The book highlights that many women experience regret, but this feeling is heavily stigmatized, leading to silence and shame. Donath argues against this stigma, aiming to open a conversation about how society pressures women into motherhood.

It challenges the notion that being a mother is a peak experience of fulfillment, arguing that it can be experienced as a void instead.

Many of the interviewed women described motherhood as an ongoing experience that erases their previous identity, causing them to long for their life before children.