Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Regretting Motherhood
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY: Israel
NATIONALITY: Israeli
http://uklitag.com/en/author/orna-donath/ * http://kosmopolis.cccb.org/en/participants/donath-orna/ * https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.700142
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in 1976.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Sociologist and anthropologist. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beersheba, Israel, sociologist; Hasharon Rape Crisis Center, Raanana, Israel, chair and volunteer.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Born in 1976, Orna Donath is a sociologist and anthropologist who writes and studies motherhood, reproduction, and the desire of some women not to become mothers, especially Jewish women. She is a research sociologist at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Beersheba, Israel. In 2011 she conducted the study “Making a Choice: Being Childfree in Israel,” which explored the emotional and societal impact of women who do not want to have children. Donath also lectures at universities in Israel and has served as chair of the Hasharon Rape Crisis Center in Raanana, where she continues to volunteer.
In 2017 Donath published Regretting Motherhood: A Study to examine the often overlooked and sometimes taboo issue of women who wished they had not become mothers. For her study, she interviewed twenty-three mothers from a variety of socioeconomic, educational, and professional backgrounds aged twenty-six to seventy-three. Donath learned that many of the women regretted their decision to have children, yet Donath, who is herself motherless by choice, explains that not having children goes against a societal norm and is not seen as a positive decision of its own. She said in an interview with Haaretz, “Recognizing the mistakes that we’ve made is an inseparable part of a life that has a beating heart, even when it’s not possible to fix or change what’s already been done,” posted in Cut.
Donath contends that motherhood is seen as a “natural” role for women, that all women desire to have children. To counter that, she is giving women the chance to speak their regrets. In the Guardian, Jedidajah Otte reported Donath explaining that motherhood “may simultaneously be a realm of distress, helplessness, frustration, hostility and disappointment, as well as an arena of oppression and subordination.” A reviewer in Publishers Weekly commented on the various perspectives revealed in Donath’s interviews with mothers, their self-awareness, and the suffering that the women had kept secret. The reviewer said, “Her work is perhaps too academic and narrow in scope for a general readership,” but nevertheless opens up the topic for further discussion. Online at Foreword, Michelle Anne Schingler called the book a “work full of remarkable disclosures and significant questions…While it will undoubtedly be a hard pill for many to swallow, it is also a necessary one.” Schingler also praised the women in the interviews for their honesty and bravery and who perhaps can advise young women who are still deciding whether motherhood is right for them.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Cut, July 12, 2016, Laura June, “Should Women Admit It When They Regret Having Kids?”
Guardian (London, England), May 12, 2016, Jedidajah Otte, review of Regretting Motherhood: A Study.
Publishers Weekly, April 10, 2017, review of Regretting Motherhood, p. 62.
ONLINE
Foreword Online, https://www.forewordreviews.com/ (January 15, 2018), Michelle Anne Schingler, review of Regretting Motherhood.
Sociologist and writer, she has revolutionised debates around maternity with her latest book, Regretting Motherhood.
Orna Donath. © Tami Aven
Orna Donath (Israel, 1976) is a research sociologist at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Beer-Sheva. Her field of study focuses on the social expectations projected on women, both those who are mothers and those who are not.
In 2011 she published her first study, Making a Choice, on Jewish women in Israel who don’t want to have children. Her first book, Regretting Motherhood (Knaus, 2016), published in several languages, is the result of a series of interviews with Israeli women. Beyond her research work, she is a volunteer at a help centre for victims of sexual aggression in the city of Ra’anana.
Update: 19/12/2016
Orna Donath
Share:
Orna Donath, born in 1976, is a sociologist at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba, where she carries out research on the social expectations particularly faced by women. After her study Making a Choice, which was published in 2011 and examined Jewish women in Israel who decide against children, Regretting Motherhood is her first international book publication. Beside her academic activities, she is involved in volunteer work at the Hasharon Rape Crisis Center in Raanana, whose chairperson she is.
Regretting Motherhood: A Study
Publishers Weekly.
264.15 (Apr. 10, 2017): p62.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Regretting Motherhood: A Study
Orna Donath. North Atlantic, $15.95 trade paper (266p) ISBN 978-1-62317-137-7
Israeli sociologist and anthropologist Donath (Making a Choice: Being Childfree in Israel) breaks open
what she describes as an "unspoken taboo," bringing the notion that women regret becoming mothers into
the public discourse with her latest research. Working from interviews with 23 Israeli-Jewish mothers
ranging in age from 26 to 73 and from a variety of socioeconomic, educational, and professional
backgrounds, Donath draws no broad, quantitative conclusions about how many mothers experience regret
or why, but rather presents a number of subjective voices reflecting on their own experiences. The most
valuable elements of the book are the different perspectives provided by the interviews, which reflect a
striking amount of self-awareness (and, often, suffering) from women who have otherwise largely kept
silent. Also significant are the author's findings that regret may be influenced by external factors--whether a
mother has a supportive spouse or abandoned a career to raise children, for example--but it also cuts across
these lines, heralding some thing more intrinsic to the mothers she sampled. Her work is perhaps too
academic and narrow in scope for a general readership, but Donath successfully opens the topic for further
exploration. (July)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Regretting Motherhood: A Study." Publishers Weekly, 10 Apr. 2017, p. 62. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A490319290/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=5ac64968.
Accessed 24 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A490319290
Should Women Admit It When They Regret Having Kids?
The Cut. (July 12, 2016):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 New York Media
http://nymag.com/thecut/
Listen
Full Text:
Byline: Laura June
Childless women - especially those past age 30 - are accustomed to answering questions about "if and when" they're going to have a baby.
This is so routine that we don't even remember to take offense at such a private matter. And (http://nymag.com/news/features/67024/index1.html?mid=full-rss-thecut) although the evidence is piling up that (https://contemporaryfamilies.org/brief-parenting-happiness/) having children makes American women less happy, we continue to feed the myth that one is "missing out" on something by choosing not to have children.
And though plenty of women have children and are completely tickled once they have them, becoming a parent is like many other "big" life decisions: We can't know what it will be like - or what we will think of it - until it happens.
So what about the women who have children but then wish they hadn't? Do those mothers exist? And what do we do about them? What do we think about them? Are women who wish they hadn't had their children too awful to contemplate? And what can we learn from the women who have the courage to admit what is perhaps the worst thing a mother can say?
An Israeli study and book about regretting motherhood has started (http://www.timesofisrael.com/after-israeli-study-regretting-motherhood-debate-rages-in-germany/) a debate in Germany over these questions. The author of the study, Israeli sociologist Orna Donath, interviewed dozens of women who became mothers and loved their children, but also reported feeling regret about their decision to procreate. (She distinguishes postpartum depression, a common but temporary condition, from the phenomenon of longer-lasting "mother regret.") Though Donath's work has been well-known in Israel for years, her recent research has had particular resonance in Germany, where debates about traditional parental roles are ongoing.
Donath, who is 39 and has chosen not to have children, argues that for many women, the decision isn't predicated on a lack of optimal conditions or a partner, nor are they all "career women" who don't have time for family. The choice not to have children, she says, is still seen as a decision in opposition to the norm, rather than a positive decision of its own. And there is little space staked out in our world, even today, for such a position. So it makes sense that some of the women who do have children for one reason or another later wish they had not.
"Recognizing the mistakes that we've made is an inseparable part of a life that has a beating heart, even when it's not possible to fix or change what's already been done," Donath said in an interview (http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.700142) last week with Haaretz. "Crying over spilt milk enables us to understand where we've come from, how we got to where we are, who we are now and where we're going."
She goes on about the milk: "And just as important, it's the crying that enables us to ask: Whose hand was it that spilled the milk? Was it really only mine? Or did society's hand, perhaps, also play an active part in it?" What she's asking, of course, is whether women who don't want to have children are having them because of societal pressure. It's an important question to ask.
Last year, (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2303588/The-mother-says-having-children-biggest-regret-life.html#ixzz3DVVWKyEQ) when a woman wrote a tell-all column for the Daily Mail - one of those salacious pieces tabloids love to print despite knowing they'll bring terrible things to the authors - she faced a heated online backlash. Isabella Dutton, who has two grown children, wrote truthfully about the problem of being a dedicated, "good mother," who still regretted having children: "It was not that I seethed each day with resentment towards my children; more that I felt oppressed by my constant responsibility for them. Young children prevent you from being spontaneous; every outing becomes an expedition. If you take your job as a parent seriously, you always put their needs before your own."
What Dutton - and to some extent all ambivalent mothers - is saying is that she wanted to be a great mother if she had to be a mother at all. And attempting to live up to those very high expectations does mean placing the needs of the child before your own for most of your life. This can be a really fulfilling way to live if you want to, if you adjust to it, if you have a partner who supports you, and if you find a way to roll with the punches. But Dutton says in her piece that she "always knew" she didn't want to have children, but she did it anyway because she felt pressure from her partner and from society. This backs up a lot of what Donath's research found: Women who feel strong ambivalence about having children, but end up having them anyway, are the perfect candidates for truly regretting it.
No one should have to live with such regret. And while narratives of women wishing they hadn't had children can empower other women to feel less like monsters for having the same feelings, we shouldn't have too many of these stories: Women who have children despite not wanting them should be almost non-existent. Abortion should be legal and protected and available to all women, and society should make a place - a real one - for women who chose not to have children. There is a real cost to making these women feel as if there is something wrong with them, or as if they are missing out.
But none of this can fully account for all situations. What about women who truly believe they want to have children and then feel regret anyway? This is the most complex and saddest scenario, and also the one that's impossible to correct for, beyond providing nonjudgmental support to those women who are in such an awful situation.
Studies show the phenomenon is quite rare, which makes sense when you consider the taboo attached. Can we even hope to get accurate numbers? After all, saying you regret having your child is taboo for a reason - the child, who already exists. Almost no one wants to be the one to admit they regret their living, breathing baby, even if doing so helps us as a society grapple with these issues. Ultimately, the goal is a lofty but unachievable one: to help women make the right choice from the start. To educate women about the realities of motherhood before they become mothers, and to stop stigmatizing women who say, "you know, I think I'm happy this way, just me."
To access, purchase, authenticate, or subscribe to the full-text of this article, please visit this link:
http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/07/should-women-admit-regret-having-kids.html?mid=full-rss-thecut
Please note: Some tables, figures or graphics were omitted from this article.
Love and regret: mothers who wish they'd never had children; Around the world, women are seeking an honest, open debate about what happens when you admit that motherhood isn't everything you were told to expect
The Guardian (London, England). (May 12, 2016): News:
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Guardian Newspapers. Guardian Newspapers Limited
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian
Listen
Full Text:
Byline: Jedidajah Otte
'I don't think it was worth it." Tammy is a mother who wishes she hadn't been. "Don't get me wrong, I love my kids. But it comes at a huge cost; mentally, emotionally and physically." Writing anonymously on feminist website the Vagenda, Tammy says: "My body was ruined, I had to have surgeries later in life to repair what was done to me by forcing an almost 9lb child through my body. And worse yet, it seems as though expressing this honestly makes me a monster... It seems as though your entire self becomes nothing more than a functional enabler for your kids' success."
So why do women regret having children? "Motherhood is no longer an all-encompassing role for women now, it can be a secondary role, or you don't have to choose it," says Toni Morrison in Andrea O'Reilly's Motherhood: A Politics of the Heart. But, she adds, "It was the most liberating thing that ever happened to me." For Morrison, and countless others, "the children's demands on me were things that nobody ever asked me to do. To be a good manager. To have a sense of humour. To deliver something that somebody could use. And they were not interested in all the things that other people were interested in, like what I was wearing or if I were sensual. If you listen to [your children], somehow you are able to free yourself from baggage and vanity and all sorts of things, and deliver a better self, one that you like."
Related: Becoming a parent is the greatest identity change we go through
Across cultures and continents, society projects this ideal of motherhood, placing a premium on why mothering matters so much, with a list of things mums must not do: smoke, have casual sex, work instead of taking maternity leave. The biggest taboo, however, is when a mother says that she regrets becoming one at all. Which is why the debate around viral hashtag #regrettingmotherhood has become so intense in recent weeks.
It started with Orna Donath, an Israeli sociologist who decided not to have children and was fed up with being considered an aberration in a country where women have, on average, three children. Last year, Donath published a study based on interviews with 23 Israeli mothers who regret having had children. In it she argues that while motherhood "may be a font of personal fulfillment, pleasure, love, pride, contentment and joy", it "may simultaneously be a realm of distress, helplessness, frustration, hostility and disappointment, as well as an arena of oppression and subordination". But the purpose of this study was not to let mothers express ambivalence towards motherhood, but to provide a space for mothers who actually have "the wish to undo motherhood", something that Donath describes as an "unexplored maternal experience".
Donath's study sparked a stormy debate. In Germany alone, novelist Sarah Fischer published Die Muttergluck-Luge (The Mother-bliss Lie), with the subtitle Regretting Motherhood -- Why I'd Rather Have Become a Father; writers Alina Bronsky and Denise Wilk analysed the irreconcilable realities of Germany's traditional mother image and modern-day demands of working environments in their book The Abolishment of the Mother; while leading German columnist Harald Martenstein wrote that these "motherhood regretters" are committing child abuse if they confront their own children with their negative feelings about motherhood (even if they also say that they love their children, as most of these mothers do). To Martenstein, regretting motherhood is the result of naive black-and-white thinking: a product of unrealistic expectations, the wrong partner, the mother's personality and perfectionism. To him, it's as pointless as crying over spilt milk.
"The ideological impetus to be a mother," as Donath describes it, can be found across all walks of society and is founded on the powerful conception that complete female happiness can only be achieved through motherhood. Those who seek to challenge this narrative face overwhelming opposition, which makes an honest, open debate difficult.
It doesn't seem to matter that mothers who regret the maternal experience almost always stress that they love their children.
Donath speaks of the ideological promises made to prospective mothers about the joys of raising children, and of the "simultaneous delegitimisation of women who remain childless", who are reckoned to be "egoistic, unfeminine, pitiful and somehow defective".
Related: On Mother's Day and every day, I'm grateful to all who help raise my child | Amy Whipple
Over on Mumsnet, multiple threads exist with women mourning the loss of their old lives and battling with the daily reality of motherhood.
"It is not post-natal depression," writes one user. "I am not depressed or 'down'. No doubt someone will try to convince me it is, just like unhappy Victorian ladies were labelled as mentally ill when they were desperately unhappy with the lives society gave them. I am perfectly happy with my life, or rather, I was. My son is perfectly lovely, and my partner is extremely helpful. I adore them both. And, no, I wasn't pressured into it, either. I was in love with the idea. I thought it was what I wanted. Society told me it was what I wanted, right?"
I am a mother, too, and while I don't regret it, I can deeply sympathise with women who feel betrayed by the eternal myth that enjoying motherhood is a biological predisposition. And I wonder if I would have chosen to be a mother had I not been indoctrinated all my life to believe that motherhood is the only thing that will complete my happiness. I'm not so sure.
Donath's aim is simple: she wants to allow mothers to live motherhood as a subjective experience, one that can combine love and regret, one that will be accepted by society, no matter how it looks.
CAPTION(S):
'Motherhood may be a font of contentment and joy -- and distress, helplessness and disappointment.'
'I thought it was what I wanted. Society told me it was what I wanted, right?'
Jedidajah Otte
REGRETTING MOTHERHOOD
Orna Donath
North Atlantic Books (Jul 11, 2017)
Softcover $15.88 (272pp)
978-1-62317-137-7
Donath’s study fills a gap in discussions of women’s lives and choices.
Orna Donath’s Regretting Motherhood is a revealing study of women who dare to speak the “unspeakable”—that their experiences of motherhood are less than charmed. This is work full of remarkable disclosures and significant questions.
Centered in Israel—of the developed nations, a place where women have more children, on average, than anywhere else—Donath’s study gives a voice to women whose experiences are often silenced and ignored. They are regretful mothers.
They may have begun families because of social pressure, or out of a sense that time demanded it; they may have once believed they longed for motherhood themselves. But the diverse group that Donath speaks to—women who range from mothers of toddlers to those whose children already have grown children—reveals that all did not turned out as promised. Sometimes motherhood does not fulfill you; sometimes it leads to lifelong regret.
Forthrightly feminist, the work speaks of women’s bodies as colonized, and reveals how illusory choice is, even for women who opt out of being parents. It explores whether there might be more to some cases of postpartum depression than just chemical imbalances, saying that expressions of regret, if heard, “add … a missing location on the emotional roadmap of motherhood.”
Many of the mothers’ confessions will be shocking—indeed, culture trains us to react to such expressions with shock, rather than compassion, as the study shows. If they could do it again: they wouldn’t. Love does not come naturally. The bind is unending. The pressure is enormous. They wish they could leave, but “don’t think [they] could handle the social repercussions.” There is no “out” that these women realistically see—but their honesty and bravery may provide an out for those still deciding about motherhood themselves, and that possibility fills many pages with hope.
Donath’s study fills a gap in discussions of women’s lives and choices. While it will undoubtedly be a hard pill for many to swallow, it is also a necessary one.
Reviewed by Michelle Anne Schingler
July/August 2017