This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, July 25th, 2011. I'm Caleb Brown.

Good parenting really isn't all that hard and the reasons people have kids today really aren't

that different from the reasons for having kids a long time ago. All this according

to Brian Kaplan author of the new book Selfish Reasons to Have Kids, we spoke Friday.

How do people think about the prospect of having kids and how do you think they should think

about the prospect of having kids?

Good question. I think, you know, especially in modern America, people think that it's pretty much the end

of your fun life.

It's the time when you have to put aside all of your interests and hobbies and you're just going

to focus on serving these ungrateful

additions to your family for the next 18 years or so. And when I say we know we should

think about it is of course there's there's you know there is some sacrifice involved

there is a change in your lifestyle but it's just

a great chance to enjoy a unique journey with another person and you know to see how they

turn out and just realize that you know they are independent people they're their own people they're going to do

their own things and the ability of parents to durably change their kids is

greatly overrated so it just works out a lot better if you just can accept that.

Go into some detail about that, the idea that what effect do parents have on their children?

Sure, so of course most people assume that parents affect their kids massively in every way.

The main thing that I do in the book is rely upon studies of kids who are adopted and studies

of twins, which actually allow us to measure the long-run effect of parents on how kids

turn out.

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