Maternal regret as identity disruption: an interpretative phenomenological study of French-speaking mothers

Maternal regret is a highly stigmatized experience that is often conflated with postpartum depression, parental burnout, ambivalence, or lack of maternal love. This study explored how French-speaking mothers made sense of maternal regret and how they related it to social expectations, psychological distress, identity, and personal history. We conducted a qualitative study using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Ten French-speaking mothers who self-identified as experiencing parental regret were recruited from facilitated online peer-support groups. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted by videoconference between March and May 2025, audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, anonymized, and analyzed inductively by two researchers using NVivo 15. Four interrelated Group Experiential Themes (GETs) were identified: personal desire under social pressure; disillusionment, depression, and disconnection from other mothers; construction and disruption of maternal identity; and motherhood as a space for transgenerational repair. Participants generally described regret not as rejection of the child but as a painful disruption of self-continuity, involving loss of autonomy, mourning of a former self, and difficulty integrating a socially prescribed maternal role with other dimensions of identity. Among the women interviewed, maternal regret was experienced primarily as identity-related suffering shaped by social expectations, psychological vulnerability, and personal history. Health professionals should provide non-judgmental spaces in which regret, ambivalence, and loss can be expressed while also assessing coexisting depression, parental burnout, and other mental health concerns.