March 21, 2024 • 33 mins
In this episode, Tim Carney discusses the collapse of community and the decline in family formation as the biggest societal problems. He highlights the impact of family-unfriendly parenting culture and the pressure to constantly supervise and maximize every moment with enrichment activities. Carney emphasizes the importance of creating family-friendly communities with walkability, playgrounds, and support for free-range parenting. He suggests that policies such as a larger child tax credit and crediting time spent as a full-time caregiver towards social security work can help. Carney also emphasizes the importance of sacrifice and building a life where sacrifice for others is easy as the path to happiness. The Karol Markowicz Show is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Monday & Thursday.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Marcowitch Show on iHeartRadio.
I'm doing a fellowship at Hillsdale College in Michigan this week,
and I've had the opportunity to interact with some really
amazing college students. Hillsdale is a small Christian college in
rural Michigan. I get that these are atypical students. They're
(00:23):
all dressed better than me, but it's been interesting having
conversations with them and getting a sense of what younger
people think. Again, they're atypical, and they're super smart, super driven.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
You could see it.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
But still I do think that they have some representative
properties of the rest of the country. The kids here
are really marriage minded, and I love that I've met
students who are already married or are engaged to be.
To me, it's the absolute right path and one I
hope my own kids will take. I plan to tell
them often that they will never be surrounded by as
(00:58):
many eligible people to date as they are in college.
It's funny to think about how dissuaded most people are
today from marrying their college sweetheart, and look, it's not
for everyone. I'm glad I didn't marry anyone. I dated
before my husband, and that includes anybody I dated in college.
But the overall idea that there'll be so many options
(01:19):
open to you after you leave college is sort of
a lie. We've made it so dating at work doesn't
really happen anymore. For example, a man asking a woman
on a date, especially if he's her senior at work,
could get into real trouble. You can get fired or worse.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
I tried to find data on college romances continuing beyond school,
but I couldn't get anything concrete. I found a few
things that said that twenty eight percent of married graduates
attended the same university as their spouse, but only two
percent of all marriages in the United States or between
two people who met on campus, which is an interesting statistic.
(01:57):
They didn't get together on campus, but maybe they met
through you vitual friends that they made in college, or
alumni networks or something similar to that.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Anyway, you all know what I think.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
That Pugh study from a year ago continues to rattle me.
The one where only twenty one percent of parents care
if their kids get married, continues to be bonkers to me.
And it really has been so great meeting young people
who rebuff that, and it's probably because their parents are
in that twenty one percent who do care if they
(02:27):
get married.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
I plan to be in that twenty one percent.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
May we all be coming up next an interview with
Tim Carney.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Join us after the break.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My
guest today is Tim Carney. He is a fellow at AEI,
a columnist at The Washington Examiner, author of the new
book Family Unfriendly, and a father of six.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Hi.
Speaker 4 (02:53):
Tim, Hey, Carol, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
So nice to have you on.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
You're actually, as you know, the second Carney brother that
I've had on. So I just need to get two
more and I have the.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
Whole set, right, you'll have all four of us. Yeah, no,
I listened to that episode. I do not hang out
in Brooklyn bars as much as he used to, but yes,
he was a good guest to have on.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Yeah, and he's you know, he was very good at
the hanging out in Brooklyn bars. I actually it was
Manhattan bars if you want to be talking about it.
He was his favorite bars from Manhattan. No sisters, right,
It was.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
Just a four boys in about a five and a
half year stretch, so it was great. I loved it.
It was the best best thing my parents could have
given me was three older brothers.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
So a question that I ask all of my guests
is our biggest societal problem? And you have several books,
so I think I imagine any of our societal problems,
you know you have covered them.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
So what would you say is the biggest one?
Speaker 4 (03:50):
Well, going backwards, I would say our biggest societal problem
for two generations has been the collapse of community. That
so many people don't belong to things, that they don't
know their neighbors, that they don't go to church or
synagogue or mosque or that sort of thing. And that
was what I wrote about an alienated America. Going forward,
(04:11):
the biggest consequence of this, and the biggest problem we
have is that people aren't getting married and having kids.
The birth rate has fallen to one point six per
woman in the United States. Meanwhile, Americans still say the
ideal number of children is two point seven. To have
that massive shortfall in something that important not only creates
(04:32):
its own problems, but I think it reflects deeper problems.
There's something wrong with our culture. We're not supporting people
creating the families that they want. That absolutely is and
just now I think the rest of the media is
starting to realize that this is a problem, but it
will be the story of the next generation is the
(04:53):
baby bust and the collapse in family formation.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
So what happened and family unfriendly?
Speaker 1 (04:58):
You talk about, for example, that you know kids in
the past were not watched every second. What shifted that
made child rearing so difficult?
Speaker 4 (05:07):
So I think there's an underlying shift here that'll get
to in a second. But you just pointed out one
of this real symptoms, the fact that parents are expected
to helicopter and that they feel this they have this
ambition to make their kids. You know, if you're going
to play baseball, well you should be the best baseball player.
You get them a pitching coach, You put them on
(05:27):
a travel team. You end up in you know, tournaments
in Delaware every other weekend, rather than rather than me
riding where if Delaware's far away, no matter where you are, basically,
even if you're in Philly, Delaware is pretty far away.
If I would ride my bike to the Little League field.
People in our generation Gen X, we were told go
(05:50):
out and come home when the street lights, come on,
be home by dinner if you want to get fed.
That's not done for a couple of reasons. One and
so this is how our parenting culture is family unfriendly.
Parents think and are told, and school districts tell the
kids and the parents that you have to sort of
maximize every moment with enrichment aimed at achievement, tutoring, studying, travel, sports,
(06:13):
and free range parenting is largely frowned upon by the
culture and sometimes outlawed by the child protective services. Where
I used to live in Montgomery County and Silver Spring,
there were free range parents who got arrested for letting
their kids walk to the park because the kids were
only eleven and eight or something like that. And so
that's a parenting culture. But again, underneath it you see
(06:37):
reflections of how our culture is family unfriendly. When you
look at the fact that you have the expectation that
you can't bring your kids on an airplane. You see
those stories of like the parents who show up with
their baby and those little bags. Yeah, no, the exceptional
thing is a person who hates babies. It's not the
(06:59):
person who brings baby on an airplane. And so in
family and friendly. I use Israel as an example of
a family friendly place where they are wealthy and educated
and they have three babies compared to Europe about one
and a half and US at one point six. So
there's a ton going on. But it's family unfriendly parenting culture.
It's family unfriendly attitude towards children, that your kids are
(07:21):
your own problem. And I think there's deeper spiritual stuff
under there. But the fundamental thing that changed was once
becoming a parent became something done intentional after a long
search of is this what I want for my life
as part of my self written script of my life,
(07:42):
then it became so much more high stress and it
became your problem because they're your kids, rather than a
societal undertaking to raise up the next generation.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Yeah, I've written pieces against the whole candy out goodie
bags on airplanes because nobody wants to be on a
plane with a baby less than the parents of that baby.
So it's, you know, like it is an extremely stressful thing.
I was supposed to worry about your.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Feelings, Now like it's you know, I have my own
problems here.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
But yeah, I think the you know, the free range parenting,
the leonors Ganazi has written about it, and she's, you know,
sort of the founder of that movement. Is really tough
to achieve because I, you know, when I lived in Brooklyn,
her my husband's first cousins moved to our block. They
had daughters about the same age as our kids, And
one day I let my six year old walk from
(08:33):
our building to the building like three buildings over, but
like I could see her from our stoop. It was,
you know, and a lady walked by, and she didn't
she said something to her, but I didn't hear what
she said.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
And then she walked by me and said, you really
shouldn't let her walk like, you know, five steps away
from you.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
I don't know that pressure.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Like for me, I obviously I didn't care, and I
continue to let her be free rangey, which obviously has
led to her being a responsible, kind of more mature
teenager now. But how do you have like the societal
pressure of that, I think really gets to people. You
don't want to be the bad parent, you don't want
to be the neglectful parent, so you end up kind
of hovering on these kids who it's bad for them.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
No, it's what do you do? Absolutely, it's absolutely bad
for them. It's There was a great op ed in
the Journal of Pediatrics in January. I believe that said,
the epidemic of childhood anxiety is due to their not
having enough independent play. By independent, we mean no adults
supervising them and telling them what to do, right, So
(09:35):
I mean, and parents run in who want to be
more free range, they run into that obstacle. They also
run into the obstacle. In my own neighborhood, very nice
neighborhood in northern Virginia. There aren't enough sidewalks anywhere, so
are older kids twelve and older. They can ride their bikes,
they can run whatever. My seven year old should be
able to walk to our elementary school, But the sidewalks,
(09:59):
the crosswalks, they're built for cars rather than for people. So,
you know, her older sibling, her older sister used to
walk her last year. But now our older sister's gone
on to middle school. And so I mean, frankly, I
love walking my first grader to school. I absolutely love it.
But it was the cutest thing in the whole neighborhood
when the older sister got to do it. She could
do it by herself. If just the place was built better,
(10:21):
and then the fewer parents who do it, the harder
it is to do it. If there's kids running everywhere,
it sort of allows parents to feel a little more
relaxed letting them run. So my antswer I mean, so
we live in a house that unfortunately doesn't have a backyard,
and I realize the upside of this is when my
kids are playing, they're playing in the front yard, and
then other kids, other parents can let the kids out
(10:43):
and join us for whiffleball, and I step out of
my front yard and sometimes my kids aren't even there anymore.
The whiffle ball game has been taken over by others.
So just leading by leading by example and being like
Carol Markowitz and being willing to say to the woman
who disapproves, actually know, I I think she can walk
that way, but I really appreciate your concern. Thank you.
(11:05):
That's the one thing I can think of to change
your culture.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
So it's funny because I think your idea is like,
for example, you know, have more sidewalks, make things more
convenient for kids to kind of be able to play.
I think it's ideologically both the left and the right
should support it. I don't see what you know what
would make one side support it over another, And.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
Well, but yeah, on that stuff, yes, but there still
are trade offs, and to some extent, walkability can trigger
some conservatives when you use that word, because there are
trade offs. I want more sidewalks and that will mean
a narrower street in some places, So Montgomery County, they're
upset that trees will be chopped down if there are
(11:47):
sidewalks put on the blocks that kids need. But usually
there are people who think that slowing down cars is
some sort of liberal plot, And I'm saying, I just
want the cars flow enough that my kids can cross
the street and if they look both ways, there's not
going to be somebody coming fifty down the road. And
so there is some conservative resistance on that, and that's
(12:09):
one of the main goals I with family and friendlies
reach out to conservatives and say, to the title of
the chapters, if you want fecundity in the sheets, you
need walkability in the streets. We got to reverse this
baby buy and make towns be places where kids can
run free and parents can ignore them. Obviously, there are
lots of problems in this whole picture with the left,
(12:33):
particularly some sorts of modern feminism are family unfriendly. But
so I don't think one side bears the blame for
the baby bus. But when people ask me for a
government to government solution, I say, local governments, sidewalks, playgrounds,
stop signs, crosswalks, and let kids run around on the field.
(12:55):
I hate the signs that say permitted use only. I
tell my if it says permitted use only, it doesn't
apply to anyone under the age of eighteen.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
So one of the things we talk about on this
show a lot is making friends and how to do
that in adulthood, especially kind of with the great migration
in the last few years, a lot of people have
moved starting over you guys have.
Speaker 4 (13:17):
Moved, not just across the river in the DC suburbs.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Yes, So your book Alienated America talked about how people are,
you know, kind of not making friends and not finding
these social circles.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
So how do we get people together again?
Speaker 4 (13:34):
Really belonging to other things is the key. Just you know,
the knocking walking up to somebody and saying will you
be my friend was awkward in first grade and it
doesn't really work as an adult. You have to do
work together with other people, and this is where parenting
is great. Right If when my brother John lived in Brooklyn,
(13:54):
you know, most people who made friends in Park Slope,
it's because you're at the same playground, yeah, with other parents.
And so for me, our community is built around churches
and our kids' schools and not just a showing up
on Sunday, but also you know, volunteering, cleaning up after
the parish picnic, giving a talk to the students on
(14:19):
coaching JV baseball or whatever it is. Volunteering doing stuff.
That's what gets you plugged in. And so if you
only wanted friends and didn't care about the other upsides
of volunteering and coaching and helping, it would be a
great thing to do. But you have to belong to institutions.
And this is a problem for millennials and it's definitely
(14:39):
related to the collapse in marriage. Is that belonging is
a little bit of a sacrifice of your autonomy, right right, Well,
I don't want to belong to anything. I want to
interact in a transactional way. At my dry cleaner, I
give them money and they give and they perform this
service for me. If you sign up for something and
(14:59):
you join, you sort of you're giving up a tiny
bit of your autonomy. That's obviously what we need to
do to be happy as human beings, but it cuts
against the sort of the spirit of the age, which
is that we're all free, floating individuals who interact consensually
but never get stuck to one another.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
We're going to take a quick break and be right
back on the Carol Marcowitch Show.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
So I think your book Alienated America really leads to
family unfriendly policies.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
I'm sure you've thought of this right.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
It's those two things sort of go hand in hand,
and I think solving one, or working on solving one,
helps to solve the other, which like, so, how do
you suggest people start?
Speaker 3 (15:46):
I guess is how do we get over these problems?
Speaker 4 (15:48):
Well, so, we definitely need to change the spirit of
the age. We have to realize that sort of individualism
and autonomy, these are great American virtues, and we've gone
too far in that direction that what we're lacking is
a sense of community, a sense of belonging, a sense
that we can be role players within a given institution.
(16:11):
And so that's the first step of this, and then
also just simply marriage. I had a young woman, and
I quote her in Family and Friendly come up to
me and say, I would love to get married and
have kids, but raising children would slow down my career progression,
and then if I ever got divorced, I would suffer.
(16:34):
And so she's going to not have kids because she
needs the insurance product of having her income and her
work skills be always up to snuff. And I just
thought that was the saddest thing in the world, but
also a perfect expression of a lot of what's wrong
with the modern mindset, and that in the schools, I
(16:56):
think must be driving that into the kids, and parents
are driving that into the kids. And so the cultural
change we need is to say, actually, no happiness is
laying down your life for other people. Happiness is having friends,
is belonging is sacrifice, and marriage, the idea of marriage
as sacrificial absolutely needs to get restored. And again, community
(17:17):
institutions really help with that because when you show up,
no matter who you are, at a church picnic, they're like,
can you throw out the trash? Show in the place
like northern Virginia, you see like a federal judge is
a guy walking around throwing out the trash. That's a
great example.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Someone lied to that girl, you know, the one who
doesn't want to have a family because she's afraid of
her career prospects. I think that every study shows you
make more money when you get married, and as always,
you know, it's been true for men.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
For a long time, but it's even true for women.
Speaker 4 (17:45):
Now.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
How do we get over that?
Speaker 1 (17:49):
You know? One of the things that I've learned in
the last year traveling for my book for Stolen Youth
was that parents really don't speak their values to their kids.
They kind kind of think that the kids will pick
it up through osmosis, which is, you know, effective sometimes
but then other times it's just not How do we
get parents to kind of bluntly tell their kids what's important?
(18:12):
And then sort of my part two of that question
is what the parents don't think it's important. There was
that Pew study that was like terrifying that parents don't.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Think that marriage is that important.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
They consider financial security to be far more important for
their kids.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
Like no idea. That was so baffling that Pew survey
that I thought a slightly different interpretation might be possible,
and it's also scary. The slightly different interpretation is that
parents being older gen xers and some younger boomers. In
that survey, the parents have high school kids basically that
(18:48):
they would that they just took it for granted. Eventually
you're going to get married and have kids. And that
idea not that everybody needs to get married, but that's
sort of the natural thing to do. That has been
lost again by this belief that. And I'm a pretty
big fan of Taylor Swift, but she had a line
(19:11):
out an NYU commencement where she basically said, you are
the author of your whole life, and nobody's going to
help you write the script of your whole life. That
idea is a horrible idea. It's set in And so
the idea that there is a natural course of yeah,
sure there might be best practices of finishing school, don't
get pregnant before you get married, but the well, yeah,
(19:33):
most people are going to finish school, get a job,
get married, have kids. Some people aren't called to that,
but that's what most people are going to do. That
assumption was a natural, healthy assumption, and now that that's
gone among the young people, I'm afraid that some of
their parents think, oh, well, eventually they'll do that. But no,
if they think of marriage and parenthood as like whether
(19:56):
or not you buy a boat, or whether or not
you're going to you know what car you're going to get,
or whether you're going to buy a condo. Well, I'm
going to be deliberate. I'm only going to do this
if I'm one hundred percent sure it's going to benefit
me and be the smart thing to do. Well, a
lot of people are just never going to do it.
So that was sort of my interpretation of that. That Again,
(20:19):
it's not an uplifting interpretation. It makes a little more
sense to me than the idea, which still might be
true that a lot of parents have no desire for
their kids to have families and just want them to
have Yes.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Yeah, Well that's funny about Taylor Swift because look at
the kind of hoopla around her and Travis Kelcey. There's
as much as she's writing her own story or whatever,
her fans, her rabid fans, which I live with one
of them, are dying for her.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
To get married.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
You know.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
They cannot Like They're all like, is he going to
propose at the Super Bowl?
Speaker 1 (20:53):
And I was like, no, He's definitely not going to
propose at the Super bowl.
Speaker 4 (20:55):
So maybe if you had caught them past.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
He would have.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
But yes, right, like on the Jumbo Sean right.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
So as much as they all kind of say, oh,
you know, marriage, take it or leave it, or I
think that there is somewhere in us and then in
these young people the idea that it is going to
happen for them, and it's going to happen for Taylor,
And when it doesn't.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Happen, I think that's sad.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
I don't know that everybody intended it that way. Taylor
swift thing is. I just think such a great example of.
Speaker 4 (21:28):
That and her uh one of her the two songs
of hers that I know enough and to like is
love Story, which is as traditional as possible, and it
reminds me of I remember about ten years ago thinking
Hollywood still produces a lot of generally conservative themes where
like going Home Again is finding yourself and I thought,
(21:49):
why is it? And I thought, well, because that's natural,
because they know that if they want to make people happy,
they have to tap into human nature. And if they
want to build an unnatural storyline, that's going to involve
a lot more work to make that seem appeal.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
It and a lot of Taylor Swift songs are about
going home.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Or remembering people who knew her before she was famous,
or that kind of thing like the home basis.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
I know a lot of Taylor Swift songs, not just too.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
So I can go through her whole catalog where she,
you know, having that stability, she praises it, and she
kind of is where she came from is important to her.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
It's interesting.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
I think what people say and what they really mean
sometimes doesn't line up.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
So I'm not sure she really meant that she was
going to be the only person writing her story when
her songs tell a completely different story, you know. So
policy wise, what can be done to make more family
friend friendly policies? Short of you know, fixing the sidewalks.
Speaker 4 (22:52):
Again on the local level, A lot of that's going
to be done on the federal level. I think stuff
like a child tax credit the one we currently have,
making it a little bigger, making it so that parents
can claim a bigger credit when the child when the
children are younger, in exchange for a smaller one when
they're older. I think those would be smart. But I
(23:14):
went into writing Family Unfriendly wanting to find like a
big proposal that would work. And I looked at Hungary,
and I looked at Japan, and I looked at France,
and I looked at South Korea, and then Nordic So
you know, you got Denmark, which has had some success,
but then Sweden, which we thought would have a success
and had a failure. And again and again I see
(23:35):
that big national policies sadly don't work, and that what
you get in a place like France with lots of
subsidies for parents of kids is a lot less marriage,
a lot more single motherhood, which is not good for kids,
who not good for others. What you get in a
(23:55):
lot of Northern Europe is actually ends up being a
subsidy for work because they subsidized daycare, and subsidizing daycare
isn't really subsidizing family. A lot of a lot of
parents absolutely need that sort of help, but the broad
societal effect is subsidizing work. And so these Northern European
countries become more workist, that it becomes sort of their
(24:18):
religion to replace the old religions they used to have,
and workism is is inimical to family. So the on
the federal level, I would say subsidizing daycare is not
a winning solution. Massive child allowance is not a winning solution.
(24:38):
Sort of a healthy slightly larger child tax credit would
be a good starting point there. There's also other things
we can do. You know, social Security is being kept
alive by you know, me and Bethany Mandel having six kids,
and so we should get either you know, above replacement.
(25:00):
So we should, we should. I'm not saying we should
get necessarily a massive break from Social Security tax, but
maybe like there's a standard deduction, have a you don't
pay Social Security tax until you've reached the poverty line
for your household size. That's the sort of thing that
I would put in. And then I also have a
whole section on at home mom's in the book, and
(25:20):
one of the points is if you were to graduate
school and become a stay at home mom, then at
retirement you have no Social Security money coming your way.
I think that time spent as a full time caregiver
to your children should be credited towards social Security work,
just in the same way that working in an office
job should be.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Absolutely, It's funny you mentioned policies not working in Europe.
I remember the story where Spain gave a really generous
parental leave, and it actually reduced birth because like the
dad saw firsthand how difficult like child rearing was and
they were like, forget it, I don't want any part.
It's like, let's just have the one. So you know
(26:03):
it has that effect. Also, yeah, sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 4 (26:07):
I'm gonna say dad spending time with their what I
call their sentient kids, the non babies, the kids when
they're old enough to interact. That ends up being pronatal,
leading to more kids, in part because a mom can
imagine having another baby if dad's running around with the
toddler and the other kids. And so I dedicate half
(26:29):
of two different chapters to workplace policies that would help.
But really the workplace mindset, the reason women still get
paid less in the US than men do is because
mothers want flexibility to be with family. And my response
to that is not, well, nobody should ever be penalized
for flexibility. My response to that is dad should want
(26:51):
flexibility too. Dad should leave work early to be able
to coach their son's T ball game or go to
their daughter's vallet recital. And male bosses should say your
family is more important to you and say that to
the dads as much as to the moms.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Yeah, it's a great point, the fact that like dad's
at an older age become you know, more interested in
their children, I.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Think, than than when they're babies.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
I think that that's like a common thing I've seen
around me as well. You wrote something one time that
I really stuck with me. I should have looked it
up before this interview, but I didn't, so we're going
to just wing it. But about how the cost of
having each baby goes down, I think people think, like
you had six kids, and so each kid is as
expensive as the first kid.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
But like I.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Remember you writing this thing where it actually because they
just hand me downs.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
And you know, you don't buy all new stuff for
every baby.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
I think that would go a long way towards people.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Understanding that having more kids is not you know, one
hundred percent of the cost every time.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
Can you sum up what you said?
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Do you remember that? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (27:57):
Oh absolutely, I mean, uh, ourmous friends would call it
economies of scale. But so, I mean one of the
things is when the part I think it's the US
Department of Agriculture, for some reason, does the estimate of
the cost of raising a child baked into their estimate
is that every new kid means one more bedroom in
(28:18):
the house. So one kid is a two bedroom, two
kids is a three bedroom. I mean, I know nobody
who has more than two kids, and every kid has
their own bedroom. We used to have two kids on
sharing a bed and it was the bottom bunk of
a bunk bed and their sister's bed was four feet away.
Now that was a little little extreme, but you there's
(28:39):
things called bunk beds, there's things called hand me downs.
I think it's good for siblings to share a bedroom
and they entertain themselves like we Sometimes you're giving you're
putting your kid in an activity just you're paying for
ballet or soccer, just to keep them busy. When they
have siblings, you're doing less of that. Ours this last
(29:00):
summer we didn't take a vacation, and the vacation was
you've got friends, you've got siblings, go go wherever you want.
And that was a budgetary constraint we were facing. It
would have been horrible at this for an only child.
A gallon of milk doesn't cost four times as much
as a quart of milk. There's lots of these things,
(29:21):
and it also the most important thing to get back
to where we started and where family and friendly starts,
because it allows you to lower your expectations for yourself.
You no longer think, oh, I can make these kids
be perfectly ordered and perfectly dressed and get out the
door on time for everything and get straight a's and
(29:42):
get into Harvard. We're just trying to say, are these
kids going to be happy? Are they going to look
at family life? Because this is our ambition for our children.
Are they going to look at their family life and say,
I want something roughly like what mom and dad had.
It was fun, And we raise our kids in a
Catholic environment, and we go to parties, sometimes with the kids,
(30:02):
sometimes without the kids, and I think they the older
ones at least they're looking at that as what they
want from life. And so you're right that we should
be a little more explicit and say to our kids,
family is more important than your career. But that's that
becomes more obvious when you have more of them, that, Okay,
(30:24):
what we're going to try to accomplish with this family
is not going to be achievement and perfection, but sort
of love and liveliness.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Do you feel like you've made it.
Speaker 4 (30:37):
Do I feel like I've made it? Having six kids?
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Many books?
Speaker 4 (30:41):
How many? This is my fourth book. I have to
say that sometimes when people talk about their age or
you know, you turn forty five, I don't want to
think about how old they are. I never mind turning
another year, and in part because I feel like I've
(31:01):
earned those years with six kids. But it really is
just I yeah, I mean, I'm going to get a
little choked up here, but being married and having a
bunch of kids, I do feel like I've made it.
I feel like there's I can't ask for anything more.
People have bucket lists or whatever. I don't really have one.
(31:24):
I mean, someday, I guess I'll be thinking about walking
my daughters down the aisles or holding grandchildren. But at
this point in my life, I don't own a house.
I'd love to own a house. I've never made the
New York Times bestseller list. I'd love to do that,
but those are all that's always very secondary.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Yeah, editorial product. You know they don't care how many
books you sell.
Speaker 4 (31:43):
It's not scientific, no.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Right, no, not at all.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
So and here with your best tip for my listers
on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 4 (31:54):
If you think about sacrifice coming first, if you realize
that laying down your life for people you love, that's hard.
And I think that a lot of what I argue
in the book is that parenting should be easier. But
I'm sorry, my dog is now looking at me. But
(32:19):
but it's the easiest path parent What is the easiest
path to virtue? And it's the easiest way to sacrifice?
I said, I'm a Catholic. Jesus sold us to feed
the hungry and clothe the naked. There are hungry, naked
people in my house begging for my health. So building
your life so that sacrifice for others is easy really
is the easiest path to happiness.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
I love that he is Tim Carney.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
His book Family Unfriendly is out now.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
Buy it.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Help him make that New York Times bestseller list That
ultimately doesn't matter anyway.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Thank you so.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
Much, Tim, Thank you Carol.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
Thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Marco
which show.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Marcowitch Show on iHeartRadio.
I'm doing a fellowship at Hillsdale College in Michigan this week,
and I've had the opportunity to interact with some really
amazing college students. Hillsdale is a small Christian college in
rural Michigan. I get that these are atypical students. They're
(00:23):
all dressed better than me, but it's been interesting having
conversations with them and getting a sense of what younger
people think. Again, they're atypical, and they're super smart, super driven.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
You could see it.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
But still I do think that they have some representative
properties of the rest of the country. The kids here
are really marriage minded, and I love that I've met
students who are already married or are engaged to be.
To me, it's the absolute right path and one I
hope my own kids will take. I plan to tell
them often that they will never be surrounded by as
(00:58):
many eligible people to date as they are in college.
It's funny to think about how dissuaded most people are
today from marrying their college sweetheart, and look, it's not
for everyone. I'm glad I didn't marry anyone. I dated
before my husband, and that includes anybody I dated in college.
But the overall idea that there'll be so many options
(01:19):
open to you after you leave college is sort of
a lie. We've made it so dating at work doesn't
really happen anymore. For example, a man asking a woman
on a date, especially if he's her senior at work,
could get into real trouble. You can get fired or worse.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
I tried to find data on college romances continuing beyond school,
but I couldn't get anything concrete. I found a few
things that said that twenty eight percent of married graduates
attended the same university as their spouse, but only two
percent of all marriages in the United States or between
two people who met on campus, which is an interesting statistic.
(01:57):
They didn't get together on campus, but maybe they met
through you vitual friends that they made in college, or
alumni networks or something similar to that.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Anyway, you all know what I think.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
That Pugh study from a year ago continues to rattle me.
The one where only twenty one percent of parents care
if their kids get married, continues to be bonkers to me.
And it really has been so great meeting young people
who rebuff that, and it's probably because their parents are
in that twenty one percent who do care if they
(02:27):
get married.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
I plan to be in that twenty one percent.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
May we all be coming up next an interview with
Tim Carney.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Join us after the break.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My
guest today is Tim Carney. He is a fellow at AEI,
a columnist at The Washington Examiner, author of the new
book Family Unfriendly, and a father of six.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Hi.
Speaker 4 (02:53):
Tim, Hey, Carol, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
So nice to have you on.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
You're actually, as you know, the second Carney brother that
I've had on. So I just need to get two
more and I have the.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
Whole set, right, you'll have all four of us. Yeah, no,
I listened to that episode. I do not hang out
in Brooklyn bars as much as he used to, but yes,
he was a good guest to have on.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Yeah, and he's you know, he was very good at
the hanging out in Brooklyn bars. I actually it was
Manhattan bars if you want to be talking about it.
He was his favorite bars from Manhattan. No sisters, right,
It was.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
Just a four boys in about a five and a
half year stretch, so it was great. I loved it.
It was the best best thing my parents could have
given me was three older brothers.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
So a question that I ask all of my guests
is our biggest societal problem? And you have several books,
so I think I imagine any of our societal problems,
you know you have covered them.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
So what would you say is the biggest one?
Speaker 4 (03:50):
Well, going backwards, I would say our biggest societal problem
for two generations has been the collapse of community. That
so many people don't belong to things, that they don't
know their neighbors, that they don't go to church or
synagogue or mosque or that sort of thing. And that
was what I wrote about an alienated America. Going forward,
(04:11):
the biggest consequence of this, and the biggest problem we
have is that people aren't getting married and having kids.
The birth rate has fallen to one point six per
woman in the United States. Meanwhile, Americans still say the
ideal number of children is two point seven. To have
that massive shortfall in something that important not only creates
(04:32):
its own problems, but I think it reflects deeper problems.
There's something wrong with our culture. We're not supporting people
creating the families that they want. That absolutely is and
just now I think the rest of the media is
starting to realize that this is a problem, but it
will be the story of the next generation is the
(04:53):
baby bust and the collapse in family formation.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
So what happened and family unfriendly?
Speaker 1 (04:58):
You talk about, for example, that you know kids in
the past were not watched every second. What shifted that
made child rearing so difficult?
Speaker 4 (05:07):
So I think there's an underlying shift here that'll get
to in a second. But you just pointed out one
of this real symptoms, the fact that parents are expected
to helicopter and that they feel this they have this
ambition to make their kids. You know, if you're going
to play baseball, well you should be the best baseball player.
You get them a pitching coach, You put them on
(05:27):
a travel team. You end up in you know, tournaments
in Delaware every other weekend, rather than rather than me
riding where if Delaware's far away, no matter where you are, basically,
even if you're in Philly, Delaware is pretty far away.
If I would ride my bike to the Little League field.
People in our generation Gen X, we were told go
(05:50):
out and come home when the street lights, come on,
be home by dinner if you want to get fed.
That's not done for a couple of reasons. One and
so this is how our parenting culture is family unfriendly.
Parents think and are told, and school districts tell the
kids and the parents that you have to sort of
maximize every moment with enrichment aimed at achievement, tutoring, studying, travel, sports,
(06:13):
and free range parenting is largely frowned upon by the
culture and sometimes outlawed by the child protective services. Where
I used to live in Montgomery County and Silver Spring,
there were free range parents who got arrested for letting
their kids walk to the park because the kids were
only eleven and eight or something like that. And so
that's a parenting culture. But again, underneath it you see
(06:37):
reflections of how our culture is family unfriendly. When you
look at the fact that you have the expectation that
you can't bring your kids on an airplane. You see
those stories of like the parents who show up with
their baby and those little bags. Yeah, no, the exceptional
thing is a person who hates babies. It's not the
(06:59):
person who brings baby on an airplane. And so in
family and friendly. I use Israel as an example of
a family friendly place where they are wealthy and educated
and they have three babies compared to Europe about one
and a half and US at one point six. So
there's a ton going on. But it's family unfriendly parenting culture.
It's family unfriendly attitude towards children, that your kids are
(07:21):
your own problem. And I think there's deeper spiritual stuff
under there. But the fundamental thing that changed was once
becoming a parent became something done intentional after a long
search of is this what I want for my life
as part of my self written script of my life,
(07:42):
then it became so much more high stress and it
became your problem because they're your kids, rather than a
societal undertaking to raise up the next generation.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Yeah, I've written pieces against the whole candy out goodie
bags on airplanes because nobody wants to be on a
plane with a baby less than the parents of that baby.
So it's, you know, like it is an extremely stressful thing.
I was supposed to worry about your.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Feelings, Now like it's you know, I have my own
problems here.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
But yeah, I think the you know, the free range parenting,
the leonors Ganazi has written about it, and she's, you know,
sort of the founder of that movement. Is really tough
to achieve because I, you know, when I lived in Brooklyn,
her my husband's first cousins moved to our block. They
had daughters about the same age as our kids, And
one day I let my six year old walk from
(08:33):
our building to the building like three buildings over, but
like I could see her from our stoop. It was,
you know, and a lady walked by, and she didn't
she said something to her, but I didn't hear what
she said.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
And then she walked by me and said, you really
shouldn't let her walk like, you know, five steps away
from you.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
I don't know that pressure.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Like for me, I obviously I didn't care, and I
continue to let her be free rangey, which obviously has
led to her being a responsible, kind of more mature
teenager now. But how do you have like the societal
pressure of that, I think really gets to people. You
don't want to be the bad parent, you don't want
to be the neglectful parent, so you end up kind
of hovering on these kids who it's bad for them.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
No, it's what do you do? Absolutely, it's absolutely bad
for them. It's There was a great op ed in
the Journal of Pediatrics in January. I believe that said,
the epidemic of childhood anxiety is due to their not
having enough independent play. By independent, we mean no adults
supervising them and telling them what to do, right, So
(09:35):
I mean, and parents run in who want to be
more free range, they run into that obstacle. They also
run into the obstacle. In my own neighborhood, very nice
neighborhood in northern Virginia. There aren't enough sidewalks anywhere, so
are older kids twelve and older. They can ride their bikes,
they can run whatever. My seven year old should be
able to walk to our elementary school, But the sidewalks,
(09:59):
the crosswalks, they're built for cars rather than for people. So,
you know, her older sibling, her older sister used to
walk her last year. But now our older sister's gone
on to middle school. And so I mean, frankly, I
love walking my first grader to school. I absolutely love it.
But it was the cutest thing in the whole neighborhood
when the older sister got to do it. She could
do it by herself. If just the place was built better,
(10:21):
and then the fewer parents who do it, the harder
it is to do it. If there's kids running everywhere,
it sort of allows parents to feel a little more
relaxed letting them run. So my antswer I mean, so
we live in a house that unfortunately doesn't have a backyard,
and I realize the upside of this is when my
kids are playing, they're playing in the front yard, and
then other kids, other parents can let the kids out
(10:43):
and join us for whiffleball, and I step out of
my front yard and sometimes my kids aren't even there anymore.
The whiffle ball game has been taken over by others.
So just leading by leading by example and being like
Carol Markowitz and being willing to say to the woman
who disapproves, actually know, I I think she can walk
that way, but I really appreciate your concern. Thank you.
(11:05):
That's the one thing I can think of to change
your culture.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
So it's funny because I think your idea is like,
for example, you know, have more sidewalks, make things more
convenient for kids to kind of be able to play.
I think it's ideologically both the left and the right
should support it. I don't see what you know what
would make one side support it over another, And.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
Well, but yeah, on that stuff, yes, but there still
are trade offs, and to some extent, walkability can trigger
some conservatives when you use that word, because there are
trade offs. I want more sidewalks and that will mean
a narrower street in some places, So Montgomery County, they're
upset that trees will be chopped down if there are
(11:47):
sidewalks put on the blocks that kids need. But usually
there are people who think that slowing down cars is
some sort of liberal plot, And I'm saying, I just
want the cars flow enough that my kids can cross
the street and if they look both ways, there's not
going to be somebody coming fifty down the road. And
so there is some conservative resistance on that, and that's
(12:09):
one of the main goals I with family and friendlies
reach out to conservatives and say, to the title of
the chapters, if you want fecundity in the sheets, you
need walkability in the streets. We got to reverse this
baby buy and make towns be places where kids can
run free and parents can ignore them. Obviously, there are
lots of problems in this whole picture with the left,
(12:33):
particularly some sorts of modern feminism are family unfriendly. But
so I don't think one side bears the blame for
the baby bus. But when people ask me for a
government to government solution, I say, local governments, sidewalks, playgrounds,
stop signs, crosswalks, and let kids run around on the field.
(12:55):
I hate the signs that say permitted use only. I
tell my if it says permitted use only, it doesn't
apply to anyone under the age of eighteen.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
So one of the things we talk about on this
show a lot is making friends and how to do
that in adulthood, especially kind of with the great migration
in the last few years, a lot of people have
moved starting over you guys have.
Speaker 4 (13:17):
Moved, not just across the river in the DC suburbs.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Yes, So your book Alienated America talked about how people are,
you know, kind of not making friends and not finding
these social circles.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
So how do we get people together again?
Speaker 4 (13:34):
Really belonging to other things is the key. Just you know,
the knocking walking up to somebody and saying will you
be my friend was awkward in first grade and it
doesn't really work as an adult. You have to do
work together with other people, and this is where parenting
is great. Right If when my brother John lived in Brooklyn,
(13:54):
you know, most people who made friends in Park Slope,
it's because you're at the same playground, yeah, with other parents.
And so for me, our community is built around churches
and our kids' schools and not just a showing up
on Sunday, but also you know, volunteering, cleaning up after
the parish picnic, giving a talk to the students on
(14:19):
coaching JV baseball or whatever it is. Volunteering doing stuff.
That's what gets you plugged in. And so if you
only wanted friends and didn't care about the other upsides
of volunteering and coaching and helping, it would be a
great thing to do. But you have to belong to institutions.
And this is a problem for millennials and it's definitely
(14:39):
related to the collapse in marriage. Is that belonging is
a little bit of a sacrifice of your autonomy, right right, Well,
I don't want to belong to anything. I want to
interact in a transactional way. At my dry cleaner, I
give them money and they give and they perform this
service for me. If you sign up for something and
(14:59):
you join, you sort of you're giving up a tiny
bit of your autonomy. That's obviously what we need to
do to be happy as human beings, but it cuts
against the sort of the spirit of the age, which
is that we're all free, floating individuals who interact consensually
but never get stuck to one another.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
We're going to take a quick break and be right
back on the Carol Marcowitch Show.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
So I think your book Alienated America really leads to
family unfriendly policies.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
I'm sure you've thought of this right.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
It's those two things sort of go hand in hand,
and I think solving one, or working on solving one,
helps to solve the other, which like, so, how do
you suggest people start?
Speaker 3 (15:46):
I guess is how do we get over these problems?
Speaker 4 (15:48):
Well, so, we definitely need to change the spirit of
the age. We have to realize that sort of individualism
and autonomy, these are great American virtues, and we've gone
too far in that direction that what we're lacking is
a sense of community, a sense of belonging, a sense
that we can be role players within a given institution.
(16:11):
And so that's the first step of this, and then
also just simply marriage. I had a young woman, and
I quote her in Family and Friendly come up to
me and say, I would love to get married and
have kids, but raising children would slow down my career progression,
and then if I ever got divorced, I would suffer.
(16:34):
And so she's going to not have kids because she
needs the insurance product of having her income and her
work skills be always up to snuff. And I just
thought that was the saddest thing in the world, but
also a perfect expression of a lot of what's wrong
with the modern mindset, and that in the schools, I
(16:56):
think must be driving that into the kids, and parents
are driving that into the kids. And so the cultural
change we need is to say, actually, no happiness is
laying down your life for other people. Happiness is having friends,
is belonging is sacrifice, and marriage, the idea of marriage
as sacrificial absolutely needs to get restored. And again, community
(17:17):
institutions really help with that because when you show up,
no matter who you are, at a church picnic, they're like,
can you throw out the trash? Show in the place
like northern Virginia, you see like a federal judge is
a guy walking around throwing out the trash. That's a
great example.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Someone lied to that girl, you know, the one who
doesn't want to have a family because she's afraid of
her career prospects. I think that every study shows you
make more money when you get married, and as always,
you know, it's been true for men.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
For a long time, but it's even true for women.
Speaker 4 (17:45):
Now.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
How do we get over that?
Speaker 1 (17:49):
You know? One of the things that I've learned in
the last year traveling for my book for Stolen Youth
was that parents really don't speak their values to their kids.
They kind kind of think that the kids will pick
it up through osmosis, which is, you know, effective sometimes
but then other times it's just not How do we
get parents to kind of bluntly tell their kids what's important?
(18:12):
And then sort of my part two of that question
is what the parents don't think it's important. There was
that Pew study that was like terrifying that parents don't.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Think that marriage is that important.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
They consider financial security to be far more important for
their kids.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
Like no idea. That was so baffling that Pew survey
that I thought a slightly different interpretation might be possible,
and it's also scary. The slightly different interpretation is that
parents being older gen xers and some younger boomers. In
that survey, the parents have high school kids basically that
(18:48):
they would that they just took it for granted. Eventually
you're going to get married and have kids. And that
idea not that everybody needs to get married, but that's
sort of the natural thing to do. That has been
lost again by this belief that. And I'm a pretty
big fan of Taylor Swift, but she had a line
(19:11):
out an NYU commencement where she basically said, you are
the author of your whole life, and nobody's going to
help you write the script of your whole life. That
idea is a horrible idea. It's set in And so
the idea that there is a natural course of yeah,
sure there might be best practices of finishing school, don't
get pregnant before you get married, but the well, yeah,
(19:33):
most people are going to finish school, get a job,
get married, have kids. Some people aren't called to that,
but that's what most people are going to do. That
assumption was a natural, healthy assumption, and now that that's
gone among the young people, I'm afraid that some of
their parents think, oh, well, eventually they'll do that. But no,
if they think of marriage and parenthood as like whether
(19:56):
or not you buy a boat, or whether or not
you're going to you know what car you're going to get,
or whether you're going to buy a condo. Well, I'm
going to be deliberate. I'm only going to do this
if I'm one hundred percent sure it's going to benefit
me and be the smart thing to do. Well, a
lot of people are just never going to do it.
So that was sort of my interpretation of that. That Again,
(20:19):
it's not an uplifting interpretation. It makes a little more
sense to me than the idea, which still might be
true that a lot of parents have no desire for
their kids to have families and just want them to
have Yes.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Yeah, Well that's funny about Taylor Swift because look at
the kind of hoopla around her and Travis Kelcey. There's
as much as she's writing her own story or whatever,
her fans, her rabid fans, which I live with one
of them, are dying for her.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
To get married.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
You know.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
They cannot Like They're all like, is he going to
propose at the Super Bowl?
Speaker 1 (20:53):
And I was like, no, He's definitely not going to
propose at the Super bowl.
Speaker 4 (20:55):
So maybe if you had caught them past.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
He would have.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
But yes, right, like on the Jumbo Sean right.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
So as much as they all kind of say, oh,
you know, marriage, take it or leave it, or I
think that there is somewhere in us and then in
these young people the idea that it is going to
happen for them, and it's going to happen for Taylor,
And when it doesn't.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Happen, I think that's sad.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
I don't know that everybody intended it that way. Taylor
swift thing is. I just think such a great example of.
Speaker 4 (21:28):
That and her uh one of her the two songs
of hers that I know enough and to like is
love Story, which is as traditional as possible, and it
reminds me of I remember about ten years ago thinking
Hollywood still produces a lot of generally conservative themes where
like going Home Again is finding yourself and I thought,
(21:49):
why is it? And I thought, well, because that's natural,
because they know that if they want to make people happy,
they have to tap into human nature. And if they
want to build an unnatural storyline, that's going to involve
a lot more work to make that seem appeal.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
It and a lot of Taylor Swift songs are about
going home.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Or remembering people who knew her before she was famous,
or that kind of thing like the home basis.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
I know a lot of Taylor Swift songs, not just too.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
So I can go through her whole catalog where she,
you know, having that stability, she praises it, and she
kind of is where she came from is important to her.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
It's interesting.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
I think what people say and what they really mean
sometimes doesn't line up.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
So I'm not sure she really meant that she was
going to be the only person writing her story when
her songs tell a completely different story, you know. So
policy wise, what can be done to make more family
friend friendly policies? Short of you know, fixing the sidewalks.
Speaker 4 (22:52):
Again on the local level, A lot of that's going
to be done on the federal level. I think stuff
like a child tax credit the one we currently have,
making it a little bigger, making it so that parents
can claim a bigger credit when the child when the
children are younger, in exchange for a smaller one when
they're older. I think those would be smart. But I
(23:14):
went into writing Family Unfriendly wanting to find like a
big proposal that would work. And I looked at Hungary,
and I looked at Japan, and I looked at France,
and I looked at South Korea, and then Nordic So
you know, you got Denmark, which has had some success,
but then Sweden, which we thought would have a success
and had a failure. And again and again I see
(23:35):
that big national policies sadly don't work, and that what
you get in a place like France with lots of
subsidies for parents of kids is a lot less marriage,
a lot more single motherhood, which is not good for kids,
who not good for others. What you get in a
(23:55):
lot of Northern Europe is actually ends up being a
subsidy for work because they subsidized daycare, and subsidizing daycare
isn't really subsidizing family. A lot of a lot of
parents absolutely need that sort of help, but the broad
societal effect is subsidizing work. And so these Northern European
countries become more workist, that it becomes sort of their
(24:18):
religion to replace the old religions they used to have,
and workism is is inimical to family. So the on
the federal level, I would say subsidizing daycare is not
a winning solution. Massive child allowance is not a winning solution.
(24:38):
Sort of a healthy slightly larger child tax credit would
be a good starting point there. There's also other things
we can do. You know, social Security is being kept
alive by you know, me and Bethany Mandel having six kids,
and so we should get either you know, above replacement.
(25:00):
So we should, we should. I'm not saying we should
get necessarily a massive break from Social Security tax, but
maybe like there's a standard deduction, have a you don't
pay Social Security tax until you've reached the poverty line
for your household size. That's the sort of thing that
I would put in. And then I also have a
whole section on at home mom's in the book, and
(25:20):
one of the points is if you were to graduate
school and become a stay at home mom, then at
retirement you have no Social Security money coming your way.
I think that time spent as a full time caregiver
to your children should be credited towards social Security work,
just in the same way that working in an office
job should be.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Absolutely, It's funny you mentioned policies not working in Europe.
I remember the story where Spain gave a really generous
parental leave, and it actually reduced birth because like the
dad saw firsthand how difficult like child rearing was and
they were like, forget it, I don't want any part.
It's like, let's just have the one. So you know
(26:03):
it has that effect. Also, yeah, sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 4 (26:07):
I'm gonna say dad spending time with their what I
call their sentient kids, the non babies, the kids when
they're old enough to interact. That ends up being pronatal,
leading to more kids, in part because a mom can
imagine having another baby if dad's running around with the
toddler and the other kids. And so I dedicate half
(26:29):
of two different chapters to workplace policies that would help.
But really the workplace mindset, the reason women still get
paid less in the US than men do is because
mothers want flexibility to be with family. And my response
to that is not, well, nobody should ever be penalized
for flexibility. My response to that is dad should want
(26:51):
flexibility too. Dad should leave work early to be able
to coach their son's T ball game or go to
their daughter's vallet recital. And male bosses should say your
family is more important to you and say that to
the dads as much as to the moms.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Yeah, it's a great point, the fact that like dad's
at an older age become you know, more interested in
their children, I.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Think, than than when they're babies.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
I think that that's like a common thing I've seen
around me as well. You wrote something one time that
I really stuck with me. I should have looked it
up before this interview, but I didn't, so we're going
to just wing it. But about how the cost of
having each baby goes down, I think people think, like
you had six kids, and so each kid is as
expensive as the first kid.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
But like I.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Remember you writing this thing where it actually because they
just hand me downs.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
And you know, you don't buy all new stuff for
every baby.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
I think that would go a long way towards people.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Understanding that having more kids is not you know, one
hundred percent of the cost every time.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
Can you sum up what you said?
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Do you remember that? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (27:57):
Oh absolutely, I mean, uh, ourmous friends would call it
economies of scale. But so, I mean one of the
things is when the part I think it's the US
Department of Agriculture, for some reason, does the estimate of
the cost of raising a child baked into their estimate
is that every new kid means one more bedroom in
(28:18):
the house. So one kid is a two bedroom, two
kids is a three bedroom. I mean, I know nobody
who has more than two kids, and every kid has
their own bedroom. We used to have two kids on
sharing a bed and it was the bottom bunk of
a bunk bed and their sister's bed was four feet away.
Now that was a little little extreme, but you there's
(28:39):
things called bunk beds, there's things called hand me downs.
I think it's good for siblings to share a bedroom
and they entertain themselves like we Sometimes you're giving you're
putting your kid in an activity just you're paying for
ballet or soccer, just to keep them busy. When they
have siblings, you're doing less of that. Ours this last
(29:00):
summer we didn't take a vacation, and the vacation was
you've got friends, you've got siblings, go go wherever you want.
And that was a budgetary constraint we were facing. It
would have been horrible at this for an only child.
A gallon of milk doesn't cost four times as much
as a quart of milk. There's lots of these things,
(29:21):
and it also the most important thing to get back
to where we started and where family and friendly starts,
because it allows you to lower your expectations for yourself.
You no longer think, oh, I can make these kids
be perfectly ordered and perfectly dressed and get out the
door on time for everything and get straight a's and
(29:42):
get into Harvard. We're just trying to say, are these
kids going to be happy? Are they going to look
at family life? Because this is our ambition for our children.
Are they going to look at their family life and say,
I want something roughly like what mom and dad had.
It was fun, And we raise our kids in a
Catholic environment, and we go to parties, sometimes with the kids,
(30:02):
sometimes without the kids, and I think they the older
ones at least they're looking at that as what they
want from life. And so you're right that we should
be a little more explicit and say to our kids,
family is more important than your career. But that's that
becomes more obvious when you have more of them, that, Okay,
(30:24):
what we're going to try to accomplish with this family
is not going to be achievement and perfection, but sort
of love and liveliness.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Do you feel like you've made it.
Speaker 4 (30:37):
Do I feel like I've made it? Having six kids?
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Many books?
Speaker 4 (30:41):
How many? This is my fourth book. I have to
say that sometimes when people talk about their age or
you know, you turn forty five, I don't want to
think about how old they are. I never mind turning
another year, and in part because I feel like I've
(31:01):
earned those years with six kids. But it really is
just I yeah, I mean, I'm going to get a
little choked up here, but being married and having a
bunch of kids, I do feel like I've made it.
I feel like there's I can't ask for anything more.
People have bucket lists or whatever. I don't really have one.
(31:24):
I mean, someday, I guess I'll be thinking about walking
my daughters down the aisles or holding grandchildren. But at
this point in my life, I don't own a house.
I'd love to own a house. I've never made the
New York Times bestseller list. I'd love to do that,
but those are all that's always very secondary.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Yeah, editorial product. You know they don't care how many
books you sell.
Speaker 4 (31:43):
It's not scientific, no.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Right, no, not at all.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
So and here with your best tip for my listers
on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 4 (31:54):
If you think about sacrifice coming first, if you realize
that laying down your life for people you love, that's hard.
And I think that a lot of what I argue
in the book is that parenting should be easier. But
I'm sorry, my dog is now looking at me. But
(32:19):
but it's the easiest path parent What is the easiest
path to virtue? And it's the easiest way to sacrifice?
I said, I'm a Catholic. Jesus sold us to feed
the hungry and clothe the naked. There are hungry, naked
people in my house begging for my health. So building
your life so that sacrifice for others is easy really
is the easiest path to happiness.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
I love that he is Tim Carney.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
His book Family Unfriendly is out now.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
Buy it.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Help him make that New York Times bestseller list That
ultimately doesn't matter anyway.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Thank you so.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
Much, Tim, Thank you Carol.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
Thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Marco
which show.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
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