The Duke of Sussex has said he wants to “break the cycle” of the “pain and suffering” of his upbringing with his own children.
Prince Harry, who is expecting a daughter with his wife Meghan and is already a father to their son Archie, said he did not want to pass on pain from his own experience.
But he said he did not think “we should be pointing the finger” at anybody.
The duke and duchess stepped down as senior royals in January 2020.
During an appearance on the Armchair Expert podcast, he compared his life as a “mixture between The Truman Show and being in a zoo”.
He told host Dax Shepard: “I don’t think we should be pointing the finger or blaming anybody, but certainly when it comes to parenting, if I’ve experienced some form of pain or suffering because of the pain or suffering that perhaps my father or my parents had suffered, I’m going to make sure I break that cycle so that I don’t pass it on, basically.
“It’s a lot of genetic pain and suffering that gets passed on anyway so we as parents should be doing the most we can to try and say, ‘You know what, that happened to me, I’m going to make sure that doesn’t happen to you.'”
He added: “It’s hard to do but for me it comes down to awareness.
“I never saw it, I never knew about it, and then suddenly I started to piece it together and go ‘okay, so this is where he went to school, this is what happened, I know this about his life, I also know that is connected to his parents so that means he’s treated me the way he was treated, so how can I change that for my own kids?'”
The duke said his family’s move to the US had not been part of the plan but “sometimes you’ve got to make decisions and put your family first and put your mental health first”.
Talking about life in Los Angeles, California, he said: “So living here now I can actually lift my head and I feel different, my shoulders have dropped, so have hers, you can walk around feeling a little bit more free, I can take Archie on the back of my bicycle, I would never have had the chance to do that.”
