Social pressure, regret, and choosing not to mother

Orna Donath Transcript

Sabrina Merage Naim
From Evoke Media, I'm Sabrina Merage Naim. With me is Kassia Binkowski, and this is Breaking Glass, a series of conversations with women around the world who are shattering glass ceilings and challenging social norms. They are audacious, gutsy, and their stories are echoed across borders and generations in a rallying cry that is changing the narrative for women everywhere.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Today we're talking about an experience that is not widely discussed or acknowledged: regretting motherhood.

Kassia Binkowski
And let's be clear, we're not talking about the regret that every single mother experiences at some point every day, definitely not the regret that I feel daily at 7pm when the wheels completely come off the bus in my house. We're talking about an issue much deeper than that.

Sabrina Merage Naim
So today we head to Tel Aviv, Israel where we speak with Orna Donath, a Doctor of Sociology who studies the field of non-motherhood, motherhood, and regret. She is a social activist and the writer of the book Regretting Motherhood, which was translated into fourteen languages.

Kassia Binkowski
Sabrina, this conversation was certainly hard for me to understand going into this episode, and I think it's a fascinating view that many, many women may not have had the chance to speak about or consider before. The fact that there are women out there who have become mothers and regret the decision is so taboo and so stigmatized that it's rarely spoken about. We delve into the societal pressures around motherhood, the stigma around regret, and why it's such a sensitive admission for mothers out there. Take a listen.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Orna, thank you so much for joining us all the way from Tel Aviv. This is a conversation that we are especially interested to dive into, something that we don't hear a lot about, and we really are excited to kind of delve into your research and some of the origin of the story. So thank you for being with us.

Orna Donath
Thank you very much for inviting me to be with you.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Absolutely. So first, tell us a little bit about yourself. Where did you grow up? And how did you end up pursuing sociology?

Orna Donath
I was born and raised in Israel, and to cut a long story short, when I was 16, I realized and I said—as in my family, as well—that I will never get married, and I will not have children. And I know many people are saying to me that it's quite young to say, but my friends—it's high school—at the age of 16, talked all the time about, ‘When I will be a mother, I will have three children. Their names will be this and that.’ And because they talked about it, for them, it was quite quite obvious, at the age of 16, that they will turn into mothers. They will become others. It gave me the opportunity to think about it for myself, and to realize that it's not my dream. I cannot see myself going down this road. Deep down, I already asked questions about society and what we are told that we must do and not do in our lives, and for me, that was the first step towards sociology. It’s really interesting because at the age of 16, if you would tell me that someday I will be a sociologist, and I will have a PhD in sociology, I would laugh because I also didn't see this kind of the road. But, um—

Sabrina Merage Naim 04:14
What were you envisioning—even at 16—what were you envisioning for down the road that was not sociology?

04:21
I always said to my surroundings that I think that I will never find the exact thing that I would like to do in life—that it was not invented yet. But this was kind of a surprise for me because when I read, you know, the book of Tel Aviv University about all the options that I can go to and learn, when I opened and read about sociology and anthropology, I immediately said, ‘This is my home. This is my home.’ But I didn’t know it in advance, and then I started doing my, my, you know, the first degree, and it was a done deal. I just...— I was so curious. I never wanted that—an academic career—and I am still not relating to myself like a career woman or something like that. I'm just...— the curiosity leads the world for me. And here I am. It's...it's not what I planned for myself, but I knew about motherhood that it was not meant for me. That was quite obvious.

Kassia Binkowski
What were people's reactions to a 16-year-old girl saying that? Declaring something that is still, you know, radically different than what all of your peers were hoping for and planning for? How did people react?

Orna Donath
I think that until my first book was published here in Israel—my first book was published when I was 34—I think that all of my surroundings assume that it's the kind of a technical bug in the system, a—

Sabrina Merage Naim
A phase.

Kassia Binkowski
It's a phase. ‘She's going through a phase.’

Orna Donath
Right, it’s a phase, and everything will be alright. And when I published my first book, here in Israel, at the beginning, I wrote about me not wanting to be a mother. And I think that's the point where my surroundings started to understand that I'm serious about it; that I'm truly serious about it. I never got a lot of pressure from my family. They do—my parents—still want me to be a mother because they really like, and still like being parents, and they wanted me to share their experiences as well. But they're not pushing me, and I'm already 45, so it's out of the question already. For myself, I never considered it as a problem that I must solve. I never went to, like, to therapy to try to understand where is it coming from? Am I afraid of something? For me, it was quite...— of course there is a diversity of female identities. Of course. What's the question here? Of course we don't want the same thing just because we have the same biological organs, but quite soon, I understood that society has a problem with me. And that's where my political journey began.

Sabrina Merage Naim
So let's just clarify because you've done a lot of research in terms of motherhood, non-motherhood, societal pressure, and the role of society, and all of that. And then in 2015, you published Regretting Motherhood, your second book, right? And the book was a culmination of years of research and interviewing women across socioeconomic, professional, and educational backgrounds. Tell us about the experience of compiling this research. This is...— It must have been extremely intimate, these conversations, because essentially what it is are mostly women who have become mothers and then after the fact, acknowledge that they regret that decision. How did you get women to kind of come forward given the crazy amount of stigma societally? To admit to something like that, what made them comfortable to come to you and tell their stories?

Orna Donath
I guess that one of the things is that my first book was published a few years before, and I was in the press here a lot—a lot of interviews here in Israel—and I think that a lot of women like, I guess, saw me and listened to me, heard me also on the radio, and I guess they understood that I will not judge them. I had already, like, the surface of my first study here in Israel, and I guess that they heard from my voice, from my intentions, that I...I will understand. Even though I'm not a mother—or because I'm not a mother—I will understand, and I will not judge them and you know, on the one hand, it was...— It's quite scary to talk about it. But on the other hand, they were yearning to talk about it because they couldn't say it to anyone—almost anyone—surrounding them.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Which, right, which leads me to wonder—and I'm sure this is a big part of your research is—how many other mothers are out there who feel this way, but just won't say it because of that feeling of shame or that stigma that society puts on them? These are the women who came to you, you know, against the odds who felt comfortable enough because they knew you wouldn't judge them? Well, pretty much everyone else has a judgement about that, and so there are, for sure, many, many more mothers out there that feel this way, but won't ever admit to it, right?

Orna Donath
We will never know how many mothers feel the same and regret [motherhood]. We will never know.

Kassia Binkowski
You've studied something that there's really so little conversation about. Do you think the lack of conversation around regretting motherhood is a product of those numbers still being fairly low and so it's just not that comment of an experience? Or, is it a product of those mothers being silenced by the shame and stigma associated with that feeling?

Orna Donath
I'm not claiming that most of the mothers or the majority of the mothers are regretting. I do believe that there are more than we think. This is...— I can't really estimate how many women. I guess it's...— Let’s say, we don't know the size of this minority. We don't know. And I'm not sure that we will ever know, but I believe—I do believe—that it's more than we would like to think.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I mean, this is...this is fascinating to me. Both Kassia and I are mothers to young children. I can tell you that almost on a daily basis, there is a moment where I will...I will be like, ‘Why the fuck did I do this to myself?’—

Kassia Binkowski
‘Do I regret this decision? Yeah!’

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yeah, I regret this so much. Never, never, whole days, right? There's always kind of the acknowledgement that within a single day, there are beautiful moments and wonderful moments and then shit moments of being a mother, and I think that continues forever. I can't say that I regret like totally making this decision. I...I do not fall into that category. That being said, since the beginning of time, women have been defined by our capacity to nurture and care for children. That has been the role that women have played forever, but your body of work really challenges that, the very definition of what it means to be a woman if not to have children, and on one hand, I really respect that because I think that we need to open up the kind of definition and the possibilities and the the whole array of what being a woman means. And, and yet, I also want to understand where that regret stems from, you know? In your research, can you tell us some of the reasons, some of the feeling, some of the...you know, what does it butt up against?

Orna Donath
First, I would like to say that we are facing a kind of, you know, spectrum of emotions, and I think that in the middle, many mothers will share what you are sharing, what you are saying: it's a kind of ambivalent feeling, and the structure is like that: ‘I'm having hardships in, within my motherhood, but the smile of my child is worthwhile, and, and I'm not regretting it.’ And I think that many of the mothers will be in this, like—the audience cannot see—like the the bell, you know, the—

Sabrina Merage Naim
It’s a bell curve.

Orna Donath
Yeah, thank you. So, I interviewed the mothers who are not ambivalent. It's not the same. They're saying, ‘I'm having hardships. I don't like it. Period. It's not for me. It's not.’

Sabrina Merage Naim
And to be clear, a lot of those women—and please correct me if I'm wrong—but a lot of those women will still say, ‘You know, I love my children’—

Orna Donath
Yeah.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I want them to have, like, beautiful futures.

Kassia Binkowski
‘I want the best for them,’ right?

Sabrina Merage Naim
Right, ‘But I am not the person.’ So, so what is the why?

Orna Donath
First, I will say that for me, it seems quite logic because regret is part of the human experience. We regret everything. We regret everything: ‘Why did I marry him or her?’...’Why didn't I marry him or her?’...‘Why did I go to study this and not that?’ And, and, you know, we regret everything. It's a part of the human life. It's part of being subjects that can imagine, evaluate, know. Everybody is telling us, ‘You must become a mother because it will change your life.’ Well, I'm saying, ‘Yes, indeed. It will change your life, so why, as a society, do we assume that for all of us it will change it for the best?’ This, I think this, is the question. And the question ‘Why do they regret?’...There is not, like, dramatic stories about, you know, problematic children, non-normative children. They're just saying, ‘Yeah, this is motherhood’—

Sabrina Merage Naim
‘It’s not for me.’

Orna Donath
‘It's not for me.’

Sabrina Merage Naim
In almost every decision that we make in our lives, we have the opportunity to pivot away or to change that course, you know? If I married the wrong person, I can get divorced, right? If I am studying something that I don't like, I can change my major. If I am living in a city that's not for me, I move. There are all of these decisions that we make that maybe we regret in different ways, or we decide it's not for us, and we can kind of just change that decision. We can make a move, even if it's difficult. You can't do that with motherhood, right? You can't be like, ‘Oop, I tried it. I'm gonna put the genie back in the bottle It's not for me.’ But what you're saying is just like with any other kind of decision, some people will not feel connected in that same way, right?

Orna Donath
Motherhood is a relationship. It's not a job. It's not a role. It's an intersubjective relationship. And that is why it can have all the human emotions regarding it. And, um, it's correct that, regarding motherhood, you cannot undo it. So two things: One, okay, we cannot undo it, you know, physically, but in our, you know, inner worlds, we can wish we could have undone it. And that's okay. In your inner world, you can wish it, even though you can't really do it. And second of all, because this is the case, I think we shouldn't let society off the hook for seducing all of us into motherhood because it cannot be undone. Let us decide, according to our acquaintance with ourselves, our abilities, disabilities, wishes. This is exactly what I'm saying. Because we cannot undo it, don't push us into it. Let us decide. We are the owners.

Kassia Binkowski
So what you're talking about is really fascinating. This notion of, you know, seducing fewer women into motherhood is fascinating to me. Let's look at...Can you unpack that for us? Look at the different ways that we're, that society, pushes us into motherhood, and are there places in the world where this isn't happening as much? Where the opportunity to deviate from that path is normalized?

Orna Donath
So first of all, there are many ways to seduce us into it. One of them is to promise to every one of us that it will be the best thing that will ever happen to us. And that's not I will not say it's a lie, but it's half of the truth or it's uncertain.

Kassia Binkowski
I can assure you at 7am this morning, it was not the best thing that ever happened to me.

All
[laughter]

Orna Donath
Yeah, so there are women, who for them, it’s like a continuous feeling. So we are being promised, and nobody can promise that to us. That's first of all. And the second of all, it's not only that we are being promised, is that the option of staying non-mothers—staying because we came into the world non-mothers, and we can live 20, 30, 40 years without being mothers, and we can have quite good lives without being mothers. So the possibility to stay non-mothers is being stained. The option to stay a non-mother is still being stigmatized. And that's not a true liberty to decide. And I think that, at least up to now, I don't know any society that does not seduce women into motherhood in one way or another. First, because countries need high childbirth. And second, because in all of the societies, at least that I know, womanhood is deeply connected to motherhood.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Because this is kind of a foreign concept to us, we're trying to attach some kind of logical justification, whereas what Orna is saying is that across any geography, across all socioeconomic or life circumstances or support systems or whatever, in the same way that there are women who love being mothers, there are women who don't. Period. And that's kind of the crux of this conversation is the unintentional judgments that may come from us in trying to attach a logical reason is not a productive way of furthering this discussion because, frankly, what she's saying and part of her research—and, Orna, I would love to hear from you about this—is that there's not always that kind of, ‘Here's the big shining reason that now everyone will understand.’

Orna Donath
Exactly. I'm trying in my study to point the look to another direction so that society will ask itself, ‘Why do we assume that each and everyone who is considered to be a female must love, dig, enjoy being a mother?’ This is what I'm asking. And I also wrote it in my study that my study, of course, it's about regretting motherhood, but my study is, like, a mirror. Many people are relating to it as a window, like, ‘Let's come to the window and look at this freak show.’ I'm saying it, like...it's a kind of quite a way to say, but like a kind of an emotional freak show of women. Let's look through the window, and I'm saying ‘This window is a mirror.’ We must look as a society at our conceptions about motherhood, about womanhood, about feminism. A lot of issues can be brought up into discussion when we are talking about regretting mothers, and I...and I'm saying, ‘I didn't....I didn't go this way.’ My, my study is not like...not such a psychological [study]. I'm not trying to analyze their personalities. It's a political study.

Kassia Binkowski
So if if the observation that womanhood is so intrinsically tied to motherhood, and that's, that's at the crux of this stigma that these women experienced—either women like yourself who chose never to have children or women who regret having children—if that tie is kind of at the crux of this. do you speculate—and I acknowledge that it's a guess—but do you think that that will change at all, as societies broaden our definitions of what families look like as we see more families with two fathers or two mothers or as we see non-binary individuals carry pregnancies? Does that start to change that? To kind of, like, weaken that tie at all...for the better?

Orna Donath
Time will tell if for the better. I'm always, like, skeptical about what...I'm looking from a side at what is going on. I'm not the one who is first to like to cheer and glow from what is happening, but things are changing, and I think that many women are now saying, ‘Not at all causes, not at any price, I will be a mother.’ And that's a big thing.

Sabrina Merage Naim
What about fathers? Have there been any studies about if fathers regret fatherhood? And if so, is the stigma the same for them?

Orna Donath
I interviewed ten men in Israel—ten Israeli men...ten Jewish, Israeli men—who regret becoming fathers. And I didn't write about it because it was...it was already wide enough, but I did talk to them. You know, it's not a statistical study or something like that, so I'm just mentioning effect that eight out of this ten men didn't want to be fathers from the outset. They didn't want to be fathers, and they became fathers because they were in a relationship with a woman who wanted to be a mother, and they didn't want to break up with her. So they went after her with her willingness to be a mother. Some of them are now divorced and regretting becoming fathers. And so eight out of ten for themselves didn't even want to be fathers. I guess—I didn't...I didn't study it further than that—but I guess that they will not be slandered as women are.

Kassia Binkowski
Well, it makes sense. It's not so intrinsically tied to their definition of manhood.

Orna Donath
Yeah, yeah, masculinity and fatherhood is not related as womanhood and motherhood. If they will not become fathers, they will not not be considered as less men. They will be considered as not—sometimes not—not mature, like, running from responsibilities. I guess people will say that about them, but not questioning their masculinity, their manhood.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yeah, it's, it's interesting. I think people would jump to say, ‘Oh, you're a bad mother. You're an irresponsible woman. You there's something wrong biologically,’ you know, whatever. But I don't...My instinct is that they don't probably say the same things about men.

Orna Donath
Yeah. Men have the permission to take so many time outs from family and fatherhood. And women, they are being expected to...to stay put.

Kassia Binkowski
So I'm curious about your, you know, personal and professional opinion. How do we...how do we create the change that you want for women, which is to give them the space to make that decision intentionally, to not be, you know, forced down this pathway of motherhood? Where are the points in your life where you wish something had unfolded differently, where you wish you wouldn't have been subjected to the stigma? Or you, you know, acutely felt it? How do we change that as a society? What does that actually look like?

Orna Donath
Um, talking, like we are talking right now. It will take time. I'm not even sure I will see the change in my lifetime, a true change in my lifetime. But there is no other way than talking about it wherever we can. I also...During the last six years, I've been moderating groups for women here in Israel who are uncertain whether they want to be mothers or not. Because women who do know have no problem. They're being hugged by society. And women who know that they don't want to be mothers, they're not hugged by society but at least they know something that might give them some serenity, like quiet. But so many women are uncertain, and they have so, like, quite a heavy noise that they can't ask themselves what do they want? So I'm moderating...Once a year, I'm moderating a group for women who are uncertain, and we meet for ten weeks, and we just talk about the uncertainty. So I think we should be creative in creating places so women will have the opportunity to know themselves better. And I'm saying ‘to know themselves better’ also for the cases that they will decide to become others later on. That's great. So, they will become mothers, but they went all...all the way to...to...to understand what they truly want. So I think one of the ways is to create spaces where women will have the, uh, opportunity to investigate and to talk about it with one another—to hear other women.

Sabrina Merage Naim
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