Regretting Motherhood: “It’s Like Living in a Nightmare”
It is difficult to overstate the power of this single confession. It tears through the polite veil of how we are meant to speak about motherhood. There is no shame or confusion here, only the raw knowledge that something precious has been lost—that life has become a kind of waking death. Donath’s Regretting Motherhood is not a book about bad mothers or ungrateful women; it is a study of truth-telling. It asks what kind of society can convince women that their highest calling is also their most effective form of self-erasure.
“I regret having had children and becoming a mother, but I love the children that I’ve got … I wouldn’t want them not to be here, I just don’t want to be a mother.”
— Charlotte, 44, participant in Donath’s study (The Guardian, 2024)
This is not simply a sociological work; it is an autopsy of a cultural ideal. It examines the way motherhood, as we understand it, demands the annihilation of self. Women are celebrated for entering the role, then quickly stripped of individuality and transformed into instruments of service. Donath’s book gives voice to what many have felt but never dared to say aloud: that the supposed sanctity of motherhood masks an unending servitude.
“She wakes, she cooks, she smiles, she loves—but she no longer exists.”
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Regretting Motherhood & the Taboo of Maternal Regret
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The Invisibility of the Woman
Donath’s most devastating insight is that motherhood erases visibility. Once a woman becomes a mother, she is no longer seen as a full human being; she becomes function personified. Society sees her only through the lens of others—“mother of,” “wife of,” or “caregiver to.” Her name fades. Her selfhood evaporates.
The women in Donath’s study describe this transformation as a form of social disappearance. One participant compares her life to being “furniture”—present, necessary, but unseen. Another calls herself a “machine that never stops.” This invisibility is not an accident; it is built into the myth of the “good mother,” a creature whose needs are irrelevant by design.
“The woman disappears, but the mother is praised—she is the perfect ghost.”
Donath reveals how language itself perpetuates this invisibility. We exalt “mothers” in the abstract while silencing the actual women who occupy the role. Motherhood becomes not a relationship but a title, and titles are easier to worship than people are to see.
The Divine Lie of Motherhood
One of Donath’s most striking achievements is how she dissects the so-called sanctity of motherhood. In every culture, motherhood is presented as divine, natural, the ultimate purpose of womanhood. Yet Donath shows how this divinity serves as a smokescreen for exploitation.
The myth of the sacred mother is society’s most effective moral trap. It rebrands women’s exhaustion and despair as virtue. It tells women that to suffer is to love, that to lose oneself is to become holy. Her respondents speak of the betrayal of this ideal—how they were told they would feel joy and transcendence, only to find themselves spiritually emptied and invisibly bound.
“To suffer in silence is to be good; to want something for yourself is to be monstrous.”
In this light, the divine mother is not an emblem of reverence but a symbol of quiet enslavement—a life reduced to duty, coated in the language of love.
The Continuity of Servitude: From Womb to World
Donath exposes that the servitude of motherhood begins long before the birth of a child and continues indefinitely. The transition from bearing a child to raising one is seamless, designed to ensure that a woman’s body and time remain in service of others. Society insists that this is fulfilment.
The reality is far more complex: motherhood becomes a lifelong identity economy in which a woman’s worth is measured by her usefulness. Biological reproduction becomes social reproduction—the endless maintenance of families, morals, and emotional stability for which no one is paid, and few are thanked.
“The womb is only the beginning of her labour. The rest of her life is its continuation.”
The Burden of Irreversibility
The tragedy of Regretting Motherhood lies not in temporary frustration but in its permanence. Donath’s participants know they cannot go back. They grieve not only for the freedom they lost but for the selves they can never recover.
“I love my children, but I wish I had never become a mother.”
This is perhaps the most unspeakable confession a woman can make. Donath confronts it without judgment, showing that regret does not erase love—it only reveals the cost of a life lived entirely for others.
The taboo of maternal regret has existed for generations. In 1976, columnist Ann Landers asked her readers whether they would choose parenthood again; seventy percent of over ten thousand respondents said they would not. The silence surrounding such truths is not accidental. It exists to protect the illusion that motherhood is sacred, fulfilling, and universal.
“Regret becomes the most unspeakable confession—not because it is rare, but because it is common.”
About the Author: Orna Donath
Orna Donath is an Israeli sociologist, feminist scholar, and writer whose work focuses on gender, reproduction, and the social regulation of women’s lives. She is best known internationally for her groundbreaking book Regretting Motherhood, a study that shattered one of the most deeply entrenched taboos in modern society: the idea that motherhood is always fulfilling, natural, and beyond regret.
Trained in sociology and anthropology, Donath’s research has consistently interrogated the boundaries of “choice” afforded to women in societies that outwardly claim to support autonomy while quietly enforcing rigid expectations. Her earlier work examined women who choose not to become mothers at all, situating non-motherhood not as deviance, but as a legitimate and thoughtful life path. Regretting Motherhood emerged as a necessary continuation of that inquiry—giving voice to women who did become mothers, and who later realised that the role itself was incompatible with their sense of self.
Donath’s work is notable not for sensationalism, but for its clarity and ethical seriousness. She draws a sharp distinction between loving one’s children and regretting motherhood as an institution, insisting that the two are not only compatible, but frequently coexist. Her interviews reveal how deeply pronatalist cultures—across religious, national, and secular contexts—condition women to view motherhood as destiny rather than decision, and how dissent from that narrative is punished with shame and silence.
Since its publication, Regretting Motherhood has sparked intense debate across Europe, North America, and Asia, influencing academic research, media discourse, and feminist activism. Donath has been both praised for her courage and attacked for her honesty—responses that only underline the central claim of her work: that societies remain profoundly uncomfortable with women who refuse to sanctify their own self-erasure.
At its core, Donath’s scholarship is an act of feminist witnessing. She does not tell women what they should choose—but she insists they deserve the truth before they choose.
The Theft of Self
Donath’s book ultimately exposes motherhood as a quiet theft—not merely of time, but of being. Many of her subjects describe motherhood as an occupation they never applied for but can never quit. Their desires for solitude, for ambition, for freedom are redefined as selfishness. The woman who existed before motherhood becomes a ghost haunting her own life.
“She breathes, but not for herself. She loves, but not as herself. The woman survives in fragments, hidden beneath the mother who took her place.”
Why Women Must Read Regretting Motherhood
Regretting Motherhood is not an anti-motherhood manifesto. It is a necessary act of honesty. Every woman who has not yet become a mother should read it, not to be frightened, but to be informed. Motherhood should be entered with full consciousness, not as a default destiny.
Donath’s work offers a kind of intellectual mercy. It gives language to the unspoken. It insists that informed choice is the truest form of empowerment—that women must know what they might lose before they surrender it.
“You are told motherhood is a gift. But no one tells you what it takes. This book will.”
Resurrection: Becoming Nobody’s Mother
In the end, Regretting Motherhood is not only a study of grief but an act of resurrection. Through the courage of those who spoke, Donath gives voice to the invisible and restores meaning to their loss.
To be nobody’s mother is not to reject love or life—it is to reclaim the right to exist beyond service. It is to remember that womanhood was never meant to be synonymous with sacrifice.
“To be nobody’s mother is not to be barren of love—it is to be full of life again. It is to return to oneself, to be visible, and to be free.”
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