“She Should Have Never Had Kids”: 69 Heartbreaking Realizations People Had About Their Parents

Soon after having me, my mom wanted to get her tubes tied. The doctors refused because she was young and still had plenty of good years of babymaking ahead of her. So because of those doctors having the expectation that my mom should be having children, my brothers and sister exist.

I was planned. They were the kids who were born because of societal expectations.

One would hope in very nearly 50 years that hospitals are no longer allowed to turn women away for the surgery based entirely on how the doctor's feeling about it that day.

My mom. She was extremely clear that she hates kids and wanted us to stop acting like kids and grow the hell up. The first time she told me this, I was 3. I remember she told me, "You're already 3. Can you stop being so immature???"


4th grade, I brought up that she's supposed to love me as my mother, and she said, "Nobody loves you. You need to figure it out and love yourself."


She also slapped my 2 year old nephew across the face in a restaurant for laughing like an idiot. Told my 5 year old to stop being an embarrassment in public.


Honestly, she should have never had kids and she's not safe around children.

My parents had to get married in 1960 because baby was on the way. Then they made the mistake of having two more. Terrible marriage. My father was a musician who drank a lot and was violent. He didn't want to be married and he was a terrible parent. My mother ended up being the breadwinner, and she still stayed in the marriage. All of it really [messed] us kids up and it's why I am a huge supporter of abortion.

I was an accessory to my mom to make her look good, so she could brag about my accomplishments or show off how cute/pretty I was (she’s very superficial and I always had to look perfect) but she didn’t care about my emotional/mental health at all. She wanted to have the perfect family and everyone to be jealous of her, that was her life goal. The world revolved around her, all the time.

My mom for sure only had them because its what was expected.

She has always been a career focused woman, she was the only one in her family to go to university and graduate. She was extremely succesful working in big companies as a GM at 25.

She had a promotion to move to Cancun as GM for the Hilton hotels but she ended up getting married to my father due to some family stuff and trauma from her side.

She loves her kids, she is the best mom i could have, genuinely she is amazing but she also has a saviour complex and also has told me multiple times if we dont want kids to not have them. She apologizes from bringing us to this world and doesnt judge anyone who chooses to not have kids because of this.

I truly believe my mom shouldve been a child free businesswoman or maybe should have had her kids later in life with a nicer man and with a good career. She will never admit it but i think she wouldve been far happier.

My wife's grandma had a son, then decided she wanted another son, so she got pregnant, but it was a girl, so she got pregnant, but it was a girl, so she got pregnant, but it was a girl, so she got pregnant, but it was a girl, so she got pregnant, but it was a girl, so she got pregnant, but it was a girl, so she got pregnant, but it was a girl, so she got pregnant, but it was a girl, so she got pregnant, but it was a girl, then she gave up.

My wife calls her aunts by their number (It's a Chinese thing) so Aunt #4 and Aunt# 6 are coming to visit, etc.

Now get this, when the father passed away, he left EVERYTHING to his one son, but then the son passed away so now everything (house, business, etc) went to the son's wife. The 9 girls got nothing, and the son's wife has everything. How's what for fair?

I was more so explicitly told this at a young age rather than realized it later.

My dad would always say: “Your mom wanted 4 kids, I wanted none; so we compromised on two.” He would also often refer to us as, “Your kids” to my mom if we were misbehaving.

My mom definitely wanted to have kids but later expressed regret for how young she had us, and said the classic, “That’s just what you did back then.” We also never really formed that strong of a connection.

I would see how much my friend’s parents supported them and their interests and realized how different that was than in family, where everything I did was judged. I was really shocked in college when I learned that people talked with their parents on the phone. Overall just feeling tolerated rather than really cared for.

My mom loved being a parent and you could tell, she wasn’t perfect but she tried, she cared and she apologized when she needed. Our father had 4 across two marriages, none of us have a close relationship with him. I’m no contact. He never showed to any of my performances, never learned my friends names. Only told me he was proud of me as a first gen immigrant college grad when I blatantly asked him. He was cold, distant, dismissive, and clearly hated children. We were not allowed to cry because it was deeply triggering to him and I’d get in trouble for hiding in the closet to cry. He shouldn’t have been a parent.

I raised my sister, so when I turned into her mother at the age of 11. Being the first born, shouldn’t make you responsible for younger children, especially when you’re not even responsible for your own actions.

My mother is a catholic, she didn’t want any of us but had 5.

My mom told me abortion was illegal when she had me, so it wasn't an option.

You realize this as you grow older, especially if you’re from a culture where marriage and children are expected. A huge percentage of the time, people do things because society expects them to. I realized it at 6 or 7 I think, my dad passed away (never met him, my mom became a widow when she was pregnant months after their wedding).

I remember her saying during a car ride to one of my dad’s close friends that she wishes she never had me. I remember him replying and getting angry, saying that’s not something you should say in front of a child and my mom replying but it IS the truth, my life would’ve been much better without her, I could start over, etc.

That statement did mess me up and numerous countless times during my childhood I was shown that I was unwanted and unloved, which are feelings that I still struggle till this day into my adulthood. You could be the prettiest, cutest girl in the world, smart and kind hearted with all the good qualities but those false beliefs and programming run DEEP.

After my father passed, I discovered my parents definitely used me as a sort of "glue" to repair their failing marriage- something my father definitely held some resentments about.

When I got to a certain age and realized that other girls' mom were actively spending time with them and my mom's interactions were just 'hi's & bye's'. Literally barely had a conversation with her from aged 10 on. She also acted very resentful and annoyed about every single thing having to do with me.

When I was 4, i started helping to raise my baby sister. My dad worked a ton and my mom would just check out. They were largely disengaged parents.

Ummm the way I was raised. My "dad" left us alone and destitute with a single mother when I was like 6. My mom never showed much interest or affection, partly from her own trauma and partly because she was working so hard to survive. It didn't help that I looked just like my "dad." I'm convinced neither of them really wanted children.

When as a kid I innocently asked my dad why he had a kid, he said "To pass on my bloodline."

My mom awkwardly laughed and, to spare my feelings, said "No, that wasn't the only reason."

"No," my dad insisted, "That's the *only* reason."

I'm not in the greatest of health now, so these genes weren't the best ones to prioritize passing on, honestly.

Because they had zero interest. They didn’t look at my homework once. The didn’t know 99% of my friends or any of the guys I was sleeping with. They blew off things like the national honor society award ceremony and left HS graduation early. They didn’t know what colleges I applied to and never knew my major. They visited me at school once and acted like it was a Herculean effort that caused serious suffering. The never called me on my birthday. They never knew where I worked or what I did for a living. They babysat my kid for a total of 3 hours and made no effort to see him. Of course, they were charming as hell and people would tell me they were jealous of me because of my wonderful parents.

When I told my mother that I didn't want kids and she responded that I had to have kids. When I asked her why she replied "Because that is just what you do at your age. You get married and start having babies." I kept trying to guide her to understand that this was an expectation placed on her and other women by her culture and society but the conversation basically kept going in circles. By the end of it I realized that my Mom had me and my siblings for no other reason than that. She just never questioned why she was supposed to live her life this way and never explored what she would have done if she hadn't.

My mother told me to my face that she only wanted to have my older brother because she thought it would be a shame if my grandmother never got to meet any of her grandchildren (my grandmother had terminal cancer at the time). The rest of us kids she didn't want at all and only did it because she thought it was expected of her since she and my dad both come from families with a lot of kids.

I haven't talked to her in eight years, so in the end she got what she wanted.