>> Anecdotally I feel like there are a fair amount of examples of people who have kids and end up regretting it, at least to a meaningful degree.
The social desirability bias against saying one regrets having kids is very intense. So although I would very much not say that the following observation is anything but a highly biased sample: I personally have never met a person regretting having children in real life. I’ve heard parents complain for sure—true regrets seem to be rare.
Yeah, the fact that it is so difficult to acknowledge such regret definitely makes hard to get good data. Personally, for people I know, I’m aware of a handful of examples of true regret, and then there’s another handful where I don’t know for sure but suspect it.
>> Anecdotally I feel like there are a fair amount of examples of people who have kids and end up regretting it, at least to a meaningful degree.
The social desirability bias against saying one regrets having kids is very intense. So although I would very much not say that the following observation is anything but a highly biased sample: I personally have never met a person regretting having children in real life. I’ve heard parents complain for sure—true regrets seem to be rare.
Yeah, the fact that it is so difficult to acknowledge such regret definitely makes hard to get good data. Personally, for people I know, I’m aware of a handful of examples of true regret, and then there’s another handful where I don’t know for sure but suspect it.