What's Good Parenting? Key Skills, Healthy Relationships, and Making the Choice

Being Well with Forrest Hanson and Dr. Rick Hanson

Being Well

Education, Self-improvement, Health & Fitness, Mental Health

4.8 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 23 October 2023

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On today’s episode Dr. Rick and Forrest focus on one of the most important decisions we’ll make in life: the choice to become a parent. They focus on what good parenting looks like in practice, the key difference in thinking of a child as a “means” or an “end,” and how to know whether becoming a parent is the right path for you. Neurodharma Course! Join Dr. Rick for Neurodharma, a live, online course focused on developing seven key qualities that help us steady the mind, warm the heart, and find a reliable sense of inner peace. Neurodharma launches October 14, use code BeingWell20 for 20% off the purchase price. You can watch this episode on YouTube. Key Topics: 0:00: Introduction 2:20: The significance (and uniqueness) of this choice 4:50: Being aware of your motivations for having a child 16:55: The influence of primal biology 20:50: Qualities of a good parent 30:30: Mirroring, idealizing, twinship, and the process of differentiation 36:35: Optimal frustration, and a healthy parental work ethic 41:25: The rewards of being a parent 46:45: If you don’t like __ you shouldn’t become a parent 48:50: A word for current parents who wish things had been different 53:00: Community, partnership, and resources 55:10: Meaning and fulfillment with or without a child 1:00:50: Recap Support the Podcast: We're now on Patreon! If you'd like to support the podcast, follow this link. Sponsors: Factor delivers fresh, never-frozen, fully prepared meals right to your door. Head to factormeals.com/beingwell50 and use code beingwell50 to get 50% off. Body Electric is an interactive six-part podcast series from NPR that investigates how our relationship with technology is impacting our health. Listen wherever you get your podcasts! Join over a million people using BetterHelp, the world’s largest online counseling platform. Visit betterhelp.com/beingwell for 10% off your first month! Want to sleep better? Try the Calm app! Visit calm.com/beingwell for 40% off a premium subscription. Finally get that project off the ground with Squarespace! Head to squarespace.com/beingwell for a free trial, and when you’re ready to launch use coupon code BEINGWELL to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Connect with the show: Subscribe on iTunes Follow Forrest on YouTube Follow us on Instagram Follow Forrest on Instagram Follow Rick on Facebook Follow Forrest on Facebook Visit Forrest's website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to being while I'm Forrest Hansen. If you're new to the
0:11.0	podcast this is where we explore the practical science of personal growth.
0:15.0	And if you've listened before, welcome back.
0:17.0	For most of human history, it was just assumed that people would have children.
0:22.0	But over the last several decades, more and more people
0:26.1	have deliberately chosen to live child free. According to a poll by Pew Research in 2021,
0:32.1	44% of non-parents between the ages of 18 and 49 say it is either
0:38.0	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
0:47.8	want to have kids. And then there are probably even more people and I put myself in this category, who are mostly planning
0:54.6	on having kids, you know, if it all works out and that's something that I can do, but are still at least
1:00.2	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
1:16.5	consequences for children. It's an incredibly high-leveraged decision that we're making here.
1:24.4	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
1:30.9	me as someone I'm very glad made the choice to become a parent psychologist and author Dr Rick Hansen
1:36.2	So thanks for that dad and well you're welcome kid good call
1:46.0	Well you're the gift that keeps on giving for us. Warming my heart over here.
1:48.0	Thanks, Dad, I appreciate that.
1:49.0	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.
2:13.2	I mean that might kind of influence how we talk about this topic a little bit.
2:16.4	Yeah, great, thank you.
2:18.4	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,
2:29.1	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
	...

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