Parenthood is one of the most important social roles, but the consequences of becoming a parent are not always as expected. It is estimated that in developed countries, up to 5%-14% of parents regret their decision to have children and if they could turn back time, they would choose childlessness. While such a situation can have serious consequences for the entire family system, our knowledge of the causes and consequences of regretting parenthood is very limited. Beyond the possible taboo, one factor that is certainly responsible for the small number of studies on regretting parenthood is the lack of questionnaires to measure its severity. In the present study, we decided to fill this gap and developed a new questionnaire-the Parenthood Regret Scale. In a series of three studies (total N = 2,994) conducted on English-speaking, French-speaking, and Polish-speaking samples, we analyzed the factor structure, reliability, and validity of the new scale. The results confirmed that the Parenthood Regret Scale has a single-factor structure, which has been replicated in the three languages. Furthermore, the analyses confirmed that higher parenthood regret is negatively related to life satisfaction, and positively related to the severity of depressive symptoms and parental burnout. In light of the results obtained, it can be concluded that the Parenthood Regret Scale is a valid and reliable measure that can help advance research on an almost unknown issue of great social importance. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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我不应该生孩子：为人父母遗憾量表的制定和验证。

为人父母是最重要的社会角色之一，但成为父母的后果并不总是如预期的那样。据估计，在发达国家，高达5%-14%的父母后悔自己生孩子的决定，如果时间可以倒流，他们会选择不生孩子。虽然这种情况可能会对整个家庭系统产生严重后果，但我们对后悔为人父母的原因和后果的了解非常有限。除了可能的禁忌之外，导致后悔为人父母的研究数量较少的一个因素肯定是缺乏衡量其严重程度的调查问卷。在本研究中，我们决定填补这一空白，并开发了一种新的问卷——父母遗憾量表。在对英语、法语和波兰语样本进行的一系列三项研究（总计 N = 2,994）中，我们分析了新量表的因子结构、信度和效度。结果证实，父母遗憾量表具有单因素结构，并已在三种语言中复制。此外，分析证实，较高的为人父母遗憾与生活满意度呈负相关，与抑郁症状和父母倦怠的严重程度呈正相关。根据所获得的结果，可以得出结论，父母遗憾量表是一种有效且可靠的测量方法，可以帮助推进对一个几乎不为人所知的具有重大社会意义的问题的研究。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2023 APA，保留所有权利）。