Motherhood is often described as beautiful, meaningful, and deeply fulfilling. But for some women, the reality can feel far more complicated, especially when exhaustion, identity loss, and constant responsibility replace the life they thought they were building.
OP, a young mother in her early twenties, says becoming a parent changed everything about how she sees herself. After a difficult birth and months of postpartum struggles, she began feeling trapped in a routine that left little room for privacy, ambition, or even basic rest.
When she tried to talk about those feelings with the people closest to her, the response was not what she hoped for. She also found herself fighting to be taken seriously when asking for permanent birth control. What followed was an painfully honest account of regret, burnout, and the quiet grief of losing the person she used to be. Read on to see what she shared.
A young mother admits motherhood erased her sense of self and left her struggling to get through each day
Sometimes becoming a parent does not feel like gaining a new identity. It feels like losing the old one. That loss can be difficult to admit because motherhood is often presented as something women should naturally find fulfilling.
For this young mother, however, the experience has involved physical pain, exhaustion, anxiety, resentment, isolation, and the frightening sense that the person she used to be has disappeared.
Her words sound much deeper than ordinary frustration with sleepless nights. She describes having no ambition, crying when her child is asleep, feeling trapped by constant responsibility, checking whether her toddler is breathing, and saying that life no longer feels worth living. She had also previously experienced postpartum depression and anxiety.
Those details matter because they suggest that her hatred of motherhood cannot be separated neatly from significant psychological distress. Just as importantly, when she tried to explain that distress to the people closest to her, she says she was dismissed as lazy rather than supported.
There is another perspective here that deserves attention. She may genuinely dislike motherhood, and treatment does not have to convince her that parenting is secretly wonderful. Mental-health care can help someone suffer less without invalidating their judgment about what kind of life they would have preferred.
The goal should not be to force gratitude. It should be to help her regain enough stability, autonomy, and energy to determine which feelings belong to depression, which come from an overwhelming division of labor, and which reflect her authentic feelings about parenthood.
The National Institute of Mental Health explains that perinatal depression can involve persistent sadness, anxiety, fatigue, difficulty carrying out everyday tasks, hopelessness, and thoughts of death or self-harm. It emphasizes that the condition is medical and treatable rather than a personal failure.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists similarly describes postpartum depression as intense sadness, anxiety, or despair that interferes with daily functioning and notes that effective treatments can include therapy and medication. The NHS also lists antidepressants and talking therapies among established treatments for postnatal depression.
That context makes her update about starting sertraline significant. Seeking treatment is not evidence that every problem she described exists only in her mind.
Medication cannot redistribute housework, restore privacy, or make an unsupportive partner suddenly participate more. What treatment can potentially do is reduce enough depression and anxiety for those practical problems to become easier to identify and address.
Her household responsibilities also deserve scrutiny. Cooking, cleaning, managing supplies, organizing social commitments, and caring for a toddler represent substantial ongoing labor. If one parent carries most of that responsibility, simply telling them to “go outside” misses the structural problem entirely.
The most realistic way forward is therefore broader than medication alone: continued medical follow-up, appropriate psychological support, substantially more practical help, protected time away from caregiving, and a fairer division of household responsibilities.
Because statements about life not being worth living can indicate serious depression, they should also be discussed directly with a healthcare professional rather than minimized.
A mother does not need to pretend that motherhood completed her. Right now, the more important goal is helping her become a person again, rather than demanding that she become better at disappearing into the role.
Here’s what the community had to contribute:
These commenters believed the PPD may still be ongoing and encouraged professional treatment
These Redditors argued the partner needs to contribute far more to household and parenting duties
These commenters explored regret, expectations of parenthood, and the difficulty of adjusting to motherhood
Was motherhood itself the source of her misery, or had depression and an unfair division of labor made an already difficult transition unbearable? Can parents openly admit regret without being treated as though they do not love their children?
