their most important adult relationship.
Recognition of missed opportunities. Some parents look at roads not taken—career paths abandoned, dreams deferred indefinitely, experiences foregone—and feel genuine grief and regret.
Understanding What Regret Does and Doesn’t Mean
It’s crucial to understand that experiencing regret about becoming a parent doesn’t mean:
- You don’t love your children
- You’re a bad parent
- You would harm or neglect your children
- You’re incapable of finding joy in parenting moments
- Your children would be better off without you
Parental regret is a complex emotional response to the profound life changes and sacrifices that parenthood demands. It’s possible to simultaneously love your children deeply while wishing you had made different life choices. These feelings can coexist because human emotions are nuanced and contradictory.
For many parents who experience regret, the feeling isn’t constant. It may surface during particularly difficult periods—the sleepless infancy stage, the rebellious teenage years—and recede during easier times. For others, it’s a persistent undercurrent that colors their entire experience of parenthood.
Breaking the Silence
The taboo surrounding parental regret serves no one. When parents feel they must pretend to be perpetually fulfilled and joyful, several harmful consequences follow:
Isolation intensifies. Parents experiencing regret believe they’re uniquely flawed, that everyone else has embraced parenthood with wholehearted joy while they alone struggle with ambivalence or dissatisfaction.
Mental health suffers. Suppressing difficult emotions and living in a state of cognitive dissonance—feeling one way while presenting another face to the world—contributes to anxiety, depression, and burnout.
Honest decision-making becomes impossible. When we can’t speak truthfully about the challenges and trade-offs of parenthood, people making reproductive decisions lack accurate information. The result is that some people become parents without fully understanding what they’re choosing.
Parent-child relationships may suffer. Children are perceptive. When parents are unhappy but pretending otherwise, children often sense the disconnect. Moreover, parents struggling with regret while feeling unable to acknowledge it may unconsciously withdraw emotionally or become resentful, affecting their relationships with their children.
Finding Support and Processing Complex Emotions
If you’re experiencing identity shifts that feel overwhelming or struggling with feelings of regret about parenthood, here are steps that can help:
Seek professional support. A therapist, particularly one specializing in parental mental health or life transitions, can provide a non-judgmental space to explore your feelings. Therapy can help you process grief about your pre-parent identity, work through regret, and develop strategies for moving forward.
Find your people. Look for support groups—either in person or online—where parents share honestly about the challenges of parenthood. These communities remind you that you’re not alone and that ambivalence about parenting is more common than public discourse suggests.
Journal without censorship. Writing privately about your feelings without self-judgment can be profoundly cathartic. Allow yourself to express thoughts that would feel too risky to say aloud. The act of articulating difficult emotions often helps process them.
Distinguish between different types of regret. Some regret stems from temporary circumstances—sleep deprivation, a particularly difficult developmental stage, or acute stress. Other regret is more fundamental. Understanding the nature of your feelings can help you determine whether you need to change your circumstances, adjust your expectations, or simply ride out a difficult period.
Practice self-compassion. Be as kind to yourself as you would be to a friend sharing similar struggles. Parenting is genuinely difficult, identity shifts are disorienting, and complex emotions about major life choices are entirely human.
Reclaim small pieces of yourself. Even if you can’t overhaul your life, reclaiming small elements of your pre-parent identity can help. Maybe you can’t train for marathons anymore, but you could take a weekly jog. Perhaps you can’t dedicate hours to painting, but you could sketch for fifteen minutes while your child naps.
The Path Forward: Integration Rather Than Erasure
The goal isn’t to return to who you were before becoming a parent—that’s neither possible nor necessarily desirable. Parenthood changes us, often in profound and valuable ways. Many parents develop greater empathy, patience, and purpose through raising children. The challenge is achieving integration rather than erasure—becoming a fuller, more complex version of yourself that includes parenthood rather than a diminished version defined solely by it.
This integration looks different for everyone. For some, it might mean returning to work after a period of staying home. For others, it might mean intentionally stepping back from career to focus more on family while maintaining specific hobbies or interests. The key is conscious choice—actively deciding what balance works for you rather than passively accepting whatever identity emerges from the chaos of early parenthood.
Rewriting the Cultural Narrative
Collectively, we need to rewrite the cultural narrative around parenthood. This doesn’t mean discouraging people from having children or focusing solely on the negative aspects. Rather, it means presenting a more complete, honest picture that includes both the profound rewards and the significant sacrifices that parenthood entails.
We need to normalize conversations about identity shifts, about the grief that can accompany even wanted transitions, about the reality that parenthood doesn’t automatically confer meaning and fulfillment on everyone who becomes a parent. When we create space for these honest conversations, we help current parents feel less alone and we enable prospective parents to make more informed decisions.
Embracing the Full Story
Parenthood is one of the most significant choices—or circumstances—a person can experience. It reshapes virtually every aspect of life, from daily routines to fundamental identity. For many, it brings profound joy, purpose, and fulfillment. But for others, or for the same people at different moments, it brings loss, regret, and a disorienting sense of having disappeared into the demands of the role.
All of these experiences are valid. All deserve acknowledgment and support. A parent who experiences regret can still provide loving, attentive care. A parent who grieves their pre-parent identity can simultaneously delight in their children’s growth.
By breaking the silence around parental regret and identity shifts, we create space for the full complexity of the parenting experience. We allow parents to be whole people with ambivalent feelings rather than one-dimensional caricatures radiating constant fulfillment. And in that honesty, we often find not only relief but also connection—the recognition that navigating these challenges doesn’t make us failures but simply makes us human.
The conversations no one wants to have are often the ones we need most. It’s time we started talking.
Further Reading:
Psychology Today – “The Complexity of Parental Regret” https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/your-future-self/202310/if-you-regret-parenthood-researchers-say-youre-not-alone
