1 00:00:17,600 --> 00:00:20,760 Well, we're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily 2 00:00:20,800 --> 00:00:23,800 Jishinski, culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email 3 00:00:23,839 --> 00:00:27,160 the show at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on exit fdr 4 00:00:27,359 --> 00:00:30,640 LST. Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts, and of course 5 00:00:30,679 --> 00:00:34,759 to the premium version of our website as well. We're joined today by someone 6 00:00:34,799 --> 00:00:36,799 that I would have on the show every day if I could, but he 7 00:00:36,840 --> 00:00:41,240 actually has a life. Tim Carney's the author of the new book Family Unfriendly. 8 00:00:41,880 --> 00:00:45,560 He works at the American Enterprise Institute the Washington Examiner. He's my former 9 00:00:45,640 --> 00:00:49,200 boss. Tim. Welcome to the show. Thank you, Emily, Welcome 10 00:00:49,280 --> 00:00:52,880 back to the show. You are frequently a presence on the show because a 11 00:00:53,039 --> 00:00:56,920 reference Alienated America in particular is so often also the big ripoff. But it 12 00:00:57,000 --> 00:00:59,799 is a good place to start because you have a chapter title on in your 13 00:00:59,799 --> 00:01:03,079 book book called It Takes a Village. This is in the new book Family 14 00:01:03,159 --> 00:01:07,719 Unfriendly. It Takes a Village as your chapter title. It sort of piggybacks 15 00:01:07,719 --> 00:01:11,760 off of arguments that you made in Alienated America about community and civil society. 16 00:01:14,120 --> 00:01:19,040 When you're talking about this sort of fertility overall fertility question, why people aren't 17 00:01:19,040 --> 00:01:23,719 having so many kids. You address so many different topics, ranging from travel, 18 00:01:23,760 --> 00:01:30,079 sports to potential government incentives. But when you're talking about community in particular, 19 00:01:32,640 --> 00:01:37,040 was there something that brought you from Alienated America to Family Unfriendly? Is 20 00:01:37,239 --> 00:01:40,400 there? It's kind of a kind of a sequel. Yeah, oh yeah, 21 00:01:40,439 --> 00:01:42,879 So well I'm going to go way back. This is now going to 22 00:01:42,920 --> 00:01:48,560 become a writer conversation, so I hope I won't bore your non writer listeners. 23 00:01:48,799 --> 00:01:51,239 But so, the first couple of books I wrote, you mentioned the 24 00:01:51,239 --> 00:01:53,640 Big rip Off. My second one was Obama Nomics. They were all on 25 00:01:53,680 --> 00:01:57,920 a certain theme. And then I read Andy Ferguson wrote an article once about 26 00:01:57,959 --> 00:02:02,920 what he called non book books, which was basically, you know, twelve 27 00:02:04,000 --> 00:02:07,959 chapters stapled together, and I realized that my first two books could have been 28 00:02:07,000 --> 00:02:09,520 called non book books, and that was a little less. So when I 29 00:02:09,520 --> 00:02:13,439 was writing Alienated America, I wanted to think, how can I make this 30 00:02:13,479 --> 00:02:16,400 be a book book? You have to be able to make arguments later in 31 00:02:16,439 --> 00:02:20,520 the book that you couldn't have made earlier. There's an arc. There has 32 00:02:20,560 --> 00:02:23,400 to be a beginning and an end. And as I was saying about the 33 00:02:23,479 --> 00:02:28,080 end, I was started thinking about Shakespeare. And I don't even know if 34 00:02:28,080 --> 00:02:31,240 this is true, but something I was told in high school about Shakespeare that 35 00:02:31,280 --> 00:02:35,680 the comedies basically all end in weddings. The ones I can think of tend 36 00:02:35,719 --> 00:02:40,599 to ed and when weddings, interestingly, not always the weddings of the main 37 00:02:40,719 --> 00:02:44,800 characters. So it's not like a happily ever after thing, but you know, 38 00:02:44,840 --> 00:02:47,599 there's a wedding. And so I thought I should somehow end my book 39 00:02:47,599 --> 00:02:53,199 with a wedding, and so I wrote it around the last chapter there the 40 00:02:53,240 --> 00:02:58,960 solutions chapters about building real local communities, and the most important ones are going 41 00:02:59,000 --> 00:03:04,039 to be religious congregations. And as I was thinking about what's the most important 42 00:03:04,039 --> 00:03:07,120 thing that a religious congregation can do, you know, it helps you when 43 00:03:07,319 --> 00:03:10,439 you as far as worldly stuff, it helps you when you are sick, 44 00:03:10,479 --> 00:03:14,960 it helps you, you know, find a job, YadA YadA. But 45 00:03:15,039 --> 00:03:20,560 ideally it helps you help your children find somebody, get married, start a 46 00:03:20,560 --> 00:03:23,240 family. And so the last scene in Nalienated America is sort of in my 47 00:03:23,400 --> 00:03:28,080 vision, was me like walking my daughter down the aisle of the same aisle 48 00:03:28,120 --> 00:03:31,240 that she puked in at church as a seven year old or whatever. And 49 00:03:31,280 --> 00:03:37,000 so I realized, if that's the most important thing that a community does, 50 00:03:37,039 --> 00:03:39,120 then the loss of community, the most one of the most important losses, 51 00:03:39,240 --> 00:03:43,319 is going to be the loss of family formation. And then when I looked 52 00:03:43,319 --> 00:03:46,280 at the falling birth rate, and then when I looked at the rising anxiety 53 00:03:46,319 --> 00:03:52,000 among kids and talking to parents who are like, this is so much more 54 00:03:52,039 --> 00:03:54,680 stressful. Why can't I just simplify my life? That's when I realized that 55 00:03:54,680 --> 00:04:00,159 the I think the most important story of the last thirty years has been and 56 00:04:00,319 --> 00:04:03,280 the collapse of community. The most important story of the next thirty years is 57 00:04:03,360 --> 00:04:10,199 going to be the shrinking family, the reduction in marriage and baby making, 58 00:04:10,479 --> 00:04:13,240 and that I mean, you see how that changes a culture in these other 59 00:04:13,240 --> 00:04:15,919 countries, and I think in the United States it will be. So that's 60 00:04:15,919 --> 00:04:19,439 how it's sort of a sequel. Yeah, that's really interesting for a number 61 00:04:19,480 --> 00:04:24,480 of reasons. In one thing you write about in the book, and I 62 00:04:24,560 --> 00:04:28,319 was fascinated by it, is the question of happiness. I think I have 63 00:04:28,360 --> 00:04:31,319 the quote here, but basically you say something they said that like, the 64 00:04:31,360 --> 00:04:35,720 happiest people have children the earliest. Yes, that's kind of the order. 65 00:04:36,319 --> 00:04:40,519 You obviously are at Ai where Arthur Brooks for a really long time and still 66 00:04:40,600 --> 00:04:43,439 is doing not at AI, but in general really important work on that question 67 00:04:43,480 --> 00:04:47,040 of happiness. We've seen as material wealth increases, happiness decline in the United 68 00:04:47,079 --> 00:04:53,000 States, more broadly in the Western world. How is happiness, in your 69 00:04:53,319 --> 00:04:58,680 estimation, affecting fertility? So I think, well, first of all, 70 00:04:58,720 --> 00:05:02,360 whenever two things are interact, the right answer is almost always that they're causing 71 00:05:02,399 --> 00:05:08,519 each other. That you know, happiness is causing happiness causes people to have 72 00:05:08,560 --> 00:05:13,399 babies, and people having babies makes them happy, and the in verse. 73 00:05:13,680 --> 00:05:18,399 A sadder society will have less babies. In a society with less fewer babies 74 00:05:18,720 --> 00:05:23,160 will be a sadder society. I think it goes together in a few ways. 75 00:05:23,720 --> 00:05:30,600 One, I think a big part of happiness is hope and a belief 76 00:05:30,040 --> 00:05:33,800 in your own kind of goodness. This is where the book ends up. 77 00:05:33,839 --> 00:05:38,920 I talk about civilizational sadness that we don't actually believe in our own goodness, 78 00:05:39,079 --> 00:05:43,879 especially white liberals in America think, you know, climate change is destroying the 79 00:05:43,920 --> 00:05:49,759 planet, We're a racist country, that we're not ultimately good, and that 80 00:05:49,519 --> 00:05:53,800 that's what I call civilizational sadness. You don't want more of us if you 81 00:05:53,839 --> 00:05:57,079 think we're not ultimately good. If you have hope and a belief that, 82 00:05:57,120 --> 00:06:01,319 despite all of your flaws and sins, actually like good. And I see 83 00:06:01,360 --> 00:06:05,040 it in religious terms like God loves me, but also that that you're good, 84 00:06:05,040 --> 00:06:10,160 that you're a force for good, that you know other people love you, 85 00:06:10,160 --> 00:06:13,600 you're you're good enough, you're you're smart enough, et cetera. That 86 00:06:14,240 --> 00:06:17,120 those people will be more likely to have kids, And then having kids makes 87 00:06:17,160 --> 00:06:23,680 you step outside of yourself. And I think one of the core causes of 88 00:06:23,720 --> 00:06:30,240 sadness is just really looking in at yourself constantly all the time. That's why 89 00:06:30,360 --> 00:06:34,079 I never saw that show Black Mirror. Did you see that show? Like 90 00:06:34,079 --> 00:06:36,480 one episode? Okay, it's I thought that might have been one of those 91 00:06:36,480 --> 00:06:42,879 shows you young people would always talk about at the Examiner. But but that 92 00:06:43,000 --> 00:06:46,519 just seemed like a perfect description of what social media does too, in this 93 00:06:46,800 --> 00:06:51,160 dark way causes us just to look in on ourself. And when you are 94 00:06:51,399 --> 00:06:58,160 married and raising kids, you're constantly you sort of get dragged almost against your 95 00:06:58,160 --> 00:07:00,319 will, to be thinking about something big, which is exactly by the way 96 00:07:00,319 --> 00:07:05,519 what community and belonging does as well, So that would be one of the 97 00:07:05,519 --> 00:07:10,199 main ways I say is that you you were made happier when you're actually living 98 00:07:10,360 --> 00:07:16,079 for other people. The do you know, Pearl Pearl Davis? Okay, 99 00:07:16,279 --> 00:07:23,079 I assumed you did. She would say that in order to make this a 100 00:07:23,120 --> 00:07:27,120 good deal, you know, having children getting married for men, you know, 101 00:07:27,160 --> 00:07:30,279 you have to reform alimony, you have to reform child support, you 102 00:07:30,319 --> 00:07:33,199 have to reform divorce because right now it's not a good deal for men. 103 00:07:33,759 --> 00:07:38,480 And she actually debated Michael Knowles on this recently. But the reason I pose 104 00:07:38,519 --> 00:07:42,439 this to you, Tim is I'm curious about your taste on the differences between 105 00:07:42,639 --> 00:07:47,439 men and women's sort of civilizational pessimism. Is there is it, you know, 106 00:07:47,519 --> 00:07:51,920 affected by one sex being really pessimistic therefore the other sex just can't find 107 00:07:53,040 --> 00:07:56,480 enough mates that are interested in having children. Or is this kind of across 108 00:07:56,519 --> 00:08:01,879 the board everyone's really pessimistic. So there's it's kind of a we need to 109 00:08:01,920 --> 00:08:05,519 have a rising tide that lifts both boats. I think that the negativity and 110 00:08:05,639 --> 00:08:13,199 like the gender wars like rises together and would go down together at the same 111 00:08:13,240 --> 00:08:18,839 time. I don't think men are more dour than women, or vice versa. 112 00:08:20,360 --> 00:08:24,959 When you look at South Korea, they there they have the lowest birth 113 00:08:24,040 --> 00:08:28,920 rate in the world, less than one baby per woman, and they also 114 00:08:28,959 --> 00:08:35,080 seem to have this immense split, like just division between men and women, 115 00:08:35,120 --> 00:08:39,759 where women, like starting to happen in the US, actually have more career 116 00:08:39,919 --> 00:08:48,559 success than men do, and that a lot of men react to that, 117 00:08:48,120 --> 00:08:50,600 not by saying, Okay, well maybe I could be a stay at home 118 00:08:50,679 --> 00:08:54,840 dad, but by saying no, you know, these women they just they 119 00:08:54,840 --> 00:09:00,480 don't actually want men. They or you know that in cell behavior kicks in, 120 00:09:01,279 --> 00:09:03,440 and then it becomes this awful spiral and then women start to think, 121 00:09:03,440 --> 00:09:09,200 well, men are just you know, our freeloaders are et cetera. And 122 00:09:09,399 --> 00:09:13,120 could that happen in the US? Absolutely it could. Are we seeing the 123 00:09:13,159 --> 00:09:15,919 beginning of it. It's possible. That's part of what I think some of 124 00:09:15,960 --> 00:09:20,879 the sadness is. So they're real awkward questions here, Except birth rates go 125 00:09:22,120 --> 00:09:28,480 up a little bit when men's income goes up. Birth rates go down when 126 00:09:28,519 --> 00:09:33,679 women's income goes up. So women making more money and having more career success 127 00:09:33,679 --> 00:09:39,840 for reasons you could guess, you know, opportunity costs doesn't help people make 128 00:09:41,159 --> 00:09:46,559 start more families, so that sadness, the sex is being at each other's 129 00:09:46,600 --> 00:09:50,519 throat. That's a vicious circle. So many of these things are vicious circles. 130 00:09:50,559 --> 00:09:54,679 And if Pearl Davis thinks you can sort of reset it by rigging things 131 00:09:54,679 --> 00:09:58,399 a little dore in favor of men, I think that that's wrong. I 132 00:09:58,480 --> 00:10:05,159 offer us or what I call family friendly feminism, which is so the family 133 00:10:05,240 --> 00:10:11,399 unfriendly feminism is that okay, women need to become more like company men, 134 00:10:11,840 --> 00:10:16,320 and it just becomes a workism, and it makes everybody less happy in the 135 00:10:16,320 --> 00:10:18,440 long run. It definitely leads to falling birth rates, more anxiety, et 136 00:10:18,519 --> 00:10:22,519 cetera. My argument is not that women become company men, but that company 137 00:10:22,519 --> 00:10:28,120 men become family guys. My family friendly feminine and not become like women. 138 00:10:28,480 --> 00:10:35,720 But do the dad stuff do? I always sometimes I post on Twitter pictures 139 00:10:35,759 --> 00:10:37,960 of me playing my kids in basketball. I have one son who's taller than 140 00:10:37,960 --> 00:10:41,159 me, but I still can beat them because I'm more wily than him. 141 00:10:43,399 --> 00:10:46,159 I have another middle son who I be and then I have a nine year 142 00:10:46,200 --> 00:10:50,879 old who I just absolutely demolish in basketball. I can't actually dunk, but 143 00:10:50,879 --> 00:10:54,799 if I could, I would just dunk on Sean all day long. But 144 00:10:54,080 --> 00:10:58,960 I had my seven year old Eve took a video of me playing sewn because 145 00:10:58,200 --> 00:11:01,759 and I just set up so that he would take a shot, and I 146 00:11:01,879 --> 00:11:03,440 just jumped in the air and I swatted the heck out of it. Like 147 00:11:03,600 --> 00:11:07,120 so far, it was my greatest block shot of Violet, yes exactly, 148 00:11:07,320 --> 00:11:11,559 and I look like to Camp Bay Matambo compared to this night. It is 149 00:11:11,600 --> 00:11:13,919 so much fun. My kids love it. I love it. This is 150 00:11:13,919 --> 00:11:18,440 what makes being a dad fun. My wife, she wouldn't get much joy 151 00:11:18,519 --> 00:11:24,559 out of beating our kids basketball, because being a dad is its own joy 152 00:11:24,639 --> 00:11:26,679 and that needs to be held up. So if I were to debate Pearl 153 00:11:26,759 --> 00:11:31,600 Davis, I think I would talk about how being a dad is awesome. 154 00:11:31,360 --> 00:11:37,159 Dads need to do that more, and that would be part of it. 155 00:11:37,200 --> 00:11:39,279 But I wouldn't place more of the onus on the men or the women. 156 00:11:39,360 --> 00:11:46,679 I think that's the wrong way to look at it. You've probably noticed volatility 157 00:11:46,720 --> 00:11:50,360 in the market lately. The stock market has seen unprecedented fluctuations over the last 158 00:11:50,440 --> 00:11:56,919 three years, and silver has historically been considered a safe haven asset during times 159 00:11:56,039 --> 00:12:01,960 like this of market volatility. 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Okay, that's true. You also seem 185 00:14:15,519 --> 00:14:20,320 to be suggesting that there are hardwired biological differences between men and women, a 186 00:14:20,320 --> 00:14:24,559 controversial position now, but you do do. Don't tell anybody I said that. 187 00:14:26,159 --> 00:14:28,080 We'll cut that part out but there is a part in the book where 188 00:14:28,120 --> 00:14:35,200 you address kind of transhumanism I think as it's been described. And what's interesting 189 00:14:35,240 --> 00:14:39,159 about that is the dovetailing with the IVF conversation, which I'm sure you've been 190 00:14:39,159 --> 00:14:41,519 thinking about a lot recently. Is a lot of people have been thinking about 191 00:14:41,559 --> 00:14:46,159 recently. There's this character in vander Pump Rules, which is a show on 192 00:14:46,240 --> 00:14:50,240 Bravo, So indulge me for a moment, tim Her name is Lala. 193 00:14:50,399 --> 00:14:54,919 She had a wildlife, then got pregnant with her fiance, had a baby. 194 00:14:56,000 --> 00:14:58,200 She loves being a mom now loves it more than anything in the world, 195 00:14:58,279 --> 00:15:01,240 and just wants to have more children. She wants to have all of 196 00:15:01,240 --> 00:15:07,080 them via IVF because she quote doesn't want a baby daddy, because she has 197 00:15:07,120 --> 00:15:11,960 this heartbreaking experience of having to share her daughter with this man who cheated on 198 00:15:13,000 --> 00:15:16,639 her and was awful to her. And it calls to mind this idea now 199 00:15:16,639 --> 00:15:22,000 that women want to have babies without men because there are problems with men. 200 00:15:22,159 --> 00:15:28,360 Men come with baggage. And so I say that as a preface to this 201 00:15:28,440 --> 00:15:37,240 question for you, how does this superhuman acceleration of technology affect the way that 202 00:15:37,320 --> 00:15:41,360 we see marriage and children. Well, now I wish I had known about 203 00:15:41,399 --> 00:15:46,039 this character while I was writing the book, because that fits perfectly into the 204 00:15:46,080 --> 00:15:48,039 tech chapter. I call it post human, and I didn't realize that that's 205 00:15:48,039 --> 00:15:52,639 what I thought I was writing about, just like phone addiction or porn. 206 00:15:52,840 --> 00:15:58,559 And then my editor was like, you're writing about us trying to escape our 207 00:16:00,279 --> 00:16:04,240 physical reality. And so that's why I use that term for that chapter. 208 00:16:04,840 --> 00:16:12,120 And that idea that wanting to escape connection. That's a huge part of the 209 00:16:12,159 --> 00:16:18,399 modern project. And marriage is a connection and it's not a transaction because it's 210 00:16:18,840 --> 00:16:25,000 hard to pull out. It's not just a contract between two people. Parenthood 211 00:16:25,679 --> 00:16:30,480 is a connection that again you're not allowed to just sort of plug into and 212 00:16:30,600 --> 00:16:34,919 unplug from. And that idea of connection. And so I quote Christine Emba 213 00:16:36,320 --> 00:16:40,519 in the book a few times she wrote rethinking sex, and she says sort 214 00:16:40,519 --> 00:16:45,840 of she equates the words freedom with a lack of connection. And I quote 215 00:16:45,919 --> 00:16:51,399 Kate Julian writing that the hookup culture is really a lack of relationship culture, 216 00:16:51,399 --> 00:16:53,720 and so it's no wonder that it's kind of led to a sex recession. 217 00:16:55,279 --> 00:16:59,519 So that idea of I want the one connection, I want the baby, 218 00:17:00,039 --> 00:17:07,720 but I don't want the husband. That vulnerability connection, that that exposes us 219 00:17:07,720 --> 00:17:12,279 to harm is something people want to avoid. Now that's as old as history 220 00:17:12,319 --> 00:17:17,680 that really, you know, vulnerability is at the heart of love and so 221 00:17:17,799 --> 00:17:19,640 we can be afraid of it. I mean there's a million stories like that. 222 00:17:19,720 --> 00:17:25,720 I think I saw Far from the Matting Crowd of Tom Hardy novel that 223 00:17:25,720 --> 00:17:26,400 I was tarting in a movie, and that was part of it, was 224 00:17:26,440 --> 00:17:32,960 like the unwillingness to be vulnerable to somebody, etc. But nowadays there's a 225 00:17:33,000 --> 00:17:37,039 belief, Okay, well we should just not be vulnerable. We're just airing 226 00:17:37,079 --> 00:17:40,799 in that direction. And I think that tech feeds into that because of this. 227 00:17:42,039 --> 00:17:45,160 The medium is the message is something people say a lot. I think 228 00:17:45,200 --> 00:17:52,720 that the medium of social media, especially an infinite feed that uses an algorithm 229 00:17:52,759 --> 00:17:57,079 that judges your behavior and then shows you what it thinks you want to see, 230 00:17:59,160 --> 00:18:03,400 that is that black mirror that turns you in on yourself, and it 231 00:18:03,440 --> 00:18:07,920 makes you either resent people who seem to have something better than you or distrust 232 00:18:08,000 --> 00:18:11,200 people because you're constantly learning about how bad the rest of the world is. 233 00:18:12,079 --> 00:18:18,240 And it makes us think of ourselves as people who can just write our own 234 00:18:18,400 --> 00:18:22,480 life script sort of on a blank page. Weirdly enough, I was just 235 00:18:22,559 --> 00:18:27,440 on MSNBC and Al Sharpton asked me a question about my book, and it 236 00:18:27,480 --> 00:18:30,599 was the best question I got on MSNBC. He said, when I was 237 00:18:30,640 --> 00:18:36,759 growing up in Brooklyn in the church, we saw ourselves as part of a 238 00:18:36,839 --> 00:18:40,519 continuity of generations, that there was a really old people, the old people, 239 00:18:40,640 --> 00:18:44,000 us young people, and that we were passing something down, and so 240 00:18:44,039 --> 00:18:48,279 it just made sense to have a next generation and pass stuff down. But 241 00:18:48,079 --> 00:18:56,480 yeah, social media is about it's a very individualistic thing. It's about crafting 242 00:18:56,359 --> 00:19:03,000 from scratch, just like that woman makes grillchy sandwiches from scratch for her children 243 00:19:03,279 --> 00:19:08,319 on Instagram or TikTok or whatever. We're supposed to create from scratch our own 244 00:19:08,359 --> 00:19:12,079 identity, our own personality, instead of our identity being formed by the things 245 00:19:12,079 --> 00:19:17,680 we belong to the people were connected to. And so if we're creating that 246 00:19:17,759 --> 00:19:22,759 from scratch, it becomes something a little less human. Why should I have 247 00:19:22,839 --> 00:19:26,599 to be binary? Why should I have to stay the race, the sex, 248 00:19:26,680 --> 00:19:33,480 whatever that I was? And certainly the unchosen obligations they have no place 249 00:19:33,480 --> 00:19:36,599 in there. So who's your brother, who's your mom, who's your dad, 250 00:19:36,640 --> 00:19:40,039 what's your hometown, what religion were you brought up in, what's your 251 00:19:40,079 --> 00:19:45,559 ethnicity? All of those things were unchosen, So those have no place in 252 00:19:45,599 --> 00:19:48,920 that script of your life that you're writing on a blank page. So something 253 00:19:48,960 --> 00:19:53,720 about social media I think drives us to see our lives, to see our 254 00:19:53,759 --> 00:19:57,000 project in life as writing a script of our life on a black, blank 255 00:19:57,039 --> 00:20:03,880 page. Curious about your experience with cross cultural examples, because there were you 256 00:20:03,920 --> 00:20:11,200 know, pre Christian societies obviously that had high levels of fertility, secular societies 257 00:20:11,240 --> 00:20:14,880 that maybe now have high levels of fertility. I don't know, because to 258 00:20:14,920 --> 00:20:17,920 me, when you're talking about this, it sounds like it's all downstream of 259 00:20:18,240 --> 00:20:21,880 secularism. As soon as you lose your sense of purpose, you lose your 260 00:20:22,240 --> 00:20:26,839 drive to be social and to engage in these institutions, whether their marriage or 261 00:20:27,039 --> 00:20:33,400 civil society. What role do you think? This is maybe the deepest question 262 00:20:33,480 --> 00:20:37,799 possible, But I know we're on a podcast, We're not you know, 263 00:20:37,200 --> 00:20:41,319 you could write a whole book just on this. But as you look at 264 00:20:41,519 --> 00:20:45,799 all of these symptoms, do you see them as being downstream of a secularizing 265 00:20:45,839 --> 00:20:49,359 society or is there no way to kind of pin it to one thing. 266 00:20:51,359 --> 00:20:56,240 The reason I I mean, it's complicated if but I would be willing to 267 00:20:56,279 --> 00:21:03,279 pin into a secularizing society because of this. I looked around for subcultures in 268 00:21:03,359 --> 00:21:07,680 the US or cultures anywhere basically, but especially in the West, that have 269 00:21:08,480 --> 00:21:14,480 a high birth rate, and the only ones I found were religious. So 270 00:21:15,200 --> 00:21:18,559 some Catholic subcultures mine, me and my friends we get together, there's like 271 00:21:18,599 --> 00:21:26,160 six adults, twenty four kids. It's normal. But the Israel, well, 272 00:21:26,240 --> 00:21:30,240 let me qualify that the Mormons, Israel, et cetera. But in 273 00:21:30,319 --> 00:21:36,759 Israel even the secular Jews have two point zero babies, while Europe's at one 274 00:21:36,759 --> 00:21:38,839 point five. The US is at one point seven. So it's a religious 275 00:21:38,960 --> 00:21:45,559 culture can be a family friendly culture. So in the abstract, as demonstrated 276 00:21:45,559 --> 00:21:48,440 by the secular Jews in Tel Aviv still having babies. In the abstract, 277 00:21:48,799 --> 00:21:53,640 you don't need religion to have a family friendly culture. But in practice, 278 00:21:53,680 --> 00:21:56,880 nobody has shown me a really family friendly culture that was secular, the one 279 00:21:56,880 --> 00:22:00,920 that's big enough to kind of show up on a map. I'm sure there 280 00:22:00,920 --> 00:22:07,599 are perfectly nice towns in Vermont or whatever that would fit this, but not 281 00:22:07,599 --> 00:22:11,279 not significantly large ones. But one interesting point about history that didn't make it 282 00:22:11,319 --> 00:22:19,599 into the book. Christianity actually ended up reducing birth rates because the idea of 283 00:22:19,680 --> 00:22:26,720 monogamy, the idea that marriage and pro creation belonged within sex, the idea 284 00:22:26,759 --> 00:22:33,039 that women actually you know, had to consent to marriage and to sex. 285 00:22:33,119 --> 00:22:41,039 These were these were forces that were pro family, but not pronatal in a 286 00:22:41,119 --> 00:22:45,640 numerical way. Progressive. Yes, yeah, really, Yeah, that's actually 287 00:22:45,680 --> 00:22:48,839 an interesting I hadn't thought about that, and yeah, that makes a lot 288 00:22:48,839 --> 00:22:52,160 of sense now, that was I don't. I sort of did this in 289 00:22:52,200 --> 00:22:55,279 the opposite way that a lot of people would. I kind of want to 290 00:22:55,319 --> 00:22:59,119 talk about the big picture stuff and then get specific because I just wondered if 291 00:22:59,160 --> 00:23:02,400 we were skipping to that because you know, we've known each other for ten 292 00:23:02,480 --> 00:23:06,759 years and everything else was already said. But yes, no, because for 293 00:23:06,799 --> 00:23:08,079 me, it's sort of like a logical proof. And that's why I like 294 00:23:08,119 --> 00:23:14,000 really reading your writing and your books do this too. You have an amazing 295 00:23:14,079 --> 00:23:17,160 you have two amazing chapter titles. You probably know which ones I'm talking about, 296 00:23:17,160 --> 00:23:19,920 But the first one I want to talk about is have lower ambitions for 297 00:23:19,960 --> 00:23:25,519 your kids, which is just an excellent chapter title, but also I think 298 00:23:25,559 --> 00:23:27,759 a really really important point when you're talking to other parents. I mean, 299 00:23:27,799 --> 00:23:30,079 first of all, give us a little taste of that argument. People should 300 00:23:30,079 --> 00:23:33,240 buy the books, but give us a little taste of that argument. But 301 00:23:33,240 --> 00:23:37,559 when you're talking to other parents, what is the way to make that argument, 302 00:23:37,680 --> 00:23:41,519 especially because you live outside Washington, d c. Where arguably the highest 303 00:23:41,559 --> 00:23:47,079 concentration of overly ambitious people. Yes, so have lower ambitions for your kids? 304 00:23:47,960 --> 00:23:52,799 Is it starts with like it starts with my son Charlie showing up. 305 00:23:52,839 --> 00:23:56,880 We let him try out for travel baseball team because I thought he would get 306 00:23:56,960 --> 00:24:00,640 cut. And then he goes out and he makes it. And so then 307 00:24:00,680 --> 00:24:03,359 they say, all right, winter workouts start in January. Now this is 308 00:24:03,359 --> 00:24:06,920 twelve year olds. They're not supposed to They're supposed to be sledding or playing 309 00:24:06,960 --> 00:24:10,319 basketball or whatever in January. But they you know, we have this indoor 310 00:24:10,359 --> 00:24:15,079 practice and the first practice a coach says to him, to the whole team, 311 00:24:15,799 --> 00:24:19,559 baseball isn't fun. Winning baseball is fun. So this is the twelve 312 00:24:19,640 --> 00:24:26,799 year olds, So the have lower ambitions for your kids? Is winning baseball 313 00:24:26,960 --> 00:24:33,079 shouldn't be the goal? Baseball should be the goal having the same son like 314 00:24:33,160 --> 00:24:37,119 plays guitar. Now he's never going to do anything with the guitar except like 315 00:24:37,480 --> 00:24:41,119 sing around a campfire and entertain me when I'm tired and want to lie on 316 00:24:41,119 --> 00:24:45,039 the couch. And that's great, that's a great thing to do with the 317 00:24:45,079 --> 00:24:51,880 guitar. I talked to this one music teacher who she was asked once in 318 00:24:51,880 --> 00:24:56,319 an interview by someone else, is your dream, she teaches inner city students, 319 00:24:56,839 --> 00:25:00,279 band, is your dream to see one of your students rise out of 320 00:25:00,319 --> 00:25:03,960 poverty and end up on the Kennedy Center stage. And she almost laughed out 321 00:25:03,960 --> 00:25:07,720 loud, and she said, no, let me tell you my favorite former 322 00:25:07,720 --> 00:25:11,880 students. This guy named Victor, and he's currently a park ranger learning ballroom 323 00:25:11,960 --> 00:25:15,680 dance. I don't even know if he still plays a piano, but he's 324 00:25:15,640 --> 00:25:19,720 music helped make him into an expansive person, was a term she use, 325 00:25:19,799 --> 00:25:26,000 And I just love that word of thinking of childhood being expansive rather than intensive. 326 00:25:26,799 --> 00:25:29,640 And so you should want your kids to try a bunch of things. 327 00:25:29,720 --> 00:25:32,759 You know that people make fun of the jack of all trades, master of 328 00:25:32,839 --> 00:25:36,720 none. No kid should be a master of any trade. The childhood should 329 00:25:36,720 --> 00:25:41,519 be about trying different things and maybe hopefully finding something that you love enough that 330 00:25:41,599 --> 00:25:45,599 pursuing it doesn't seem as much like work. But instead they make sports becom 331 00:25:45,680 --> 00:25:48,960 and music become a job, and even on academics. And this is the 332 00:25:48,960 --> 00:25:53,839 one where I need the reminders because it's the kid's primary sort of occupation is 333 00:25:55,160 --> 00:26:00,920 at academics. But even there to realize that high achievement in academics is not 334 00:26:00,960 --> 00:26:04,960 the goal of school is what they should be working towards. But if they 335 00:26:06,000 --> 00:26:08,200 work towards it and they fall short of it, they still got the benefit 336 00:26:08,200 --> 00:26:11,680 of working towards it. And so how do I sell it? It's a 337 00:26:11,680 --> 00:26:17,799 hard sell. It's an easier sell to a religious audience because ultimately, I 338 00:26:17,839 --> 00:26:21,920 say, my ambitions for my kids are not low. I want them to 339 00:26:21,960 --> 00:26:25,000 be saints. So it's the highest ambition you could have. But as far 340 00:26:25,000 --> 00:26:30,119 as baseball, or music, or even academics, it's I don't think their 341 00:26:30,160 --> 00:26:37,799 achievement really reflects It doesn't reflect their value, it doesn't reflect their character necessarily. 342 00:26:38,720 --> 00:26:41,799 And so one way, if you can't explain it to somebody by saying 343 00:26:41,799 --> 00:26:45,480 that God loves your son no matter what, you can't explain it by pointing 344 00:26:45,519 --> 00:26:48,160 out a lot of that stuff you're trying to do. It's not going to 345 00:26:48,200 --> 00:26:52,039 work anyway, and it's going to backfire. So that's two parts. It's 346 00:26:52,039 --> 00:26:59,039 not going to work because as one I quote an athletic director saying, you're 347 00:26:59,079 --> 00:27:03,519 going to give your kid all this training, his own private coach, etc. 348 00:27:03,079 --> 00:27:07,359 And then some other kid who's never played the sport before and it's just 349 00:27:07,359 --> 00:27:10,880 super athletic, is going to jump in and take a spot. So Jacob 350 00:27:10,960 --> 00:27:14,480 de Gram, who in my opinion is the greatest pitcher of the last twenty 351 00:27:14,559 --> 00:27:21,240 years, he didn't start pitching until halfway through college. The guy who is 352 00:27:21,279 --> 00:27:26,359 a goalie for the men's Olympic soccer team, he didn't start playing goalie until 353 00:27:26,319 --> 00:27:29,839 at some point in high school. So these guys just went ahead and they 354 00:27:29,880 --> 00:27:33,839 took a job of somebody probably who had dedicated their whole life to this one 355 00:27:33,880 --> 00:27:40,160 achievement. And it backfires because specialization is bad for kids' bodies, it's bad 356 00:27:40,200 --> 00:27:47,240 for kids' psyches, and that the lack of sort of childhood independence is the 357 00:27:47,359 --> 00:27:52,279 root cause of childhood anxiety. According to you know, basically, that's the 358 00:27:52,359 --> 00:27:56,960 conclusion that the pediatricians and the psychiatrists are coming to So you're giving your kid 359 00:27:56,039 --> 00:28:03,880 an anxious childhood and you're not even guaranteeing their success at what you're making them 360 00:28:03,920 --> 00:28:11,440 specialize in. Today's episode is brought to you by surf Shark. 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Yeah, you're 378 00:29:37,799 --> 00:29:41,960 right about travel sports, which is obviously one of your buggobooes for for good 379 00:29:41,039 --> 00:29:44,519 reason, as I don't know if you did travel sports as a kid. 380 00:29:44,519 --> 00:29:47,279 I did travel sports as a kid, but my parents cut it off after 381 00:29:47,279 --> 00:29:52,960 a certain point because it gets so ridiculous. How did we let ourselves normalize 382 00:29:52,960 --> 00:29:56,279 the culture of travel sports And it's it's not just travelsports also like travel academics, 383 00:29:56,359 --> 00:30:00,480 it's not that's not as like high house travel sports, but there are. 384 00:30:00,519 --> 00:30:04,799 It's a culture of just intensity, as you've just discussed, how did 385 00:30:04,839 --> 00:30:10,960 we let that culture happen? So one term I use at one point in 386 00:30:11,000 --> 00:30:18,160 the book is letting the logic of capitalism slip into our social arrangements. What 387 00:30:18,200 --> 00:30:21,559 capitalism does is it allows us and this is why it's great, and it 388 00:30:21,559 --> 00:30:26,799 makes us all wealthy. It sort of allows us to identify what's most promising, 389 00:30:27,200 --> 00:30:30,920 pump a ton of resources into it, and turn it into a success. 390 00:30:32,880 --> 00:30:37,400 And I think I think of like tennis camps as being the things that 391 00:30:37,440 --> 00:30:40,079 did this where they realized, wait a second, you know, one in 392 00:30:40,160 --> 00:30:42,839 one hundred kids who play tennis might become super good at and be able to 393 00:30:42,839 --> 00:30:47,839 be a tennis star and then provide you know, college scholarships or wealth to 394 00:30:47,880 --> 00:30:52,960 their parents. And so we started trying to find a way to identify those 395 00:30:53,039 --> 00:30:57,960 kids who would be great baseball players and across players and make them be something 396 00:30:59,359 --> 00:31:03,559 big. And so that involved us forgetting that the point of youth sports is 397 00:31:03,559 --> 00:31:06,079 not to make sure the best baseball players make it to the major leagues. 398 00:31:07,559 --> 00:31:11,559 That's the point of like investors shopping around the market. That's not the point 399 00:31:11,720 --> 00:31:17,519 of parent The point of youth sports is exercise is good. Losing games is 400 00:31:17,559 --> 00:31:19,799 good, Winning games is good. Being a team captain is good. Learning 401 00:31:19,839 --> 00:31:25,599 to be the last guy on the bench is good. Having somebody who's not 402 00:31:25,640 --> 00:31:29,480 your dad telling you to do something, because you're more likely to listen to 403 00:31:29,519 --> 00:31:30,720 him, because he wasn't also telling you to clean up your room earlier in 404 00:31:30,720 --> 00:31:33,960 the day. That all these benefits we forgot them, and we thought that 405 00:31:34,000 --> 00:31:41,519 the point of youth sports was winning and getting scholarships and just there is a 406 00:31:41,599 --> 00:31:45,000 virtue of trying hard and becoming good at something. And so if you see 407 00:31:45,000 --> 00:31:48,240 a kid do that, even if he doesn't ever pick it up again, 408 00:31:48,680 --> 00:31:52,200 parents are like, that was just great to watch him have to learn how 409 00:31:52,240 --> 00:31:56,880 to you know, a great marching band, Like the people who were in 410 00:31:56,920 --> 00:32:00,319 really good marching bands always remember that, and so we do. I that 411 00:32:00,480 --> 00:32:04,880 the pursuit and the attainment of excellence in youth is a good thing, but 412 00:32:04,920 --> 00:32:07,640 then we let that one good crowd out all the other goods of just sort 413 00:32:07,680 --> 00:32:15,880 of fun in childhood. There were days in high school where I would have 414 00:32:16,319 --> 00:32:23,279 soccer practice, basketball practice or game, sometimes another soccer practice and then marching 415 00:32:23,359 --> 00:32:27,720 band. It's and that wasn't that, I mean, it wasn't that unusual 416 00:32:27,960 --> 00:32:31,440 in twenty is the aughts? Yeah, I hope that's declined. I don't 417 00:32:31,440 --> 00:32:35,160 know, it seems like maybe I don't think it has, and not where 418 00:32:35,160 --> 00:32:38,880 I live in the in the suburbs of DC, the elite stuff is still 419 00:32:39,200 --> 00:32:44,799 is still pretty bad. And then again you hear well intentioned parents say, 420 00:32:44,799 --> 00:32:45,920 oh, well, the problem with Little league is, you know, the 421 00:32:45,920 --> 00:32:52,640 coaches are all just volunteers, like wall, that's an actual that's it. 422 00:32:52,720 --> 00:32:55,240 Yeah, it's like they don't really know what they're doing. Now, sometimes 423 00:32:55,240 --> 00:32:59,920 a coach who doesn't know what he's doing is horrible because precisely because he dried 424 00:33:00,119 --> 00:33:02,000 the kids too hard, he doesn't realize it's supposed to be fun. But 425 00:33:02,160 --> 00:33:07,279 my experience in travel baseball was it was exactly those were the worst coaches. 426 00:33:07,200 --> 00:33:10,720 That was the worst coach we ever had was a travel ball coach because he 427 00:33:12,400 --> 00:33:15,720 thought that his job was to win baseball games. And when he quit, 428 00:33:15,759 --> 00:33:20,559 he said, I'm washing my hands of this mess, meaning his kids who 429 00:33:20,559 --> 00:33:25,319 were one had one win and six losses this mess. Yes, fair enough. 430 00:33:27,559 --> 00:33:30,160 The other chapter title that you probably already know that I'm going to bring 431 00:33:30,240 --> 00:33:35,559 up is fecundity. Uh, yes, what is it? It's like facundity. 432 00:33:35,920 --> 00:33:38,519 I want fecundity in the sheets. You need walkability in the streets. 433 00:33:38,599 --> 00:33:42,599 Blockability in the streets was I think I should I should get a T shirt 434 00:33:42,640 --> 00:33:45,720 that says that somebody a podcast host that he was going to get that T 435 00:33:45,839 --> 00:33:50,119 shirt. Was I realized I should get that too. Yeah, you absolutely 436 00:33:50,119 --> 00:33:53,799 should. But this is basically a chapter on city planning, and you have 437 00:33:53,839 --> 00:33:57,839 a lot of Terence trying to make it sound more exciting. So, well, 438 00:33:57,920 --> 00:34:01,519 you're city planning very exciting, but you have personal experience with us that 439 00:34:01,519 --> 00:34:06,880 you've written about before too. How did you go down the city planning rabbit 440 00:34:06,920 --> 00:34:10,239 hole? And what does it have to do with fertillay? So I don't 441 00:34:10,239 --> 00:34:13,800 even tell this story in the book, but I remember living on Capitol Hill 442 00:34:14,519 --> 00:34:17,159 twenty years ago before he got married, and there's a guy running for city 443 00:34:17,159 --> 00:34:22,360 council and he said for a more walkable DC, and I was just like, 444 00:34:22,800 --> 00:34:28,960 how is that an important enough issue that contain sign? I mean for 445 00:34:29,039 --> 00:34:31,400 me? Yeah, I just didn't even walkability just seemed like an insane, 446 00:34:31,480 --> 00:34:37,840 niche issue. And then I didn't realize, though, what my privilege was 447 00:34:37,920 --> 00:34:40,639 as a kid to live in a town where if I walked out my front 448 00:34:40,679 --> 00:34:44,960 door, I could just go all over town. I would walk to my 449 00:34:44,960 --> 00:34:46,920 friend's house before I had a driver's license, we would ride our bikes. 450 00:34:46,920 --> 00:34:51,519 I would explore the town on my bike we would. Once we walked in 451 00:34:51,639 --> 00:34:53,840 Mike Boyle and I walked into the Bronx so far and we had to like 452 00:34:53,920 --> 00:34:58,199 walk on the side of the road, which wasn't optimal walkability because we got 453 00:34:58,239 --> 00:35:00,320 a bunch of tics. But the point is where we lived, there was 454 00:35:00,599 --> 00:35:07,599 lots of places we could walk and explore and have that sort of unstructured play. 455 00:35:07,039 --> 00:35:09,960 But if you hadn't said the Bronx, by the way, I guarantee 456 00:35:10,000 --> 00:35:15,599 you listeners would have been thinking that you were describing rural Mayberry. And that's 457 00:35:15,679 --> 00:35:21,360 actually both sad and interesting. You grew up in Greenwich Village and so it's 458 00:35:21,400 --> 00:35:28,039 it's absolutely essential for parents too, right, what we as parents need is 459 00:35:28,119 --> 00:35:32,039 to be able to ignore our kids while they have fun. But in the 460 00:35:32,079 --> 00:35:38,719 places I've lived in the suburbs of DC are not that are not that walkable. 461 00:35:38,719 --> 00:35:42,840 Sometimes there's little pockets of it. But if my kids have a social 462 00:35:42,880 --> 00:35:45,440 life, we need to be able to drive them to all their parties and 463 00:35:45,480 --> 00:35:50,480 then even if they wanted to. We had a grocery store basically across the 464 00:35:50,480 --> 00:35:52,360 street from our house when we lived in Montgomery County, but the road was 465 00:35:52,360 --> 00:35:55,400 four lanes in each direction, so the kids. It wasn't until they were 466 00:35:55,480 --> 00:35:59,719 ten that we let them go to the grocery store. While when I was 467 00:36:00,440 --> 00:36:04,199 a kid in Greenwich Village, again it was like eight just because the streets 468 00:36:04,199 --> 00:36:08,960 were narrow or the cross the drivers weren't going one hundred miles an hour. 469 00:36:10,239 --> 00:36:17,239 And so that need for childhood freedom, physical freedom. It's not just I 470 00:36:17,239 --> 00:36:21,679 get to read what I want or whatever. It's to roam, to meet 471 00:36:21,760 --> 00:36:23,320 up with friends, to walk over to friend's house, so walk to the 472 00:36:23,360 --> 00:36:30,559 basketball court and play pick up basketball. I used to just go take the 473 00:36:30,760 --> 00:36:34,280 newspaper and go and sit on a bench and read it. I once saw 474 00:36:34,320 --> 00:36:36,599 an older kid doing that. I thought that looked really cool. So I 475 00:36:36,639 --> 00:36:45,000 started doing that when I was twelve. And so that physical freedom requires walkability. 476 00:36:45,000 --> 00:36:47,159 But so many of our suburbs are built for town I mean for cars 477 00:36:47,239 --> 00:36:52,480 rather than for people. And if it's built for cars, that means parents 478 00:36:52,519 --> 00:36:54,280 have to take you everywhere. It means it's less safe for kids across the 479 00:36:54,320 --> 00:37:00,440 street. It means there's no corner store within two and so the kids are 480 00:37:00,480 --> 00:37:05,119 going to have to get a ride to do anything, get dropped off at 481 00:37:05,119 --> 00:37:07,800 the mall. You know, then they get to walk around within the mall, 482 00:37:07,840 --> 00:37:08,800 but it's better if they can just walk out of the house. And 483 00:37:08,880 --> 00:37:15,280 so liberating kids, which thus liberates adults, requires it being sort of safe 484 00:37:15,320 --> 00:37:17,920 and fairly convenient for kids to walk to places. So that involves a little 485 00:37:17,920 --> 00:37:22,679 more density than some excerbs especially want, but it certainly involves just things like 486 00:37:23,000 --> 00:37:30,119 sidewalks and bike trails. That's a perfect segue to one question I wanted to 487 00:37:30,119 --> 00:37:34,440 ask, actually because and there's another thing you've written about, sort of reconciling 488 00:37:34,840 --> 00:37:40,880 the limited government mentality of books like The Big Ripoff It, which is an 489 00:37:40,880 --> 00:37:45,280 anti cronyism and for good reason, and it's something that a lot of conservatives 490 00:37:45,280 --> 00:37:51,840 should absolutely still embrace, even though some are pushing it aside. But reconciling 491 00:37:51,880 --> 00:37:54,679 that with what you just described, which would be maybe dismissing the guy and 492 00:37:54,800 --> 00:37:59,880 tied Ie on the city council twenty years ago who was asking for a walkability 493 00:38:00,199 --> 00:38:01,679 and saying, you know, if there was a demand for walkability, the 494 00:38:01,719 --> 00:38:06,679 businesses and the city would respond to that demand and create walkability. But you 495 00:38:06,719 --> 00:38:12,199 also write about things like the trod tax credit and the demand for or whether 496 00:38:12,239 --> 00:38:14,800 there's a demand for that or need for that whether it works, and that's 497 00:38:14,800 --> 00:38:17,360 a debate that people have devoted book lengths to before. But what room do 498 00:38:17,440 --> 00:38:22,639 you think there is for policy incentives, if any, in that conversation. 499 00:38:22,760 --> 00:38:28,800 So, first, infrastructure is a place of government. So family friendly infrastructure 500 00:38:29,119 --> 00:38:34,320 is again they're going to pave a street, and when they pave it wide 501 00:38:34,360 --> 00:38:37,639 with a high speed limit, they're not being neutral. They're picking cars over 502 00:38:37,800 --> 00:38:43,800 kids. And so that's one where the government's involved, and I'm saying they 503 00:38:43,840 --> 00:38:52,320 should pick children and walkability over cars. Then you look at a lot of 504 00:38:52,360 --> 00:38:54,480 the you know, whether it's Hungry that a lot of our friends on the 505 00:38:54,559 --> 00:38:59,880 right will point to as a pronatal state, or Northern Europe, the social 506 00:39:00,320 --> 00:39:04,480 states up there that our friends on the left who actually like kids, they'll 507 00:39:04,519 --> 00:39:07,119 point to those as successes. None of those are successes. None of those 508 00:39:07,360 --> 00:39:12,760 they all have lower birth rates basically than the US. Hungary kind of dropped 509 00:39:12,800 --> 00:39:15,679 stopped its fall, so it's maybe done a little bit of good. France 510 00:39:16,519 --> 00:39:20,960 has a one point nine birth rate, which is higher than the US, 511 00:39:21,239 --> 00:39:25,639 but it's below replacement. And it's not just immigration. Native born French have 512 00:39:25,679 --> 00:39:30,239 one point eight babies, so that's again higher than the US, but they 513 00:39:30,280 --> 00:39:35,199 spend so much money in Hungary and France to get these small gains in the 514 00:39:35,239 --> 00:39:42,639 birth rate that it can't be it's not plausible in the United States that we 515 00:39:42,679 --> 00:39:46,360 would pull that off. But I defend a child tax credit just on fairness 516 00:39:46,400 --> 00:39:51,880 grounds that and I wrote a Wall Street Journal a lot ed that kind of 517 00:39:51,920 --> 00:39:53,760 to still the argument from the book. But I just compare sort of a 518 00:39:54,480 --> 00:39:59,159 bachelor pad of five guys. I had this baseball teammate and he lived in 519 00:39:59,159 --> 00:40:01,239 the suburban house in my neighborhood, so everybody else was a family, but 520 00:40:01,360 --> 00:40:06,039 he had five guys living there, and the next door family had, you 521 00:40:06,079 --> 00:40:09,079 know, a mom, a dad, and three kids. And I realized 522 00:40:09,119 --> 00:40:13,760 that if those five guys had made a combined one hundred and twenty five thousand 523 00:40:13,800 --> 00:40:17,360 dollars, so they're all working like part time jobs Maurissa's uber or whatever, 524 00:40:19,280 --> 00:40:23,239 and then the married couple, also five people two incomes added up to one 525 00:40:23,320 --> 00:40:28,239 hundred and twenty five thousand dollars. Without a child tax credit, that married 526 00:40:28,280 --> 00:40:31,960 couple would pay twice as much in taxes as the five single guys, just 527 00:40:32,000 --> 00:40:37,719 because of the way we have a standard deduction is per adult per tax filer, 528 00:40:37,000 --> 00:40:40,840 with the tax rates and the brackets are per tax filer, and so 529 00:40:42,159 --> 00:40:45,440 all that a two thousand dollars tax credit does is equalize the treatment of these 530 00:40:45,440 --> 00:40:50,760 two houses. And so that means that if you don't have any child tax 531 00:40:50,800 --> 00:40:53,320 credit, if you object to there being anyone at all, you're saying kids 532 00:40:53,320 --> 00:40:59,440 should encount as humans. And so that's that's a fairness measure that I have. 533 00:41:00,000 --> 00:41:04,119 I would increase it a little bit. It's annoying that it stops when 534 00:41:04,159 --> 00:41:07,000 your child's sixteen. The year that your child's going to turn seventeen, you 535 00:41:07,039 --> 00:41:08,920 no longer get it. Well, you're still paying for all their stuff and 536 00:41:08,960 --> 00:41:13,719 now paying for their travel, sports, their car insurance in my case. 537 00:41:15,000 --> 00:41:20,159 But also it hasn't been indexed for inflation. So I actually went out to 538 00:41:20,199 --> 00:41:22,719 study the question of the child tax credit when I was working on this, 539 00:41:22,800 --> 00:41:24,920 getting excited saying, I don't know where I'm going to end up, and 540 00:41:25,039 --> 00:41:29,599 I assumed I was going to end up with either scrap this thing or quadruple 541 00:41:29,639 --> 00:41:32,639 it, and that would have been a more viral take, but instead I 542 00:41:32,719 --> 00:41:38,599 ended up with increase it a little bit, which again I'm hamstrung by only 543 00:41:38,599 --> 00:41:43,679 being able to advise what I think is actually good policy. But those European 544 00:41:43,719 --> 00:41:45,880 countries that just spend a ton, they're not getting a lot of bang for 545 00:41:45,920 --> 00:41:53,840 their buck. Another area where there's synergy with Alienated America is this question you. 546 00:41:53,920 --> 00:41:57,760 I have the quote here you write about how the baby bust is not 547 00:41:57,840 --> 00:42:01,679 correlated with poverty but health. And this goes to the point about Lena Dunham 548 00:42:01,679 --> 00:42:06,480 you make in Alienated America, which is probably your most quoted point from my 549 00:42:06,559 --> 00:42:08,599 perspective. I just love the way that you put it in that book, 550 00:42:08,679 --> 00:42:12,960 but you're right about it here too. Can you just flesh out a little 551 00:42:13,000 --> 00:42:16,000 bit about that correlation what we actually see in the data. Yeah, so, 552 00:42:17,000 --> 00:42:22,320 I mean there's there's a lot going on here, but mostly I'm trying 553 00:42:22,320 --> 00:42:29,480 to argue that money affordability is not the cause of the baby busts. People 554 00:42:29,519 --> 00:42:32,360 say, why aren't millennials having kids? Well, they can't afford it. 555 00:42:32,360 --> 00:42:37,920 It's just not It doesn't stand up to analysis. Millennials are not poorer than 556 00:42:37,400 --> 00:42:45,880 Gen X was adjusted for inflation. Wealthier Americans don't have more kids unless you 557 00:42:45,920 --> 00:42:47,559 go into like the top one percent of the one percent. And it's basically 558 00:42:47,599 --> 00:42:53,159 like NFL players and Elon Musk they have a ton of kids, but for 559 00:42:53,199 --> 00:42:59,199 the most part, wealthier families don't have more kids. Wealthier countries definitely don't 560 00:42:59,199 --> 00:43:01,880 have more kids. So in some ways, like an alien in America, 561 00:43:01,920 --> 00:43:06,840 you could say the baby bus is two different stories. There's the upper class 562 00:43:06,920 --> 00:43:09,960 baby bus and the lower class work baby bus. The upper class baby bus 563 00:43:10,039 --> 00:43:15,079 is people who are bringing their kids to across tournaments in Delaware every weekend, 564 00:43:15,519 --> 00:43:19,360 who feel that they should only have as many kids as they can provide with 565 00:43:19,519 --> 00:43:22,199 all the best of absolutely everything, and they end up giving their kids anxiety, 566 00:43:22,239 --> 00:43:25,440 and they have anxiety and they can't imagine having more than one or two. 567 00:43:27,800 --> 00:43:32,239 The working class baby bus is about a lack of stable marriages and a 568 00:43:32,320 --> 00:43:39,159 lack of stable communities. They So the upper class that's not having kids is 569 00:43:39,239 --> 00:43:45,079 not that they're Lena Dunham, who's you know, swingers, sleeping around refusing 570 00:43:45,079 --> 00:43:50,239 to settle down. It's that they are being too intensive in their parenting. 571 00:43:50,679 --> 00:43:55,599 And the working class it is more that there's not stable marriage, there's not 572 00:43:57,320 --> 00:44:04,119 monogamy, and but it doesn't lead like some conservatives thing to like welfare moms 573 00:44:04,159 --> 00:44:08,960 having twelve babies most of what it leads to is a girl gets pregnant at 574 00:44:09,000 --> 00:44:14,360 twenty and doesn't end up marrying the father, and then she raises that one 575 00:44:14,440 --> 00:44:17,559 kid alone. And so both of these things there are two very different stories 576 00:44:17,559 --> 00:44:23,800 in some way, but they both result from a lack of communities that would 577 00:44:23,800 --> 00:44:29,320 point you towards family formation. So again, secularization. If what we belong 578 00:44:29,400 --> 00:44:32,079 to was churches, working class would belong to more churches and they would be 579 00:44:32,119 --> 00:44:35,760 more likely to get and stay married. And the upper class would belong to 580 00:44:35,800 --> 00:44:37,760 more churches and they would be less likely to think that the point of life 581 00:44:37,760 --> 00:44:45,360 is making your kid a high achiever? Where have all the Friday jobs reports 582 00:44:45,400 --> 00:44:49,000 gone? The Washed Out on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski. Every day 583 00:44:49,079 --> 00:44:52,960 Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and the economy and how it affects your 584 00:44:52,000 --> 00:44:55,960 wallet. The White House used to gloat about their incredible job numbers. The 585 00:44:57,079 --> 00:45:00,320 latest report was off by forty percent. They are lying to you. What's 586 00:45:00,360 --> 00:45:05,280 the real truth about the jobs reports? It's all fake. Whether it's happening 587 00:45:05,320 --> 00:45:07,440 in DC or down on Wall Street, it's affecting you financially. Be informed. 588 00:45:07,519 --> 00:45:10,639 Check out the Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski on Apple, 589 00:45:10,719 --> 00:45:17,159 Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. I wanted to ask, ultimately, 590 00:45:17,159 --> 00:45:23,400 if you're optimistic because one of the interesting things about this book is the level 591 00:45:23,599 --> 00:45:29,639 of specificity in some of your prescriptions and some of your diagnoses. You know, 592 00:45:29,639 --> 00:45:35,119 we're talking about travel sports and the layout of cities and the obsession with 593 00:45:35,199 --> 00:45:39,480 cars. At one point I even talked about apartment buildings having two staircases being 594 00:45:39,519 --> 00:45:42,840 a bad thing. So that's real specific. Yeah, Well, since you 595 00:45:42,920 --> 00:45:51,280 brought it up, you now have to explain us regulations require apartment buildings to 596 00:45:51,320 --> 00:45:54,000 have two staircases on every floor. This is for in case there's a fire 597 00:45:54,039 --> 00:45:58,840 in one of them. But what that ends up doing, and regardless of 598 00:45:58,840 --> 00:46:01,519 how many elevators you have, what that ends up doing is requiring a certain 599 00:46:01,920 --> 00:46:07,239 structure of building where every apartment is just like a bookshelf, a book on 600 00:46:07,280 --> 00:46:08,719 a bookshelf, where they have to be long and thin. It's hard to 601 00:46:08,760 --> 00:46:15,400 have multiple bedrooms more than two, et cetera. And it makes it harder 602 00:46:15,440 --> 00:46:21,639 to build apartment buildings with like good common areas on the floor. In a 603 00:46:21,639 --> 00:46:25,440 lot of Europe they don't require the two staircases so there's just one central staircase, 604 00:46:27,159 --> 00:46:30,679 and there might be a big lobby on each floor where people hang out. 605 00:46:30,719 --> 00:46:32,360 There might be a four bedroom apartment, a three bedroom, and an 606 00:46:32,360 --> 00:46:36,960 efficiency all on the same floor. And so I found this out from weirdo 607 00:46:37,119 --> 00:46:40,039 liberal urbanists who were complaining about this regulation, and I was like, they're 608 00:46:40,119 --> 00:46:45,480 right about this regulation. So anyway, but that's just one example of how 609 00:46:45,639 --> 00:46:54,360 regulations make it harder for the market to provide housing that's good for families. 610 00:46:54,559 --> 00:46:58,079 It could actually have been in the big ripoff, could be ripped right out 611 00:46:58,079 --> 00:47:01,559 of the page. Yeah, rip off. So that's where one. On 612 00:47:01,599 --> 00:47:05,480 the one hand, because there's so much specificity in this book, it feels 613 00:47:05,480 --> 00:47:07,199 really daunching and overwhelming. And I wonder if that's a sensation that you had 614 00:47:07,239 --> 00:47:12,159 while you were writing it, because there are so many ways as you describe 615 00:47:12,199 --> 00:47:16,079 that our culture is family unfriendly to quote the title of your book. So 616 00:47:16,239 --> 00:47:21,079 does that leave you ultimately optimistic or pessimistic? You know, optimistic in the 617 00:47:21,119 --> 00:47:23,639 sense that if we have a shift, some of these things will sort of 618 00:47:23,639 --> 00:47:29,440 be downstream of any large cultural shift and sort of work themselves out, or 619 00:47:29,480 --> 00:47:32,280 pessimistic because there is no one big thing that could come in and happen, 620 00:47:32,280 --> 00:47:37,320 and so we're still going to be structurally unfriendly. How do just leave you? 621 00:47:37,280 --> 00:47:44,480 So I don't think I ever really believe in one big fix. So 622 00:47:44,840 --> 00:47:46,360 it doesn't depress me. But I mean, again, you were in the 623 00:47:46,440 --> 00:47:50,719 Washington, DC area, and that's always what people want. What's the solution? 624 00:47:50,840 --> 00:47:54,880 What bill could Josh Howley propose that would make America family friendly? And 625 00:47:55,039 --> 00:47:59,960 there obviously isn't one. Though I think I could convince him to outlaw travel 626 00:48:00,119 --> 00:48:04,719 sports. That would be fun, but that wouldn't solve the problem. The 627 00:48:04,760 --> 00:48:08,679 reason for optimism is this because I said, the causality and everything ends up 628 00:48:08,679 --> 00:48:13,159 going both ways, and so if you build some positive momentum, it often 629 00:48:13,199 --> 00:48:15,079 gains on itself. So one of the arguments I make is we need more 630 00:48:15,119 --> 00:48:20,760 stay at home moms and more say at home dads, and if you can 631 00:48:20,840 --> 00:48:24,519 get a few more of them through some local institutions saying hey, we're going 632 00:48:24,559 --> 00:48:28,079 to support you. Anytime you want to drop off your kid, you can 633 00:48:28,119 --> 00:48:30,519 do it. You want to have a mommy and me yoga or whatever. 634 00:48:30,840 --> 00:48:34,880 I always say people who want more gender equity should propose like daddy and me 635 00:48:35,000 --> 00:48:38,199 would working with the four year olds in their hometown and their public library, 636 00:48:38,880 --> 00:48:42,679 just a little bit of that. Once you have more say at home parents, 637 00:48:42,880 --> 00:48:45,000 you'll get more stay at home parents because it becomes less isolating, it 638 00:48:45,000 --> 00:48:51,079 becomes more fun, more rewarding, there's more of a support network. Similarly, 639 00:48:51,159 --> 00:48:54,199 once a place is more walkable and more families send their kids out to 640 00:48:54,239 --> 00:48:58,119 run around the neighborhood, the more that other families will be like, oh, 641 00:48:58,519 --> 00:49:00,960 actually, our kids could be pretty attained and safe because there's more eyes 642 00:49:01,000 --> 00:49:05,239 on the street. Let's send our kids out. So the reason for hope 643 00:49:05,320 --> 00:49:13,079 is I think that little tweaks can create a positive momentum in lots of ways. 644 00:49:13,119 --> 00:49:15,480 But you're right that it's difficult when the problem is a culture. That's 645 00:49:15,480 --> 00:49:19,480 sort of like if you ever played on a sports team where you're like, 646 00:49:19,719 --> 00:49:22,079 the problem is our team chemistry. That was always the toughest thing to solve. 647 00:49:23,000 --> 00:49:29,440 But unlike the team chemistry here, I think actually just trying harder will 648 00:49:30,920 --> 00:49:36,079 can turn the culture around. My last question is sort of a specific one, 649 00:49:36,079 --> 00:49:39,719 and it is should conservatives make fun of cat ladies or not? And 650 00:49:39,800 --> 00:49:45,840 I say that as somebody who's firmly in the not camp. Because you know, 651 00:49:45,320 --> 00:49:49,880 this is a very real problem, and there are obviously a lot of 652 00:49:49,920 --> 00:49:55,719 deficiencies in the Democratic Party and the liberal approach to these questions that are miserating 653 00:49:55,760 --> 00:50:01,519 young women. Where do you fall on this tim So part of what I 654 00:50:01,559 --> 00:50:06,519 try to do with this book is not wag my finger at anybody and say 655 00:50:06,559 --> 00:50:09,559 you should have a lot more kids. Try to say these are the problems 656 00:50:09,599 --> 00:50:17,039 that are deterring people from having kids, but then ultimately say you can overcome 657 00:50:17,559 --> 00:50:24,400 these problems. So rather than mock or scold cat ladies, encourage them, 658 00:50:24,480 --> 00:50:29,800 paint a picture of life, of the future of the world that makes it 659 00:50:29,960 --> 00:50:37,880 seem okay, plausible and desirable and attainable to get married and have kids, 660 00:50:37,960 --> 00:50:45,760 regardless of the obstacles that we face in the world. And so and also, 661 00:50:45,840 --> 00:50:50,320 I don't think everybody is called to marriage and parenthood. I'm a Catholic. 662 00:50:52,079 --> 00:50:57,920 All of my favorite priests are unmarried and childless, so I don't think 663 00:50:57,960 --> 00:51:01,039 they have cats. I'm pro dog. I'm ambivlent on cats. Dogs as 664 00:51:01,119 --> 00:51:05,480 a practice. Kids I'm in favor of and b they like. I think 665 00:51:05,519 --> 00:51:12,360 they're good for kids. But as far as you know, attacking people for 666 00:51:12,400 --> 00:51:16,679 their individual choices. I'm not so much into that because A, not everybody's 667 00:51:16,719 --> 00:51:22,000 called to marriage in parenthood. But B if we start building a culture that's 668 00:51:22,079 --> 00:51:27,159 more family friendly, I think a lot of those marginal cases will tack in 669 00:51:27,199 --> 00:51:34,400 the direction of family. The book is called Family Unfriendly. Timothy P. 670 00:51:34,559 --> 00:51:38,159 Karney is a father of six. He's at AEI the Washington Examiner, the 671 00:51:38,199 --> 00:51:40,800 author of many books, and again this one is called Family Unfriendly. You 672 00:51:40,800 --> 00:51:45,880 should absolutely buy it. There's so much to this book. Even if you're 673 00:51:45,159 --> 00:51:49,639 you know, unmarrited, childless like I am. There's so much to love 674 00:51:49,719 --> 00:51:52,760 about Family Unfriendly. Tim Carney, thank you so much for joining the show. 675 00:51:52,800 --> 00:51:55,800 Thank you, Emily, you've been listening to another edition of The Federalist 676 00:51:55,880 --> 00:51:59,599 Radio Hour. I'm em Aleidjashinski, culture editor here at The Federalist. Will 677 00:51:59,599 --> 00:52:01,719 be back to with more. Until then, be lovers of freedom and anxious 678 00:52:01,719 --> 00:52:17,559 for the friend. You got me right, but you wrong. H