Summary: A study by Rutgers University reveals that a significant number of parents in the US, around 7%, say they wouldn’t have children if they could do it over again. The fear of missing out, or “FOMO,” is a key motivator for these parents. The researchers collected narratives from Reddit’s /r/childfree subreddit, an online community of 1.5 million child-free users, and identified three discourses: parenting as heaven, parenting as hell, and parenting as (the only) choice.
Keeping up with the Joneses, or social envy, can lead individuals to do things they would otherwise avoid, such as purchasing a new car they cannot afford or constructing an extension to their home they do not need.
It also might be a motivator for becoming a parent, a new Rutgers University study finds.
Roughly one in every 14 parents in the United States, about 7%, say they wouldn’t have children if they could do it over again.
Rates of parental regret are even higher in parts of Europe, such as Germany (8%) and Poland (13.6%). One of the main reasons that regretful parents have children in the first place may be fear of missing out, more colloquially known as “FOMO.”
“Why do you really want to have a child? What are your motivations? In the context of what it means to be a parent, FOMO could be a valuable consideration,”
said Kristina M. Scharp, an associate professor in the Rutgers School of Communication and Information and co-author of the study in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.
Regretful Parents
Parental regret is antithetical to how parents are expected to feel about their children. Social norms suggest that parents, and especially mothers, are “supposed to love their children unconditionally from conception to eternity,” the researchers wrote.
The researchers collected narratives from Reddit’s /r/childfree subreddit, an online community of 1.5 million child-free users to understand what moved regretful parents to start a family. Moderators allow parents who express regret about having children to post to the subreddit, which has cataloged 85 such testimonies between 2011 and 2021.
Scharp and her colleagues coded the Reddit posts with items such as “investment of time” and “relationship sacrifices.” Codes were then grouped into themes—such as “resource-intensive work”—which helped illuminate so-called discourses. Three discourses from regretful parents emerged: parenting as heaven; parenting as hell; and parenting as (the only) choice.
Finally, the researchers examined how these discourses interacted to guide decision-making about having children.
FOMO
What they found was a new, previously unconsidered driver: FOMO. The findings have broad implications for family planning.
“By better understanding potential motivations for their actions, people might be more inclined to make value-concordant, autonomous reproductive decisions,”
the researchers wrote.
With access to abortion in the United States becoming increasingly restricted, they believe the possibility of parental regret should be addressed in reproductive counselling services.
“Because of social norms, anyone who doesn’t subscribe to dominant views on parenting gets marginalized or stigmatized. Sometimes social norms are good: We know it’s wrong to steal. But sometimes social norms have unintended consequences and punish people for their choices—including people who want to be child-free,”
said Scharp.
Abstract
Guided by relational dialectics theory (RDT), we analyzed 85 first-person testimonials of parental regret written by users of the /r/childfree subreddit. We interrogated how competing discourses animate what it means to be a parent (our semantic object). Contrapuntal analysis revealed dominant and marginalized Discourses of Parenting as Heaven (DPHN) and Parenting as Hell on Earth (DPHL), respectively, as well as a third Discourse of Parenting as (the Only) Choice (DPOC). We identified three kinds of dialogically contractive practices including a new form we call fear of missing out (FOMO), two forms of diachronic separation, four forms of synchronic interplay including a new form we introduce (i.e., allying) that is useful when more than two discourses compete, and one form of dialogic transformation. We argue that FOMO serves as a catalyst for diachronic separation. We offer practical implications for fencesitters (those “on the fence” about having children), counselors, and policymakers.
Reference:
- Elizabeth A. Hintz, Kristina M. Scharp. “I hate all the children, especially mine”: Applying relational dialectics theory to examine the experiences of formerly childfree regretful parents. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 2023; DOI: 10.1177/02654075231194363