Hello and welcome to being while I'm Forrest Hansen. If you're new to the

podcast this is where we explore the practical science of personal growth.

And if you've listened before, welcome back.

For most of human history, it was just assumed that people would have children.

But over the last several decades, more and more people

have deliberately chosen to live child free. According to a poll by Pew Research in 2021,

44% of non-parents between the ages of 18 and 49 say it is either

not too or not at all likely that they will have children someday. Of those 56% over half say it's because they just don't

want to have kids. And then there are probably even more people and I put myself in this category, who are mostly planning

on having kids, you know, if it all works out and that's something that I can do, but are still at least

a little bit on the fence about it. And the question of whether or not to have kids is one of the biggest decisions we're going to make in our lives. And survey suggests that almost 20% of parents regret having a child. And then on the other hand, bad parenting has enormous

consequences for children. It's an incredibly high-leveraged decision that we're making here.

In this episode we're going to be talking about what makes a good parent and whether becoming a parent might make sense for you or not. Joining

me as someone I'm very glad made the choice to become a parent psychologist and author Dr Rick Hansen

So thanks for that dad and well you're welcome kid good call

Well you're the gift that keeps on giving for us. Warming my heart over here.

Thanks, Dad, I appreciate that.

And, you know, it's probably worth disclosing at the beginning of this episode that hey if you're new here that's my dad I am his child that's probably going to enter into the conversational dynamic a little bit and also that I would describe myself as somebody who had like a really good run as a kid, you know, I was born into a very healthy family system, you know, very responsive parents who cared about my well-being. I thought that you guys were by and large really darn good parents.

I mean that might kind of influence how we talk about this topic a little bit.

Yeah, great, thank you.

So where I would love to start with, Dad, it's just your take on the significance of this choice at all, and just giving it the credit that it's due,

because I think that a lot of people do just sort of blindly assume that they're going to have kids and it just becomes

...