Being afraid of having kids and becoming a parent is real and it’s exceedingly common. 

One aspect of this to-have-or-not-to-have-kids ambivalence that may be more unique for those of us who come from backgrounds of childhood neglect, abuse, or trauma, is the fear that, if we become parents, we’ll inevitably mess up our kids as much as we feel like our parents did to us.

And we really don’t want to do that. 

We may fear that we’re too damaged to have kids.

Sometimes we worry that we don’t know how to be good mothers/fathers because we didn’t – and don’t – have any positive examples of what this can look like.

We imagine that having a kid will turn us into our mother or father. And that’s exactly what we’d most like to avoid.

Because our own trauma still feels unresolved sometimes, we’ll lash out or overreact to our kid.

We stress. A lot.

We go back and forth, weighing the pros and cons of becoming a parent. Wondering if we’re cut out for it. We spend so much emotional energy and time trying to figure out what we “should” do.

Like anyone else who doesn’t know 100% whether they want to become a parent or not, we spend a lot of exhausting time in ambivalence.

But our ambivalence takes on its own special fearful flavor of what-ifs and possibly-maybes, informed by our own pain and sadness from our younger days.

Please hear me out: Being afraid to have kids is normal and natural.

Just because you’re afraid of having kids and have these fears doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have children.

And just because these fears are normal and natural doesn’t necessarily mean that you should have children.

What these fears do mean is that you may need to do some extra inventorying. Maybe some deeper psychological digging than your non-traumatized peers may have to do to understand what part of your ambivalence about becoming a parent is based in historically-informed reactive fear, and what part of it is indicative of a genuine lack of desire to have kids.

Look, I don’t have a crystal ball and I can’t tell you what decision will be best for you. But in today’s post I want to offer up some ideas and some prompts to help you dig a little deeper. Especially if you personally find yourself afraid – even in part – about becoming a parent for fear of replicating what was done to you and what you experienced in your own childhood. 

If any part of this resonates with you, please keep reading.