There’s a particular kind of thought that tends to arrive at a very unglamorous moment.

In the car-line queue. Folding a small pair of pants for the fourth time this week. Scrolling past a photo of someone on a patio at 4 p.m. on a Thursday, holding a drink that nobody is trying to knock over.

The thought goes something like:

I miss my old life.

And then, roughly half a second later, the follow-up:

What kind of mother thinks that?

Here’s the short answer: a very normal one.

Missing the life you had before children is a feeling many women describe, and it is not the same thing as regretting your kids. You can love them with the full, ferocious, would-step-in-front-of-a-bus kind of love and still grieve the version of yourself who could leave the house with only her keys.

Both things can be true. Usually, they are.

First, let’s separate missing from regretting

This distinction matters, because the guilt usually comes from blurring the two.

Regret says: I wish I hadn’t done this.

Missing says: I loved some things about how life used to be, and I don’t have them right now.

The second one is just an honest accounting. It’s what happens when any big life change closes some doors as it opens others. People miss their hometowns after moving for jobs they wanted. They miss their single-life freedom inside marriages they chose. Nobody calls that a moral failing.

Parenthood just carries more cultural pressure to be grateful every second, which makes the ordinary feeling of loss sound like a confession.

It isn’t.

The research says parenting is both. At the same time.

When Pew Research Center surveyed more than 3,700 U.S. parents in 2022, the vast majority said parenting was enjoyable and rewarding all or most of the time. In the same survey, 41% said it was tiring all or most of the time, and 29% said it was stressful all or most of the time.

For mothers, those numbers were higher: 47% said tiring, 33% said stressful.

And 62% of parents said parenting had been at least somewhat harder than they expected. About three in ten mothers said it had been a lot harder.

Read those numbers together and you get a fairly accurate portrait of modern parenthood: deeply rewarding, frequently exhausting, harder than advertised.

Not either/or.

Both/and.

Parents are more stressed than other adults. That’s not a vibe — it’s official.

In 2024, the U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory specifically about parents’ mental health, titled Parents Under Pressure. It cited 2023 survey data showing 48% of parents said that most days their stress was completely overwhelming, compared with 26% of other adults.

The advisory also described parenting as something that can bring meaning and purpose, and can also involve “significant, sometimes relentless, stress.”

It flagged loneliness, too. Citing a 2021 survey, it reported that roughly 65% of parents and guardians, and 77% of single parents, experienced loneliness, compared with 55% of non-parents.

That’s worth sitting with for a second. You can be almost never alone and still be lonely. Being needed by small people all day is not the same as being known by grown ones.

And when you miss your old life, part of what you may be missing is exactly that: friendships that had room to breathe, conversations that finished, people who saw you as something other than the person who knows where the other shoe is.

Your time didn’t just shrink. It changed shape.

Ask most women what they miss and the list tends to be small and specific. Uninterrupted thoughts. Spontaneity. Sleeping in. Reading a book in one sitting. Being bored.

The data backs up the instinct that time has been reorganized around children. Statistics Canada’s 2022 time-use data found mothers spent an average of 7.5 hours a day caring for their children, compared with about 4.9 hours for fathers.

The Surgeon General’s advisory points to U.S. research suggesting that the time parents now put into paid work and childcare has come at a cost to time with partners, sleep and parental leisure.

So no, you’re not imagining it. The hours that used to be yours genuinely went somewhere.

And much of what fills the gaps is invisible: the noticing, planning and remembering that never makes it onto a schedule. If that sounds familiar, we dig into it in How Do You Stop Carrying the Entire Family Calendar in Your Head?

There’s a word for this: matrescence

Anthropologist Dana Raphael coined the term matrescence in the 1970s to describe the process of becoming a mother as a developmental passage, not a single event.

The word has been picked up again in recent years by psychologists and neuroscientists. A 2023 review in Trends in Cognitive Sciences by Orchard and colleagues draws the comparison directly: just as adolescence prepares a person for adulthood, matrescence is a period of transition, and both life stages are marked by shifting social roles. The review notes the term covers many routes into motherhood, including pregnancy, surrogacy and adoption.

Why does this matter for the woman crying in the grocery store parking lot?

Because nobody expects a 14-year-old to move through adolescence without wobbling. We expect identity confusion, mood swings, a bit of grief for childhood. We give teenagers room.

Matrescence gives mothers the same frame. It’s a transition. Transitions are disorienting. Feeling unmoored partway through one is not a sign you’re doing it wrong.

It’s also worth noting what the concept doesn’t promise: a neat ending, a timeline, or that everyone experiences it the same way. Some women feel the shift immediately. Some feel it years later, when kids start school, or leave home, or when a career change or a parent’s illness reshuffles everything again.

How you feel depends a lot on what’s around you

Here’s one of the more useful findings in this area, and one that gets talked about less than it should.

A widely cited 2016 study in the American Journal of Sociology by Glass, Simon and Andersson compared parents and non-parents across 22 wealthy countries. In countries with weaker family policies, parents reported being less happy than non-parents. In countries with stronger supports — things like paid time off, flexible work schedules and subsidized childcare — that gap disappeared. The United States had the largest parenthood “happiness penalty” of the countries studied.

Translation: if you’re missing your old life, it may not be because there’s something wrong with you or your love for your kids. It may be because you are doing an enormous job with not much of a village.

That’s a very different problem to solve. And it’s not one you fix by feeling more grateful.

What missing your old life can tell you

Rather than shoving the feeling away, it can be useful to get curious about it. Not every part of your pre-kid life is something you need back. But the specific things you miss are often pointing at a real need.

A few questions worth asking yourself:

• What, exactly, do I miss? “My old life” is vague. “Reading on a Sunday morning” or “having a conversation that isn’t about logistics” is something you can actually work with.
• Is it the activity, or the feeling? Sometimes it’s not the bar you miss. It’s feeling spontaneous, or attractive, or competent at something other than packing lunches.
• Is this about time, or about load? If you’d have free time if only you weren’t the one tracking everything, that’s a division-of-labour conversation, not a personal shortcoming.
• Who did I used to talk to? Loneliness is common among parents. The friend you haven’t texted in a year may be missing you too.
• Is anything else going on? If the feeling is persistent, heavy, or getting in the way of daily life, talk to your doctor. That’s true at any stage of parenting, not only the newborn months. If you’d like to talk to someone right away, in Canada you can call or text 9-8-8 any time, and in the U.S. you can call or text 988. Postpartum Support International (postpartum.net) also offers support for parents in Canada and the U.S.

Small ways back to yourself (that don’t require a retreat in Tulum)

Nobody needs another list of self-care suggestions that cost $400 and a babysitter you don’t have. But a few low-drama moves tend to help, and none of them require you to stop loving your kids:

• Protect one recurring thing that’s just yours. A weekly class, a standing walk, an hour with a book that isn’t about parenting. Small and consistent beats big and imaginary.
• Say the feeling out loud to someone safe. A partner, a friend, a therapist. Shame tends to shrink when it’s spoken.
• Renegotiate the load. If one adult is carrying most of the planning, the other adult can carry more. That’s not a favour. It’s math.
• Let yourself grieve without fixing it. Some things genuinely are gone for now. Acknowledging that can be more honest than pretending you don’t notice.
• Remember this stage is a stage. The demands of parenting change shape as kids grow. They don’t vanish, but they do shift.

And if you’re also caring for an ageing parent while raising kids, the squeeze can be even tighter. We look at that specific crunch in The Sandwich Years: Raising Kids While Your Parents Need You Too.

The Mom One’s take

Missing your old life isn’t betrayal.

It’s evidence you had a life worth missing.

The woman who used to sleep until 10, travel on a whim and finish her coffee while it was hot didn’t die in a delivery room or an adoption office. She got very, very busy. And maybe a bit buried.

You don’t have to choose between her and your kids. You don’t have to pretend every minute is magical to prove you’re a good mother. You get to say, “I love them more than anything, and some days I really miss me.”

That sentence isn’t a crack in your parenting.

It’s just honest.

And honesty, last time we checked, is something we’d like our kids to learn too.

For more stories about the real, complicated side of raising a family, visit The Muddy Family Desk.

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Featuring The Mom One: loves her kids fiercely. Occasionally hides from them.

Muddy Family content is educational and informational and is not a substitute for individualized medical, mental health or professional advice. If you’re struggling with your mental health, please reach out to a healthcare provider.

Sources

• Parenting in America Today — Pew Research Center
• Parents Under Pressure: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Mental Health & Well-Being of Parents — U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
• How do parents share child care? — Statistics Canada
• Matrescence: lifetime impact of motherhood on cognition and the brain — Trends in Cognitive Sciences
• Parenthood and Happiness: Effects of Work-Family Reconciliation Policies in 22 OECD Countries — American Journal of Sociology (summary: Population Research Center, UT Austin)