Woman Sparks Debate By Admitting She's 'Not Happy' As A Mom And Has 'Maternal Regret'
Jan 04, 2023 by apost team
Raising children is not for the faint of heart. The common complaints of parents are usually that they're unacknowledged, unpaid, and underappreciated. Whether it's a family of toddlers or teenagers, the amount of work for the adults involved is endless. Between diapers, meals, school, extracurricular activities, friends and relatives, there isn't always time for a parent to have their own time or even their own identity. The sheer demands of childrearing leave many moms and dads feeling overloaded and even, at times, trapped by their circumstances. Usually, the love they feel toward their children and some overall feeling of sacrifice being paid off evens out the equation. However, some parents, even as they see their child learn and grow, experience something more like regret.
One 38-year-old Brazilian woman started a group for moms who experience what she calls maternal regret. She wrote about her experience for Universa in 2021, which polarized and shocked audiences everywhere.
She began, "I'm Karla Tenório, I'm 38 years old, I'm an actress, writer, I have a 10-year-old daughter and I'm a sorry mother." Tenório spoke as the creator of "Mãe Repentida," a "movement to support women like me: who don't like motherhood." This alarming claim startled readers. However, Tenório maintained that her group is perhaps not as radical as it sounds and merely "aims to free the voice of mothers who are not happy as mothers, who suffer and feel guilty because of motherhood."
She explained how the "movement aims to combat the social construction … that the woman has an unconditional love for the child … this idea that when we become a mother, we lose our sexuality, we focus entirely on the child, on housework and care."
Tenório then relayed her journey into motherhood, admitting she had struggled with the decision to become pregnant and been in an abusive relationship with the father of her child. In addition to having a difficult delivery, she also suffered mentally after the birth.
She explained, "I had postpartum psychosis, which is something more serious than postpartum depression because I was compulsive about being a perfect mother … In psychosis, you lose track of time, close yourself off from the world, become an excessive caregiver. I have kept, for example, a notebook where I wrote down how many minutes my daughter suckled on each breast." In her inflammatory article, Tenório unflinchingly revealed details about motherhood that are rarely touched upon in "Mommy & Me" books. While some readers were appalled by her confessions, others found commonality in her experience.
She continued:
"I never had a nanny, I stopped doing many things, from accepting jobs to being an excellent mother, because of guilt. That's who I am, this perfect mother…."
Her outlook seemed to turn around when in 2017, Tenório joined a women's collective where participants "discussed readings about maternal regret." She told her readers, "As the years went by, I started to read more about it, to talk about what I felt, and I realized that there were other women like me. I created (Mãe Repentida) … not to cause controversy, but for women to be recognized, to be able to talk about the overload and their suffering." Tenório's honesty and her story have since inspired other women to speak more frankly about their struggles with motherhood.
apost.com
What sacrifices did you or your parents make in raising children? Let us know — and be sure to pass this article on to friends, family, as well as any other parents who feel they need a bit of a break!