Thomas Hansen [00:00:03] My name is Thomas Hansen. I live in Oslo, in Norway, and I've been working for about 20 years with ageing research focussing on the psychological aspects of ageing and with a particular view to wellbeing, loneliness, mental health, that kind of issues. I changed work last year, and now I work at the National Institute for Public Health at the Department of Suicide and Mental Health. I'm still very much interested in ageing and genatological research. I've been publishing quite a bit on different topics for different periods. I've been very interested in in childlessness and parental status and how our parenthood affects wellbeing and how childlessness affects wellbeing, and how the two statuses might affect ageing and well-being in later life. I think I came into this topics from my own childlessness. I was involuntarily childless for a number of years, and so that kind of spurred things down in terms of this research interest. But interestingly, perhaps after that, I've had four kids, so now I'm sort of at the opposite extreme of that. So it started with two foster kids. Then we had twins on top of that.

Huda C [00:01:14] So what really got you into the intersection between well-being and happiness and old age? Like, what was it that really prompted that for you?

Thomas Hansen [00:01:22] Well, it wasn't like a childhood dream coming to fruition. It was more like-

Sahil S [00:01:27] What was your childhood dream Thomas?

Thomas Hansen [00:01:28] Becoming a professional footballer like everyone else.

Sahil S [00:01:32] And then what happened?

Thomas Hansen [00:01:33] Well, partly because of my parents being psychologists. Probably I ended up with psychology and I got sort of a few jobs after that. And then me and my wife travelled around the world for half a year, and then I came back and applied for 100 jobs. I lived in Trondheim, further up north in Norway then, so I got two jobs and one of them was in Oslo. This was in the gerontology.

Sahil S [00:01:56] So is gerontology kind of like geriatrics? Is it like a part of that as you grow older? So it's looking at old age and wellbeing in that age group specifically?

Thomas Hansen [00:02:06] Well, in general, it's sort of the same difference as psychology and psychiatrics in a way. Geriatrics looks more at like medical topics, whereas gerontology and social gerontology in particular looks more like social psychological topics that's related to ageing and life course with a particular view on the second half of life, but not so much on old old age, but more like what happens when people enter through their 50s, 60s and 70s.

Huda C [00:02:30] So I have a question now - regarding when I guess you hit the 50s mark. Most people say, you know, the older you get, the more health problems you have. In terms of that do you believe that a lot of the time our health problems, especially around that age, kind of are exacerbated due to external factors that influence or, I guess, affect our mental health?

Thomas Hansen [00:02:54] It's an interesting question, because you normally would think that somatic or physical health problems influence your later life well-being, but it can also be the other way around so things can sort of loop and contribute to each other through this circle. What recent data show is that late life loneliness or loneliness in all age groups actually, as well as mental health problems and lower quality of life, can also give this feedback loops and contribute to different somatic and mental health problems, for example, depression and anxiety problems, but also more somatic health problems, which might be more of a surprise that loneliness can actually lead to a lot of cardiovascular problems, poorer immune system, different illnesses. And when these problems are more chronic, they tend to compromise your physical health or they can do that. So especially in older adults, you see that chronic loneliness has these really detrimental effect on physical and mental health, which in turn, of course, exacerbates social isolation and mental health problems that we're there to begin with. More like a feedback loop. That's quite detrimental.

Sahil S [00:03:57] Going off that I actually do have a question about loneliness. How do you define loneliness? And a lot of people say, Oh, it's all in your head. Loneliness is in your head because you could be in a big group with people, but you might still feel lonely. So how do you define loneliness and what's the difference between being alone and loneliness?

Thomas Hansen [00:04:15] Yeah, that's an interesting one. People tend to confuse the two. Also, some researchers and politicians, for example, in Australia, I think you have a minister, at least in the UK, they have a minister of loneliness. The core of that post is not so much focussed on loneliness. It's more focussed on social isolation. So social isolation is sort of the objective component of social wellbeing or the lack thereof. You have more like an objective lack of social contact. There's different markers, so one of them is living alone and the other one is low connectivity and low social contact and low social participation. So that's sort of the objective side of it all. But then you have the loneliness part, which is more like the subjective component of social wellbeing, and that can be quite different from social isolation. So you have a lot of people that are quite objectively isolated, but nonetheless, report really low on loneliness and reported high satisfaction with their social situation, and then you have the opposite of that where you have people who are quite connected but still feel lonely. It can be tied to different explanations. It can have to do with trauma during childhood. Low attachment to your parents, or being teased at school or going through a different trauma of some kind and then that leads to you having problem sort of trusting people and connecting really closely with people. But it could also relate to people having very high social standards. If you're very active in socials, then you have these really high expectations of social contact and you're not you're sort of never satisfied - so the glass is always half empty in a way. We often find a correlation of 0.2 between the two, so that's sort of a quite low correlation. So it displays how how different the two can be.

Huda C [00:05:55] So you said something along the lines of people that often feel this way are reported to have traumas from their childhood. One of the main traumas we often hear about is to do with parents a lot of the time. Obviously once the kids out in the world and they're able to socialise with other people that's a different story, and that's got its own sort of connotations. But when it comes to parents, it's kind of a big one now. One of the things that I guess we were talking about earlier and this is what we wanted to get into. So I guess it's a perfect segue way. You know, childlessness versus parenthood. We live in a world where basically being a parent is a stock standard. It's an expectation. It's just a way of life. It's what you do. And if you don't do that, what else are you going to do? Societally I'm not sure if you're I guess you know much about this because I know you've studied the happiness levels. Why is it that we attach these norms to being a parent?

Thomas Hansen [00:06:52] Well, this is a difficult one. I think it's a very robust sort of standard that's been there for ages. And of course, going back thousands of years, families and communities have needed children, so there is a strong social pressure and strong social norm of having children, especially for women. So women of all times have felt a strong sort of social pressure, culture pressure and which in turn have led to strong personal expectation and preference for children. And with that, also perhaps these popular beliefs that we need children to have sort of the right and moral life and we need children to feel fulfilled and that children are essential for a happy marriage. And so it's sort of a robust norm and a strong social expectation that I think has been there for ages that sort of stems from the societal need for children and also for social order in a way. Brings structure to people's life and sort of keeps people in order and and sort of makes for a more predictable and well-functioning society in a way. It's been a social norms forever in a way. But even today we see these norms are strong and there's still a strong stigma attached to choosing to not have children. So you see that people who don't want children would sort of explain that away and sometimes blame other problems instead of being honest about their situation. So it's still a strong social norm, but it's starting to fade a little bit. I think it's becoming more common now to choose not to have kids, and you have role models in popular culture. So we see, at least in Western countries, at least in the north western European countries, that voluntary childlessness is on a slight increase, but it's still still very uncommon. So when you interview young people about whether to have children or they want children, you would find that just about three to five percent are explicit about not wanting children and men are more often than women. So women in general tend to still have this strong inclination and strong preference and ambition and need for for children,

Huda C [00:08:44] I guess, with women there's the fear of the body clock too, right?

Thomas Hansen [00:08:49] Right. That's true. Yeah. So that's adds to the pressure, of course. Whereas men, I mean, their ability to have children is also declining after a certain age, but not in the same extent as women.

Huda C [00:09:02] And it's something I find that is not talked about because so I knew this chick with her husband, they were trying to have children and she started off quite late in her life. She was like past these, like 35 - 36 yo. Society says that your eggs kind of dry out by that point. 35 is like you cut off, you know? So anyway, they were trying to have babies and basically they went through absolutely everything and anything you could imagine to the point where she was sickly. She was starting to lose hair because they tried IVF, they tried putting her on different diets, they'd tried hormonal things. They did everything under the Sun and they did it for five years. So she was like almost 40 by this point. They were just slamming her with everything. And so eventually she decided or they decided that I'm going to use my sisters egg.

Thomas Hansen [00:09:53] Oh yeah.

Huda C [00:09:54] So then they did that, and it almost worked. But then she lost the baby. Basically, the doctor said the problem is actually not you, it was the husband all along.

Thomas Hansen [00:10:05] Oh, right.

Sahil S [00:10:06] Great movie plot.

Thomas Hansen [00:10:07] And what a surprising twist

Huda C [00:10:09] I know. And they said, because you can carry, because you did. The baby didn't survive, but it wasn't because you couldn't carry the child. It was actually the genetic that came from the father. I guess what frustrated me the most is this common expectation that it'll always be the woman that's the problem. And it's it's funny that we never talk about how men can also be a problem. If it's not working, it's got to be the woman.

Thomas Hansen [00:10:32] I guess the story resonates a bit with me because I've gone through all that. But at the same time I can't really, I didn't find that that was sort of the implicit or the first reaction in a way that has to be something wrong with the women. I found that going through all these tests and everything, you sort of got the objective answer both on the male and the female side in terms of what they can find out about their reproductive abilities. Sometimes I think it's quite common that they don't find anything wrong in a way. But it still doesn't work. It has something to do with the match, perhaps, or genetic things that are not able to be found out about. So I can't say that my personal experience or what I know from the literature sort of backs that up.

Sahil S [00:11:14] Yeah, I wanted to interrupt. Were they western caucasian couple?

Huda C [00:11:19] Yes.

Sahil S [00:11:20] That's very interesting. So I actually saw this show. It's on Netflix. It's called Bling Empire. It's like a reality TV show. It's really trashy, but it's about this Asian couple, really rich Asian couple where the wife basically pretends that it's her fault that they're not able to have the baby. And she was lying to the husband's father because they didn't want to say that the husband was the one who can't have the baby because the husband's the man and there's going to be nothing wrong with him.

Thomas Hansen [00:11:47] But I mean, if if a couple is seeking help in a relatively old age 35 to 40, for example, then I guess the first reaction could be that it's more selective the women that has something wrong because of their biological clock in a way. But I found that also the men were scrutinised in a way. You have all these tests you need to go through and they they can at least find out about the obvious thing like sperm counts and all that. But in my own experience from ourselves and others around us was that often they wouldn't find anything wrong. And there's an increase in chances of infertility in general, actually, and in most Western countries. So it's driven largely by this chain of postponements. People tend to take longer educations, move out of their home later, tend to actualise themselves and do all this travelling and everything before they settle down with a partner. And then they wait even longer for having kids. So eventually a larger proportion ends up being too late in a way.

Huda C [00:12:44] So I have a question about actualisation. Everyone's got this idea of what it means to be self-actualized. So can I ask you what it actually is? What is self-actualisation?

Sahil S [00:12:54] I've no idea what the fuck that means at all.

Thomas Hansen [00:12:57] I have no ideas either. I think it's it's a difficult one, but it has to do with personal growth and development and the sort of meeting your sort of goals in life. You have a bucket list that you want to sort of get through before it's quote-unquote too late. When you have children, I can only speak for myself. For myself, I wanted to do certain things before I had kids and settle down with that, for example, studying in Australia, travelling, doing my master's degree. And yeah, that was sort of my expectations in terms of what I wanted to get out of the way before I was going to be 'too late'. But I mean, it's different for everyone, but career is also very central to many people. They want to be at a certain stage in their career before they settle down and have children. And then perhaps your plans of having children eventually might coincide with the partnership disillusioned and you sort of start it all over again and It might be too late in the end. And people also have perhaps too high expectations in terms of what can be done from the medical side. We have all this really advanced technical reproductive assistance now technology. But with that, people tend to have this really high expectations that it will be successful in the end. But obviously, that's not the case for everyone. So even though this assistance can help a lot of couples, some couples will end up permanently childless.

Sahil S [00:14:18] I wanted to go back to something you said before, which was mentioning the fact that a lot of couples want to have a child because that will make for a better marriage. Is that true in your research or what have you found out? How does the marriage tend to go after having kids? Like how often does it actually lead to quote unquote a happy marriage? Or does it break it down more often than not?

Thomas Hansen [00:14:39] Is an interesting one, because this field about parental status and well-being has a number of myths, and this is one of them, actually. Young people tend to hold this belief, and perhaps also older adults in a way have these beliefs that their children will bind couples closer together. And that will be essential for a for a good marriage and that children are integral to relationship quality and affection and closeness in a relationship, but the data doesn't bear that out. The data shows that it's actually the opposite, so having children doesn't dampen whatever conflicts are there from before. Quite the contrary, you see an increase in relationship conflict and disharmony. So if the marriage is rocky from before don't have kids, the relationship quality, relationship satisfaction, feelings of being valued, appreciated and intimacy and also the sexual frequency. All of that goes a bit down after.

Sahil S [00:15:34] That's what I care about. It's like because I was actually listening to someone, a researcher who said that intimacy is so important.

Thomas Hansen [00:15:41] And of course, these effects are mostly present when the children are young and and coresiding with the parents. But the thing is also that the dissolution rates are much higher amongst couples without children. Marriage dissolution can be a good thing, and a lot of couples are staying together because of the children. So it's quite poor quality of marriage and couples just stick together because of the children. That also drives some of these mean level findings between childless and couples with children. But also having said all that, I mean, the data also show that people who are struggling with these fertility treatment things, they also have a lot of increase in tension, a lot of the decrease in marital or relationship satisfaction. So that puts its toll on couple relationship. Well, at least the transition to childlessness in that stage and there you will find a lot of disillusion amongst couples because they can't seem to agree on strategy or seem to handle it very differently and have a lot of problems in that stage.

Huda C [00:16:40] And I could imagine that there would be a level of resentment as well to some extent if...without meaning to, you know, even if I really want a child and my partner can't give me that and that's a dream of theirs, it gets shattered. It's it's going to create resentment.

Thomas Hansen [00:16:55] Yeah, a lot of guilt as well. I mean, if you're struggling with the choice of whether to try to find a different partner, of course, or if the couple is disagreeing whether to accept sperm donation, egg donation, whether to have the tenth IVF treatment, that kind of thing, then that, of course, would lead to a lot of conflict in the marriage.

Huda C [00:17:15] I feel like it would be hard to recover from that. Men often don't realise how hard it is for the woman, and a lot of the times men don't often help either. You know, there's no real partnership involved when it comes to raising the child. And I'm not saying this is every man, of course. But a lot of the time men, you know, they get to go to work, they get to keep the body the way they want to keep it, and they get to do all of that and go out with their friends, enjoy all of that when the woman is at home raising the child. And is there any research, I guess, on that as well, like where women kind of feel dissatisfied in that sense?

Thomas Hansen [00:17:51] Yeah. I mean, my first reaction to what you said was that it's also harder during reproductive assistance technology treatment. I mean, women go through this quite horrible, sometimes hormone treatments. So it's going through all that. There is a much stronger burden on women than men, usually so. So that's another thing. But you were moving on to the rearing children, right? And having small children and whether that affects women and men differently? And that's absolutely what the data shows. Men's well-being would be quite unaffected on a group level. By having children, you would find that women's well-being and life in general. Of course, it's much more strongly affected by having children. So obviously during childbearing and the initial child rearing, you would have a much stronger restriction on women's life. And it's a much more sacrifice, a much more toll on their time and energy, sleep problems and stress and all that and hormonal changes. So the data shows that women's well-being tend to decline quite a bit after the birth of a child. So we had this advanced data set where we interview people every year and then when we see that it would be sort of a really strong expectation of well-being before the first child. But then during the first couple of years, she would see a strong decrease in well-being. And after about four years, well-being is sort of returning to the baseline level or as close to that as possible. Yeah, there's this couple of tough years after you have the first child, but then you eventually would return more or less to your previous level. But when we compare in a more cross-sectional data: parents with young children, we would see that women are sort of better off without having children, at least in countries like Australia and in the UK and USA. We have a lot of data from these countries and they would observe that young couplers are better off without having children and especially women. So it has to do with these subgroups of women that have really low well-being, women with low income, low education and perhaps single women. So single motherhood is, of course, very challenging, especially if that coincides with residing in a country with low sort of state based support for young families that in effect makes it really hard, particularly to combine young parenthood with other obligations, for example, employment and other interests and hobbies. It takes its strong toll on well-being in these countries. Whereas in the Nordic countries where we have this really generous welfare based supports so-called pro nationalistic policies, we we don't find much effect either way actually either amongst men or women. So I mean, the Nordic welfare state seems to facilitate the enjoyment of the sort of positive aspects of having children,

Sahil S [00:20:43] Which is actually one of the first things I wanted to talk about is, you know, you see this kind of research coming a lot out of Nordic countries, which have kind of been able to give that support at the state level where, you know, you can have children and still be able to, you know, financially be OK because a lot of times men give that excuse, right? I have to go and earn money. What am I supposed to do.

Thomas Hansen [00:21:04] There's a number of things that I think we take for granted here. We have accessible and affordable health care. We have day-care. You can have parental leaves really well paid for a full year.

Sahil S [00:21:15] We do as well.

Huda C [00:21:15] We've only recently, so maternity leave was always there. Now, paternity leave is becoming quite apparent nowadays.

Sahil S [00:21:24] Yeah.

Thomas Hansen [00:21:25] Is it fully fully paid or ?

Sahil S [00:21:29] Only for like a couple of months.

Huda C [00:21:30] Couple of months or not,.

Sahil S [00:21:31] I think six months. I think.

Huda C [00:21:32] No, that's for maternity. Parental Leave gets less than that. I don't know how much. I think it's three months or less than that,

Thomas Hansen [00:21:41] Are you also entitled to have your your employment, your job back after if you if you choose to be away for a year or two, can you have your are you entitled to?

Huda C [00:21:49] Not always. So there's no real, I say. So it depends on the contract. So there's all these different contracts. If you're in a permanent position and it's your position, you get to keep it. But it's it really depends because you don't get paid for the time always. So like, it really depends on how much leave you have and all that sort of stuff

Sahil S [00:22:09] Because sometimes they'll say you can take a sabbatical. Yes, instead of paid time off. So you have that sabbatical, you can go away and then come back.

Thomas Hansen [00:22:18] And another thing is gender equality. So here people, couples usually share share the housework and they share the obligations for the children are quite equally so. That also, of course, helps especially women relative to in other countries where it's much more gendered, where women more or less take the lion's share of of house and children and all that. That's of course, it puts a much stronger toll on their well-being and quality of life. So that's that's also one of the factors that contributes to these relatively high motherhood levels of well-being we find here,

Huda C [00:22:50] which is, I think, a very western concept because-

Sahil S [00:22:53] Well, so so talking about, you know, in Asia, especially, I think it's it's easier to have children just because of the support that you have from families,

Huda C [00:23:01] from communities yeah.

Sahil S [00:23:03] And even here, for that matter. South Asian families here tend to have a relatively easier time having children grow up because they have grandparents taking care of them more often than not. And it's a lot easier I find in South Asian families than it would be in Western families because there's so much support from the family. It's part of the culture that you know that families want to live together, although that is changing.

Thomas Hansen [00:23:26] So that's the way we most of the Western world used to live before, and that might have a certain positive aspects of that, especially in terms of motherhood and well-being during their childbearing years.

Sahil S [00:23:38] The big difference that I find in South Asian cultures compared to the Western cultures, it's considered a woman's duty to have a baby rather than a choice. That's the big difference that I find.

Thomas Hansen [00:23:49] But then another complicating factor might be that, especially in quote unquote modern families, the women would prefer to still be working and have all these competing interests. And so in that sense, it's ideal to facilitate the combination of work life balance, at least in a Nordic context. That would be sort of the key goal of government policies, as well as the preference for most families I think in women especially.

Huda C [00:24:15] Yeah, I think it's also a religious and cultural factor that a lot of the concept is still coming from. Even even in like, you know, Christianity, which is where most of maybe the Western culture kind of gets its concept. Just really quickly going back to have a child, all the health stuff that women go through and there's this almost like a desperation or an obsession comes from, like, why is it so that we're so desperate to just have a child? Hundreds of thousands of dollars on IVF and stuff like that? You know, what is it about that? Why don't people opt for, I guess, adopting?

Thomas Hansen [00:24:51] Yeah, it mirrors the strong expectations we have in the strong wish for and strong drive that we have to have children that we sort of want would never give up. And it also mirrors the strong belief we now have in in these reproductive assistance technology, I mean, in a way, it was easier some decades ago when when we didn't have all these equipment and assistance and people perhaps had an easier time letting go and moving on and sort of accepting their fate in a way. But now I think increasingly and also with couples being much better off financially than before, people can sort of afford all these rounds of treatment. So a lot of people around me has and ourselves also has gone through all these, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and spending several years and sort of never giving up over trying the new things and going abroad for different kinds of treatments there and sort of never giving up and moving on, then that might lead to success in the end, in a way, but it might also deteriorate your quality of life during those years. And the data also show that more often the couple eventually breaks up because it puts too much stress on the relationship and on the general well-being. It becomes an obsession in a way might detract from more real sources of quality of life.

Sahil S [00:26:05] Could it be ego as well? If we think about how the world started and you know, human beings were put on this earth, one of the things that they were always doing was procreating and kind of was the purpose initially so that we have enough people in the world.

Huda C [00:26:19] And also our gene line.

Sahil S [00:26:21] Yeah. So after a while when you can't get something which you consider so basic and the fact that it's been going on for so many years, it becomes an ego thing. You're like, Why can't I do this? Because I feel that ego in any task is something that we are used to. If someone wants to win a gold medal at the Olympics and people trained for that for eight years, 12 years.

Thomas Hansen [00:26:39] It's funny that having a child has sometimes been seen as a pro-social thing, but in my view, it's more of an ego saying it on a deeper level. We all have a strong drive to procreate, and that's that's why we're here. But also, there might be a strong innate need to have children in a way to have the child and to bring your genes on. And that might be true and might be the driver between these obsessions to have children. But also perhaps more to the point in modern society, I think having children is seen as more unique and obvious way to feel all these other needs for self-realisation, for filling your need for affiliation, for love, receiving and giving love, for belonging to a group and for social connectivity, and sort of for old age insurance against isolation and loneliness in later life. So it's a multifaceted drive that people have, and women especially talk about this unconscious drive that they have to have children. It's sort of a perpetual question I think that there's no definitive answer to, but I think we see children as very important to feel a whole range of different needs that we have on a deep level.

Huda C [00:27:47] I think it comes down to we feel like it's our purpose like that is why we're here. Like you said, something really interesting just before where you said that we are put on this earth for it. And maybe they're not exact words. But, you know, as a woman and I'm not going to lie, I think, you know, I've had this thing where it's an innate sort of natural primitive drive that comes out where I feel the need to nurture. Funnily enough, my sister was telling me about this article that she read, and in the article, they talk about how this generation now, often whenever they feel the need to have children or feel the need to nurture - they're getting pets now to do that.

Thomas Hansen [00:28:25] Yeah, that's that's not uncommon amongst childless couples to nurture pets or to have these quasi parental roles where they nurture others children, for example, their extended kin's children. Or they can be become more involved in the community and and foster other kids. And so that's that's other ways to sort of fill the need for, like you said, for nurturing and affiliation.

Sahil S [00:28:49] So with the childless couples, the one thing I did want to ask is you were talking about how a lot of couples or parents can fulfil that need or, you know, that need to nurture or that certain amount of happiness they get. How do childless couples achieve the same? Like most of the time, are they able to just get that that need to have a child or that self-actualisation, that growth could come without having a child?

Thomas Hansen [00:29:15] The childless group is, of course, not a uniform group. It's a lot of variation. And one thing that separates them is your childlessness is voluntary or involuntary? And so I mean, these involuntary childless couple, they go through a really tough stage where they try to console themselves and move on and find a new set of goals and new areas for engagement and meaning. And whereas these voluntary, childless couples say they already have strong other engagements and roles, that sort of in a way gets in the way or it leads to them not having the same drive for having children. But in a way, both groups agree that having children restructures their life and has a strong influence over your ability to pursue interests and career opportunities. So the lives of the two groups are, of course, very different, but in general, the data suggest that childless adults are much more involved in careers, a bit more invested in their relationships, so they would report stronger closeness with a partner. And they also meet friends more often, they go out to cultural events more, they eat more, they exercise more and importantly, also they do much less housework.

Sahil S [00:30:25] So that sounds pretty good to me.

Huda C [00:30:27] Yeah, I hate housework.

Sahil S [00:30:28] That's pretty good. I think that knowing all these things, Thomas, when did you kind of decide you did want to have kids?

Huda C [00:30:36] Yeah. And what? Yeah, I find that really fascinating because you've said that you started this study because you were very much interested in not having kids.

Thomas Hansen [00:30:44] Yeah, it's funny because having this overview of the of the literature, we still had that's that strong drive to have children. So I'm sort of an extreme case of that, not buying the myths about happiness, but still wanting to have children. So what is that all about? I feel that, well, societal pressures. I think it works on everyone, a more subtle level. So it's it's hard to to start to get around that.

Sahil S [00:31:13] Was it your mom, your mom Thomas?

Thomas Hansen [00:31:17] It might have been. My mom was pushing me to the edge. Yeah. But no, as I said, I felt in a way that's sort of what's it called the unbearable likeness of being a phenomenon that I was in my late 30s and life just I just needed something outside of myself as a project, a bit wider project than just filling my life in my own self pursuits. So I think for me, it was making life more meaningful. It's a bit like Roy Baumeister, the very famous American social psychologist who said that having children, is not a good strategy to make life happier, but it's an excellent one for making it more meaningful. And I think that's where I was at myself. I was struggling with finding meaning and purpose and direction, or I was tired of my own old ways of living. So that was sort of the drive for me, I think.

Sahil S [00:32:08] And have you?

Thomas Hansen [00:32:10] It's funny because on more, especially on a more like armchair level, having children leads to obviously to a strong sense of meaning in life and direction and purpose and the structures of life in every way. But but what I've also come to realise, especially now during the holiday, that if it also detracts from my purpose in life. Because because your real life in day to day situations with children can be quite tedious, frustrating, boring and and it detracts from your other, more strong ways of finding purpose in life. So in a way, I would rather go cycling in the woods or or I mean, listen to music, reading a book and pursuing work or something that are strong goals for me and strong areas of meaning. I would rather do that than spending three or four hours by the pool every day or doing all these other activities. So to to be honest, having kids has it's pros and cons situation. It gives you a more global sense of meaning of course, it's structures your life and gives it direction, but it can also detract from other areas of engagement and purpose. And I think that's why because even though Baumaster said that having kids is an excellent strategy for making life more meaningful, the data shows that there are almost no differences in terms of meaning and purpose in life between childless adults and couples with children. So I think that's that's sort of the mirrors that these childless couples find other ways to sort of fill the need for engagement, the meaning and purpose.

Sahil S [00:33:44] Does your wife feel the same?

Thomas Hansen [00:33:48] I think she would agree. But I think what you would find when you ask parents, it's very different. They give a very different response when they're actually taking care of the kids whereas how they would respond during campfire over a glass of wine in the evening when the kids are all in bed. So it's a much more gloomy situation if you ask them while they're taking care of the kids. Interestingly, there's a line of research that explores well-being more on an online, real time level. You have a set of respondents; several hundreds of respondents and you would text them or phone them at random points of the day and asks them a set of questions. And especially interesting is that they ask you, What are you doing and how are you feeling? So then you can associate different activities with your wellbeing. Whereas parents would say commonly they would report that spending time with kids is the most enjoyable thing they do. But when you have this more online data, you would find that having when you're spending time with your kids, your happiness level would be rock bottom and it would be one of the one of the activities that you do that has associated with the lowest level of well being on par with the housework and commuting to work, shopping that kind of thing. Whereas whereas your happiness would be much higher when you are exercising or you're meeting friends, you're doing all this other thing that's obviously childless couples are doing much more often.

Sahil S [00:35:17] One last thing? Just one last thing from that. So you said that happiness might be at rock bottom? I'd be very curious to know, are they still feeling like their life is meaningful, even though the happiness is low, just to find that correlation between the two?

Thomas Hansen [00:35:32] Exactly. And that's an interesting one. And that's one of the flaws of this data set that hasn't asked about that at the same time, whether you feel a sense of purpose and engagement and whether you feel a strong sense of meaning and whether you take a lot of self-satisfaction or a lot of a strong sense of meaning from providing your kids with these activities and giving them these childhood memories and childhood experiences, because that's what I find myself that on one level, doing all these sacrifices is spending all this time on these quite frustrating and activities full of hastle or boredom. It's a challenge, but at the same time, it's very rewarding on the more cognitive armchair level. But like you said, this data set it would be would be a strong benefit if we had asked about that as well. But unfortunately, that's not being asked here. So here we only have data about their level of joy, level of satisfaction with life and level of happiness at the moment. And they're like, I said, these mean level scores on these indicators are quite low when you're taking care of your kids. So that speaks to how frustrating and how much negative effects that's being involved sometimes with your activities with children. But I guess most parents would say that these negative experiences are balanced by their intense joys you feel now and then in between? And that makes up for the all the challenges that you experience.

Huda C [00:36:54] A few things that I got from everything you've just said is one that I think we have to understand when it comes to happiness. It's a fleeting moment. And even people that are childless will have times of unhappiness in other aspects of their lives. And then when we talk about you know meaning, when it comes to meaning, I think it takes a little bit of time to create meaning, and that means performing fairly tedious tasks. You know, when you talk about careers, if that's what your meaning is like, that's what brings you purpose or that's what kind of gives you something meaningful. You know, you got to climb that ladder. You've got to do all those tedious tasks to get there.

Sahil S [00:37:32] But Thomas did have like career ambitions, right?

Huda C [00:37:36] Well, see, that's the thing.

Sahil S [00:37:37] But he still felt that he didn't have that meaning. And that's what's bothering me. I'm trying to figure out.

Huda C [00:37:41] I think, though, that meaning is different to everyone, and that's the thing. So we we often, I think, with humans and you can correct me if I'm wrong because you're the, you know, scientist here. You know, I think with humans, we often have a different version of what meaning is, and that will change as we get older, too right? So it's never going to stay the same.

Thomas Hansen [00:38:01] Yeah. And I've been criticised sometimes for making light of I mean, it's a bit more complicated than that. People are having children to become happier. I mean, it's it's also because people want children, not despite of all these challenges and sacrifice. But precisely because of it in a way. So I mean, it's not like anyone would want sort of a religious paradise in a way where we would just have this positive emotions and everything is just pure happiness. We we do sort of need and want these contrasts and the richer experiences that involve struggles, challenges, self-sacrifice, but also these deeper experiences of joy and pride. And it's like, we don't want to just be on the top of the mountain. We also want to make the the hike up there. So we we want the yin and the yang in a way.

Huda C [00:38:55] I think what you said is, you know, the sacrifice bit, which I think stood out to me the most. I think we all we all talk about sacrifice in a concept of it's a part of giving right, like where we take something away from us to give to another. And I think when we talk about meaning and giving, I think and this is something I ask someone some time ago who was a social psychologist, and I said, Is there a link between self-satisfaction and giving to others which, you know, the giving part is sacrificing your time, your energy to please or help another and is there a link between the two? I think for humans, it's often quick or easy to be like the best idea I have right now to self-sacrifice is to have a child, which will give equal meaning to me. Whereas you have people that are activists or that are, you know, doing other things that often don't have children. A lot of the time. But that's because they're sacrificing and that's giving them meaning.

Thomas Hansen [00:39:58] I think that's that's a deeper human need and most people choose to be there for others, to provide for others and and sort of play a role in other people's well-being and other people's life, and there's, of course, different ways to do that. A notable one is, of course, to have children. And I think that's a drive in us in a way. And and also that leads to happiness and the happiness literature interestingly enough, it shows that your level of happiness is higher when you're giving a gift or when you're giving help than when you're receiving a gift or receiving help. At least some data show that. So that's that's quite interesting and sort of provides evidence for these notions that we want and we need, and we benefit from helping others and being there in in other people's lives.

Sahil S [00:40:43] This idea of which you mentioned a while ago was, you know, sometimes a lot of people have kids because they want that guarantee that when they get older, they're not isolated. I'm curious to know if that is actually the case because I feel like a lot of parents have that expectation of kids to take care of them. And sometimes when those expectations are not met, they feel resentment as well in old age.

Thomas Hansen [00:41:08] It's a common understanding or conception that that you need children in order to feel fulfilled in later life. And not having children would jeopardise your well-being and cause loneliness, depression and particularly regrets about not having children. But the data doesn't bear that out. The data seems to suggest that levels of loneliness and mental health problems and well-being is quite even between couples with and without children in later life. I think that speaks to different things. First of all, an important factor that we haven't touched upon so far is that genes and dispositions have such a strong influence on your well-being. So people that tend to see the world optimistically and the glass as half full instead of how empty they would do that in different circumstances. So I mean, negative life events can be a disappointment momentarily or initially lead to a deterioration of well-being. But eventually you would sort of fall back to your stable baseline genetic determined level of well-being. So that contributes to a lot of these stable, non-zero findings that we talked about. Initially couples without children go through a crisis, but later on they eventually move back to their sort of personality determined level. The data seems to show that in later life, it doesn't matter so much whether you have children or not, and that these older couples with other children that can lead to enjoyment and satisfaction. But it could also lead to disappointment and frustration and being let down by not being visited on the weekends. So they don't call me as often as at least, and they are frustrated by their kids choice of partner, for example, and they say that you're only as happy as your least happy child so your children's problems are affecting you big time also in later life. So having children is sort of a gamble. It can be an enrichment, but it can also be a challenge in many ways also in later life.

Sahil S [00:43:01] Huda is trying to find which of your siblings, including her is the least happy child,

Huda C [00:43:06] So Sahil -- he's the only child, whereas I've got two other siblings, so I'm like, Hang on a minute. It's funny, though, because yeah, I was thinking it, and you just said it, that you go to retirement homes. And I did some volunteer work at Retirement Village, and all they ever talk about these old people is their children and how they're children never visiting and they are lonely. Like you find a lot of the time their children actually never visit. And, you know, I feel like it's really interesting that we often think to ourselves, you know, our children will be there forever. We we never consider that it might not happen. And that's even worse than at least if you don't have kids and you think, Oh, whatever, I didn't have them, that was my choice.

Thomas Hansen [00:43:46] I think there can be a level of frustration and disappointment, and I feel that personally, I'm quite good at making contact with my own parents, even though they live far off. But sometimes I feel that imagine if my own kids are going to be just as distant and rarely contacted me when I'm old and how the feelings that I get from that is such a drag. I mean, because you are so close to them when they co-reside with you. But after you move out, that can become a quite distant relationship and perhaps your every day closer community level or friendship level, social ties are much more important to your everyday wellbeing. And if you're sort of stuck with the mindset of the glass being half empty when it comes to the level of contact you have with your kids and their sort of genuine interest they show in your life and etc., then that can be a strong source of disappointment in later life. It depends on the type of contact you have and your sort of relationship quality and how well the children are doing, if they have mental health problems. If they get divorced or have health problems or financial issues, then that bears a strong toll on your own well-being, even though you're approaching 80-90 years old.

Sahil S [00:44:54] Thinking about that, I have a question. If you do want to have a child, when should you have a child?

Thomas Hansen [00:45:00] Well, the data atleast suggests that having children at a young age is not too good. That's associated with poor outcomes in terms of especially the mother's well-being. It depends a bit whether you take the child's perspective or the parents, but I guess both of them align a bit. If you if you have kids, I would say in the late 20s, early 30s, where you would still have the energy level during your children's childhood to commit to and to contribute to and do all the things you want and to really be there for your kids and at the same time, be in a place in your life where you have more emotional stability, perhaps, and you're more in place in terms of career and other other pursuits. Because if you have children too early, then perhaps you will have competing interests. That might be a stressful to combine with rearing children. So at least not having them too early is a good idea. But then if you have a bit too late like myself in a way, then that can be a problem also in terms of energy levels and also being there for them. And when you have your grandchildren, if you have grandchildren, then you might be too old to really be there and take part in that. It's hard to say a definitive answer, but I would say in there.

Sahil S [00:46:12] Yeah, but that's kind of what I wanted.

Thomas Hansen [00:46:15] At least in the western culture where most couples would prefer to maintain employment and to have a strong preference for beneficial work life balance. In other cultures that might be different if both partners have a preference and therefore see the woman, for example, moving out of employment and just taking care of family, then things might play out differently.

Huda C [00:46:40] We talk about childhood trauma starting from parents, and it's that's why I guess it's important that parents are very aware and ready to have a child. So I guess what's your advice for people?

Thomas Hansen [00:46:54] Have a realistic expectations. That's important, of course. And that's also, I think speaking more from personal experience and from from the data, I would say that that's having children later makes for a much more realistic expectations because you have seen friends going through it and you have much more precise information and expectation in terms of what it all involves in terms of the sacrifices you need to do and how things might change in terms of how you relate to your partner and and family relationships beyond that, of course.

Sahil S [00:47:24] And I actually did want to --- thinking about myself and probably Huda as well, but definitely for myself, I come from a country where population has been a big problem, and I'm not sure if it's just the media, but we are pretty aware of the fact that the Earth is not probably in the best place possible right now, and we have global warming, climate change, shady politicians, COVID-19 and overconsumption and wastage. And it might be making it too simplistic. But I've always felt like for a country like India where I come from, if we were able to educate and reduce the population, a lot of our problems would go away. Keeping that in mind, should we be thinking about the kind of future that we'll be able to provide our kids given, especially with what's happening with the environment? Or was it a consideration that people do think about right now, like people that you might have data on?

Thomas Hansen [00:48:16] Yeah, the world is not in such a great place right now, so it's not the best place to bring children in. The needs of the sort of the planet and the families are not aligned. Planet needs less people, but families keep wanting children. And also politicians try to facilitate higher fertility rates, especially in the western countries where we see a steep drop in fertility rates. And even in Norway, the Norwegian prime minister has sort of urged people to have more kids, and we also have this strong state based support for that. So we are sort of the ideal place to have kids and we have all these incentives and sort of society is sort of organised around families in a way. The problem here is that people are sticking to the one or two children norm before more people will have three or more kids. But now people are having fewer kids and also there is an increase in childlessness. But but it's like for the planet, that's a good thing. But for countries, communities, families, that's seems to be an unwanted thing. So it's it's a contrast there that's hard to reconcile, I think, and there's a lot of problems and concerns related to falling birth rates, which might in turn lead to problems, funding and funding the welfare state, but also to take care of the large boom of ageing adults in aged ageing populations like most Western societies.

Sahil S [00:49:41] Yeah, that's what they always say is, is that idea that there's too much pressure on the economy if there's not enough people being born, but there's more older people.

Thomas Hansen [00:49:49] Exactly. That's a big problem, of course, which eventually would be solved a lot through immigration, I think. And and that's also a problem because it takes away much needed resources in these poorer non-western countries, so this is a complicated issue.

Huda C [00:50:05] It is very complicated.

Sahil S [00:50:07] It's just about chucking people from here to there.

Huda C [00:50:09] He's like, I'll just do it.

Sahil S [00:50:12] No, but migration is only going to become harder. I mean, looking at what's happening right now in countries.

Thomas Hansen [00:50:19] But it's a bit like in contrast to what Trump is saying, they're not giving us our best people. But here is a bit opposite. We're taking much needed health care professionals from from non-Western countries to contribute in our own health care systems anyway.

Sahil S [00:50:35] Wow I never even thought about it like that.

Thomas Hansen [00:50:37] So it's it's a complicated issue and it depends which perspective you're taking, I think.

Sahil S [00:50:44] Yeah. And especially with, you know, the massive refugee population that's in Syria. In the Middle East in general, you know, a lot of countries have now started going, OK, we can't have more.

Thomas Hansen [00:50:55] Yeah. It feeds right wing policies.

Huda C [00:50:58] I mean, I guess we could just go on and on, but we've actually got a go. Yeah.

Sahil S [00:51:03] And I think you have to go for your kids pool lessons.

Thomas Hansen [00:51:07] Exactly. Well, I'm finding a lot of purpose right here. And now I have to go.

Thomas Hansen [00:51:28] By the way the data also doesn't seem to suggest that people regret not having kids. If that was their choice, then in later life, they don't sort of all of a sudden have this negative life review and a lot of regrets of depression over that. I think people find purpose and meaning in the actual circumstances, and they don't tend to go back and wish they had done things differently.

Huda C [00:51:48] That's actually a really good point. You know, the one thing was that I was afraid of not being able to have children, you know, with my biology and stuff that I started running for the clock. Like, I started chasing the clock. And I find that a lot of the time when people do that, they end up settling down with the wrong person, you know, and they rush into decisions,

Thomas Hansen [00:52:12] I haven't done research on that but it makes a lot of sense. I mean, especially women become very stressed if they really want children, and they've turned 30, 35 years old and I can easily imagine that they could make poor choices in terms of partner or other things. So that's that's obviously true, I think. But I think the data suggests that if you're a reasonably happy person, you would be reasonably happy no matter what you do and you won't regret it by being criticised because I sort of imply that parenthood doesn't give you much joy. And these are characterisations that most parents, it doesn't resonate too well because they do find that the role gives them a lot of pleasure and meaning and self-satisfaction. And I think that's true and I'm also acutely aware of that myself in my everyday experiences. But I think it's a tendency amongst parents to sort of forget or not admitting through the more challenging sides as well. And when they have a glass of wine in the evening, they forgot about the three hours of intense boredom at the playground.

Sahil S [00:53:11] Well that's why they had that glass of wine.

Huda C [00:53:12] And you know what, it's actually funny that you say that Thomas, because I find that with women a lot, right? They talk about childbirth as being a horrendous experience at the time. Like, I can't I could never do this again. And then, you know, a year later and they're pregnant again, it's actually a thing you know, women do forget.

Sahil S [00:53:31] Apparently there is a certain hormone in a women's body that makes you forget that.

Sahil S [00:53:35] Yeah. And I think that's with anything really like when you consider, you know, people that have been heartbroken in relationships like you'll find some that are like, I'm never going to love again, I'm never going to trust again. But then a lot of these people can often meet someone new and find the capacity to love and trust. I think that's the human nature, really more than anything that we're talking about, like kind of forget our struggles because and I think this is something I feel like you resonate with this as well. It's the fact that, you know, human beings will always go through hardship in life. And I think that's the one thing that helps us understand happiness in itself, you know, meaning in itself.

Thomas Hansen [00:54:13] Yeah, but also there's a lot of self-deception involved in terms of not remembering or at least not conveying to others these challenges. So I think also it's a lot of cognitive dissonance involved. If you were to admit that's something you spend so much time and energy on would not give you any pleasure and happiness. And that's part of the reason why you would say both to yourself and to others that this role is so rewarding, etc. And a last point is that parenting is sort of a club where you complain to other parents, but across the aisle, you wouldn't complain. Then you would sort of more convey the positive things and sort of brag about your happy moments during your holiday weekend and post that on social media. Whereas within the club you would you would complain about how frustrated you are or how much or how little sleep you've had, etc. So it's that it's that too.

Sahil S [00:55:08] Well, on that note, I think we should let Thomas go.

Thomas Hansen [00:55:13] Thanks. It's been interesting. So thanks for the chat, guys.

Huda C [00:55:16] No. Thank you for coming on. It was awesome talking to you and you've given us so much insight and a lot to think about.

Sahil S [00:55:23] And thank you for taking the time given you're in Sweden right now. And I hope your kids really, really pester you today and really get on top of your nerves today. I really hope that happens.

Thomas Hansen [00:55:35] With this, I got one and a half hour off the childcare, so that's a win win win situation.

Huda C [00:55:44] .Thank you so much, Thomas.

Thomas Hansen [00:55:47] Thank you. Buh bye.