When you love your child, but sometimes you don't like parenthood

Psychologist Sarb Johal say ambivalence about parenting can strike at any time - even in the lead up to parenting. He says it's totally normal but because few parents ever voice these feelings, it's easy to feel guilty.It's a tricky subject, but there are times for all parents when they just don't like parenthood. They love their child, but the actual experience of being a parent at that moment just doesn't feel great. For example, when your child is inconsolable, and you haven't been able to eat or sleep for hours, and you can't even get to the toilet. Psychologist Sarb Johal says ambivalence about parenting can strike at any time - even in the lead up to parenting. Listen to the full interview hereJohal tells Kathryn Ryan it's totally normal to feel that way but because few parents ever voice these feelings, it's easy to feel guilty. "They can experience pressure from other people to conform or feel like they can't voice their doubts or concerns, but the implicit message here is that no one is really talking about it so maybe there's something wrong with me, and so you can internalise a lot of this ambivalence because everybody else feels like they're doing okay with it." The dread or regret of parenthood can set in over time or emerge when you're frustrated with your duties, he says. "You could feel this tension building up between you and your child, and that can have resultant feelings like anger, guilt, or depression if it doesn't go right." As a result, parents can feel compelled to suppress their thoughts, because they don't want their peers to perceive them in a negative way, and end up acting in compensatory ways, he says. "Often we can distract ourselves or we can obliviate wine o'clock; this idea that we want to get to the end of the day, we want to do something completely different that is not to do with our kids. "Or sometimes we might be hypervigilant. So we get super helicopter parenting about it, because we don't want this thing to go wrong." At the root of this are unrealistic expectations of having and raising children, Johal says. "I think that experienced parents would probably all sign up to the notion that having a child is really messy, figuratively, literally, but also the emotions that it provokes in you and others too, including your children, your partner, your parents, whoever is around, it's messy." For most people what they're experiencing is the comparison between the life that they had before or the life that they imagined that they would have as a parent, he says. …Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details