New York magazine’s The Cut has published some eyebrow-raising pieces over the years, but it hit a bizarre new low this week with a feature titled ‘I Regret Having Children’.
“I mean, truly, only the left would sit around and say, ‘You know, it’d be a great thought piece on how many parents hate their children.’ And they actually managed to find people who hate their children,” Megyn said on Friday’s edition of The Megyn Kelly Show. “The one mother they highlight is actually going to peace out because she doesn’t want to be with her child anymore, and she doesn’t seem to feel particularly bad about it.”
The article by Bindu Bansinath is the latest in the outlet’s series “on the decision about whether to have children” and tells the stories of three women who “regret” their choice to have kids. Here’s how the writer introduced the piece:
“Sooner or later, everyone has to decide whether to give up lazy weekends, disposable income, and overall peace of mind to have a baby instead. For many of those on the fence, one anxiety looms large: What if I make the wrong choice? Parent regret is more common than you might think — the r/regretfulparents sub-Reddit alone gets around 70,000 weekly visitors who anonymously commiserate — though stigma makes it hard to admit in real life. Below, three moms of young children talk about why they wish they could go back to their old lives.”
The women interviewed include a 34-year-old Rhode Island mother of a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old, a 30-year-old European mother of a 3-year-old, and a 27-year-old North Carolina mother of a 1-year-old. What the trio have in common is they all think their lives would be better if they had not become parents.
The Stories of ‘Regret’
Megyn was particularly disturbed by the NC mom, who said she was never sure about whether she wanted a “big family” like her husband until she saw a “a positive pregnancy test at 25” and realized “this was not for me.”
She admitted she considered having an abortion but got negative feedback from her “very religious and anti-abortion” mother and one of her close friends. Her husband, whom she described as “pro-choice,” was also against it. “He was like, ‘I really want to have this child. I think you’re really anxious, it’s a big change for you, but it’s a great thing. You’re going to be a wonderful mom,'” she recalled. “He really wanted this.”
After her son’s “traumatic” birth, the woman said she went back to work about a month later because she “had to go back to regular life.” And yet she ended up feeling like she had “disappeared as a human being” because well-meaning people asked her questions about her child and motherhood.
Ultimately, she and her husband are heading for divorce:
“My husband and I are taking steps to separate, and he’s willing to take on the role of a single parent, which makes me feel incredibly guilty. But I can’t live this life with him anymore. I’m not the parent my son needs. I don’t feel anything for him, and I don’t want to wait it out for years and walk out when he has actual memories. Right now, he’s very young, and you can fake things. But I can only fake it so much.”
Megyn said, sadly, that may actually end up being what’s best for the child. “The more you listen to this woman, the more you think she is doing the right thing. She should get the hell away from that child,” she noted. “All I can think is I feel bad for her baby. Maybe now he has a shot, if the father remarries, of finding a mom who actually loves him.”
Her guest, The Daily Wire’s Isabel Brown, agreed. “I’m in the exact phase of life that this young mom is in. I’m 28 [and] my daughter will be one at the end of next month, and my last year is so full of the most magical, purpose-giving moments that I could have ever asked for,” she shared. “But how they are presenting this through this article is asinine and completely disgusting.”
She believes it is but the latest iteration of a long-fought battle by leftists. “I really think this is the end result of decades-long programming to convince us to never want to get married or have children in the first place,” she posited. “They can’t do that because we know it is an innate desire baked into us by God, how women are created with this nurturing instinct; [but] now, even if [they] lost you and you ended up becoming a mom, [they’ll] just convince you to leave that experience because it’s so bad for you. How tragic.”
The Root of the Problem
As Megyn noted, the piece is littered with musings from these women about how they would have so much more free time and independence if they didn’t have kids. The mother from Europe lamented that she didn’t go straight into a doctorate program and live alone when she graduated college, instead getting married and starting a family.
That mother described postpartum life as a “nightmare.” She said the only helpful thing her husband did for her was change diapers with a “reluctant expression on his face.” Her mother, meanwhile, was around to help but “didn’t like being disturbed at night and even during the day was afraid of holding the baby or changing her.”
“It felt like I’d been tricked into this,” the woman said. “Everyone who wanted me to have a child — my husband, my family — knew they weren’t going to lose much, while my freedom and identity went down the toilet.”
Megyn said the issue seems to be less about the children and more about poor life choices. “Now I’m thinking, you have a bad support system, you don’t have a good marriage, you don’t have a great husband, and you kind of have a pain in the ass mother,” she explained. “You should have set yourself up better with a close friend or maybe a sister. You wish you’d have married better – that’s obvious – and discussed what the expectations would be for shared parenthood when you had a baby. Clearly you forgot all that.”
Changing the Narrative
The Federalist’s Brianna Lyman told Megyn this attitude is part of an unfortunate societal shift. “If you go back just throughout American history, family was the core of a functioning society,” she noted. “You don’t have a functioning society without, not only a functioning family, but two parents in the household.”
And yet that is not what young people see reflected in popular culture today. “To the hyper-obnoxious independent ‘girl boss’ regime we’ve all been taught, I think a lot of women feel like they are not fulfilling their ultimate societal goals unless they are working 70 hours a week and bringing home a big paycheck,” Lyman explained.
“Because as a culture, we’ve said that being a mother is burdensome,” she added. “If you choose to be a mother, not a career woman, there’s something inherently wrong with you. So, we need to change the conversation around what it means to be a mother and celebrate women who want to be a mother and a worker, just a mother, or just a worker.”
Megyn agreed. “These people have been taught wrong. They’ve been raised wrong. They’re looking at it all wrong,” she concluded. “You fold your child into your life; you don’t give up your life because of your child. If you’re looking at it that way, you’re doing it wrong.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Brown and Lyman by tuning in to episode 1,272 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.