Mother Admits She Never Wanted Parenthood And Now Feels Guilty Around Her Five-Year-Old Daughter

Parenthood is often described as something that naturally brings love, purpose, and connection. But for some people, becoming a parent does not create those feelings, especially when the decision was never truly theirs to begin with.

One 27-year-old woman turned to Reddit after admitting something she feels deeply ashamed of: she does not feel the kind of love for her five-year-old daughter that she believes a mother should.

Years earlier, she became pregnant during a casual relationship and felt pressured by the father and his family to continue the pregnancy.

Now, despite having a kind and affectionate child, she feels trapped between guilt, resentment, and the urge to walk away. Scroll down to see why her confession sparked such an emotional response.

A mother struggles with resentment toward the daughter she never wanted, despite the child being loving and kind

Some forms of regret are especially painful because there is no simple way to undo the choice without affecting someone innocent.

The OP never wanted motherhood, yet she eventually continued the pregnancy after intense pressure from the child’s father and his family while she was already grieving and overwhelmed. Five years later, she is living with the consequences of a decision she never fully embraced.

The emotional conflict is built from resentment, guilt, grief, and responsibility. Her daughter has done nothing wrong, which makes the OP’s feelings even harder for her to tolerate. She does not describe a difficult child who created the resentment.

Instead, she describes a kind little girl who wants closeness, making every absence of maternal affection feel like evidence that something is wrong with her.

At the same time, screaming at a five-year-old over a drawing shows that these feelings are already leaking into the child’s emotional world. Understanding the mother’s distress cannot mean minimizing that impact.

A fresh perspective is that the OP may not truly “hate” her daughter as an individual. The child may have become psychologically connected to everything the OP lost when she felt pressured into parenthood: autonomy, a different imagined future, and perhaps unresolved anger toward Mark and his family.

Unfortunately, children cannot distinguish between “my mother resents what motherhood represents” and “my mother resents me.” That distinction may exist inside the adult, but the child experiences the relationship directly.

Recent psychological research recognizes parenthood regret as a real phenomenon rather than an unthinkable moral failure.

A validated study involving nearly 3,000 participants found that regretting parenthood is distinct from ordinary parental frustration or temporary burnout, with estimates suggesting that roughly 5–14% of parents in developed countries may experience it.

Researchers emphasize that the irreversibility of parenthood can make this form of regret particularly psychologically burdensome.

That insight matters because shame alone is unlikely to make the OP suddenly feel maternal love. She needs somewhere safe to examine resentment, grief, coercion, and the life she believes she lost. But her daughter also needs protection from becoming the container for those emotions.

If weekends repeatedly produce anger, emotional withdrawal, or rejection, maintaining the current custody arrangement simply because mothers are “supposed” to want their children may ultimately hurt both of them.

The realistic next step is professional help focused on parental regret and family dynamics, alongside an honest review of custody with the child’s wellbeing at the center. The OP does not need to manufacture feelings she cannot access, but she does need to control how she behaves toward her daughter.

A smaller, stable, kind role may be healthier than forcing an intimate maternal relationship filled with resentment. Her daughter deserves consistency and emotional safety, while the OP deserves help understanding her regret without pretending it does not exist.

Here’s the feedback from the Reddit community:

These commenters focused on the child’s emotional pain and fear of growing up feeling unloved

These Redditors urged OP to seek therapy and let the father take primary custody temporarily

These users suggested stepping back from parenting if OP cannot provide a healthy emotional environment

Should the mother temporarily step away from weekend custody while seeking professional help, or would reducing contact create another kind of hurt? And can someone build a healthy parent-child relationship even when parenthood itself remains a source of regret?