Developing a Motherhood regret scale: An examination of reliability, validity, and association with basic attributes

The first objective of this study was to develop a scale that measures the level of regret of becoming a mother among women at various stages of motherhood (child age ranging from unborn to 29 years old) and examine its reliability and validity. The second objective was to explore the effects of participants’ basic attributes on the regret of becoming a mother. The study recruited mothers who were pregnant (before birth), mothers of infants (age 0–1), young children (age 2–6), primary school-aged children (age 7–12), and adolescents and young adults (age 13–29). In all, responses from 462 participants (458 women, 4 others; mean age = 37.77 [ SD = 7.03]; age range = 20–59) were analyzed. As a result, the unidimensional nine-item scale showed an acceptable value for goodness of fit and high reliability (α = .96). In addition, we determined the cut-off score to categorize the regret group. Among the participants in the present study ( N = 462), 31 were classified as the regret group, and they represented the scores at the top 7%. Moreover, regarding the association between the participants’ basic attributes and level of regret, we found that “having many children” had a significant negative effect on the predicted level of regret (β = –.19, p < .001) while “being a single mother” had a significant positive effect (β = .11, p < .05). Based on these results, we discuss the structure of the scale that was developed and the effect of a mother’s attributes on the level of regret to provide insights on the attributes of respondents classified into the regret group.