Kristen Bell & Dax Shepard Handled the ‘How Are Babies Made?’ Question Like Champs

Every parent has anxiety about when and where the “How are babies made?” question will arise. Some prepare for it and others just wing it. Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard, however, crushed it.

When PureWow spoke with both Bell and Shepard in celebration of their new Lightlife “A Taste of Honesty” campaign, we asked if they gravitate toward brutal honesty or little white lies as parents.

Bell, always candid, explained that both she and her husband of almost six years are all about telling their kids the truth. 

“At five years old our daughter came in and said, ‘How are babies made?’” Bell recalled.  

So how did they react? Bell explained, “Dax sat down and said, ‘Well, there’s a sperm and an ovum,’ and she said, ‘All right, I’m going to go back outside.”

Bell joked that Lincoln, who’s now six, was so bored with Shepard’s clinical description that she completely lost interest. This clever tactic is something that Shepard learned from his own mother, who Bell says was wildly candid with Shepard from a young age about the, um, variety of ways people can get intimate.

“My mom was unbelievably unfiltered with us,” Shepard said. “And I just always appreciated that as a kid and I respected that. I could tell when adults were fibbing to me and I had friends who had parents who didn’t tell them how babies were made, and they believed in the stork. I felt grateful that I was being told the truth…We have a pretty hardcore policy of ‘We’ll just tell you how it is.’”

Today, this frankness plays a major role in how they parent their daughters, Lincoln and Delta (4), and why they chose to partner with Lightlife (the plant-based burgers are so good that they don’t have to lie to their girls to get them to eat veggies) and make this cheeky video.