I'll Always Wonder

How To Embrace Wonder And Avoid Regret When Deciding Whether Or Not To Have Kids

Jun 27, 2025

green trees on green grass field during daytime — Photo by Beth Macdonald on Unsplash

We all know one of the biggest sticking points for people on the fence about having kids is a fear of regret. What if I regret having kids? What if I regret not having kids? The fear of making the “wrong” decision can have us paralyzed and clinging to the fence for safety. It’s how we often keep ourselves stuck on this rollercoaster we’re desperate to get off. Sometimes we feel like there’s a gun to our heads only to look in the mirror and realize we’re the ones holding the gun.

I recently saw this video on IG from a coach friend named Keltie Maguire who also works with clients trying to make this decision. She was interviewing Stacey Hicks, a mom, who talked about making the decision of whether or not to have a second child. She describes how natural it is to wonder what having a second child might be like but ultimately she decided not to. It got me thinking about the idea of wonder vs regret…

We’ve already talked a lot about regret here at Mother of a Dilemma. Here are a couple posts to go back to if this is a big concern for you:

Fear Month: Regret

Stuck In The Middle With You

But we haven’t really talked about the idea of wonder, and I think we really should. Wondering is a neutral curiosity about the path you didn’t choose. Wondering about the choice you didn’t make is extremely normal and is perfectly fine... dare I even say, healthy? In fact, I would be genuinely surprised if you didn’t wonder at all about the path not taken. I don’t mean you need to wonder constantly and ruminate about it, but there may be moments where you stop and let your mind go there and picture an alternate reality. It’s only natural.

I think we’re often worried that if we wonder it means we’ll regret our choice, and so we try to be 100% certain about our choice so that there’s zero room for any wondering after we’ve made it. And if we anticipate we might wonder after making a different choice, then we aren’t ready to choose yet. This is not the case.

Instead of framing it as “I’m going to spend my whole life wondering if I made the right choice”, we could reframe it as “Occasionally over the course of my life, I will likely wonder about the path I didn’t choose.” And can we make that OK and not mean that something has gone horribly wrong? Can we choose to enjoy that experience we’ve chosen knowing that we’d still be left wondering if we had made the other decision instead? Can we let it be possible that both paths were good… you’re enjoying the one you’re on and the path you didn’t choose might have been good too… without needing to rank them and make one better than the other?

Let’s be careful not to conflate wonder with regret. What makes regret different from wonder is this: Wondering is just being curious and letting our imagination explore a little. Regret is the comparison and judgement that assigns certain meaning to it. Regret is deciding that the path you’ve chosen is wrong and that the other path would have been better. It’s often based on picturing the other path in the most positive light and the path you’re currently on in the most negative light… or not as positive light at least. But both paths contain both good and bad.

A helpful antidote to regret is to remind yourself of the positives of where you are now and remind yourself of the possible negatives of the path you didn’t choose. If we can look at things in a more balanced way, we can turn down the heat on feelings of regret.

If you have children, you might wonder what your life would be like if you hadn’t had them. What trips would you have taken? What hobbies would you have dedicated yourself to? What work opportunities might you have taken on? What relationships would you have nurtured instead? What sort of relaxing weekends might you have? It doesn’t need to mean that you regret having children. Remind yourself instead the reasons why you chose to have a child and all the experiences you’re looking forward to having as a parent. See if there’s a way to work in any of the trips or opportunities you wondered about into your life now. Also remind yourself that being childfree doesn’t mean life is just vacation and no stress!

Similarly, you might choose to remain childfree and wonder what parenthood would have been like. How many kids would you have had? Would they be boys or girls? What would you have named them? What would they look like? What sort of Christmas gifts would “Santa” have brought them? What would they be like as adults? These types of thoughts can be fun curiosities. They don’t need to mean that you’ve made a huge mistake and should have had children. Remind yourself of all the great parts of being childfree, and see if there are fulfilling ways you can nurture the kids in your circle or kids in need. Remind yourself of the hard parts of parenthood that you decided not to take on.

Don’t be afraid of wondering. Embrace it. Let it be fun and keep perspective that it doesn’t mean you’ve made a wrong choice or that your life would have been better if you’d chosen differently. It would just be different. There are pros and cons to both lifestyles. Besides, you’ll never know exactly what the path would have looked like if you’d chosen it. You can wonder about it and imagine it, but it isn’t reality. So you can’t compare your current circumstances to an imagined best case scenario you’ve made up in your head. It’s not fair.

I used to be afraid of wondering about what life would have been like if I’d had kids. I worried it would put me back on the fence after deciding to be childfree. Maybe it used to, before I’d really decided. But now I like thinking about it when I do. I’ve learned that it doesn’t mean anything has gone wrong or that my choice isn’t the one I still want. The other path doesn’t have to be a dumpster fire to walk away from it. Do you ever wonder?

I'll Always Wonder

How To Embrace Wonder And Avoid Regret When Deciding Whether Or Not To Have Kids

Discussion about this post