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Ep 16 - Tim Carney - "Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be"
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On this episode of the Sphere Podcast, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, Publisher of Sphere Media, talks to Tim Carney, a Senior Political Columnist at the Washington Examiner and a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, about his latest book, "Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be."
It's a wide-ranging conversation about all the ways in which contemporary American society has become hostile to families and what we can do about it.
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Buy Tim's book: https://www.amazon.com/Family-Unfriendly-Culture-Raising-Harder/dp/006323646X
Follow Tim on X: https://x.com/tpcarney
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:00
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Low Production Value Sphere podcast, which is shot from my terrorist hideout in, i haven't picked a location this time, in let's say, northern Iraq. Let's say Kurdistan. let's No, actually, let's say the Sunni Triangle.
00:00:18
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah My guest tonight is a very good friend and a very smart and talented writer. Tim Carney, where are you affiliated now?
00:00:29
Tim Carney
The American Enterprise Institute and the Washington Examiner.
00:00:32
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Two very good places. All right.
Cultural vs Policy Issues in Family Life
00:00:35
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And so we could talk about a million things. ah We could talk about the Expert Import Bank. ah But you published a book, which is a very good book and a book that touches on things that you and I both care about, which is the family.
00:00:52
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And I find it interesting because it's less of a sort of policy book. It's more about the culture, although there's policy stuff in there. ah so ah Tell us about the book. Tell us the title and what's what it's about.
00:01:08
Tim Carney
Great. The book is Family Unfriendly, How Our Culture Made Raising Children Harder Than It Needs to Be. And it's ah it's about how, why we have a baby bus, you know, birth rates at a record low and still steadily falling.
00:01:23
Tim Carney
And it's about, you know, also the epidemic of childhood anxiety. that I think has been correctly diagnosed by you know the US Surgeon General, pediatricians, psychiatrists, et cetera, parental stress.
00:01:35
Tim Carney
And so obviously there are policy issues tied up with this having to do with affordability. I think affordability matters, but it's overstated. And the word culture is in the subtitle there because I think that we broadly have a culture from parenting culture to cultural values, um to ah you know any aspect of culture that discourages people from having kids, discourages people from wanting kids, discourages people from getting married, and that makes parents do things wrong.
00:02:09
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Do things wrong, like what?
00:02:11
Tim Carney
So over-parenting. um in I'm in the DC suburbs.
00:02:16
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes, let's let's do this. Let's get into that. Let's start with the hard stuff.
00:02:19
Tim Carney
And then you can talk all about French parenting. um
00:02:22
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right. Well, I mean, i this is one of the places where I'm smug because the the stereotypes about French parenting are true, and I really believe this is somewhere where we're superior.
00:02:32
Tim Carney
i don't I don't believe it.
00:02:33
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
But...
00:02:34
Tim Carney
I haven't gotten to do my reporting in France, so I'm just going to believe that it's a lie.
00:02:37
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Well, you know, maybe AEI can give you a grant to to do some some research on parenting in Paris.
00:02:40
Tim Carney
There we go. Absolutely.
Youth Sports Culture and Family Life Impact
00:02:45
Tim Carney
I'm in the upper middle class suburbs of Washington, D.C., or, you know, sort of middle class so edges of the upper middle class suburbs. And the let me tell you about a conversation I had.
00:02:56
Tim Carney
My son was playing in a summer baseball game. It was in Rockville, a town just across the river in Maryland. And I ran into one of the baseball coaches in Rockville, standing on the sidelines. I said, oh, yeah, when we lived in Maryland, we used to put our kids in in the Rockville Little League.
00:03:12
Tim Carney
He said, oh, don't do that. I said, why not? He said, I tell all the parents, don't do Rockville Little League. All the coaches are just a bunch of dads volunteering. And of course, ah this had been me a year earlier.
00:03:23
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I'm sorry.
00:03:26
Tim Carney
i said, really, what' what do you say? it said she says, well, they got to do travel ball. I tell him, don't even try playing baseball if you're not going to do travel ball. And then he proceeded to tell me that they have trouble even getting a varsity and JV team at Rockville High School, despite 2,000 kids.
00:03:42
Tim Carney
Partly because he tells these parents that if unless you're willing to dedicate your whole life to youth baseball at age 10, it's not worth doing. And that's just one episode of how we replace things like games that children play.
00:03:58
Tim Carney
with a job where parents think it's their job to, i don't know whether it's get a D1 scholarship or just achieve some particular level of achievement that, and I mean, what a pediatrician would call sort of like age inappropriate level of specialization.
00:04:01
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right. Right.
00:04:18
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
right
00:04:20
Tim Carney
And that that happens in sports. It happens in in Family and Friendly, i interview a music teacher who always has to tell, she's encountering either people who think their job is to get their kid at the Kennedy Center or people who are really just checking boxes for a college resume.
00:04:38
Tim Carney
has to say, the point of music is the music.
00:04:41
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right, right, right.
00:04:41
Tim Carney
and That's an overstatement, but um to understand even school and academics, Here, middle class, upper middle class, it's all a trial for college rather than being what Aristotle would call like a proxies, an activity that's worth doing.
00:04:55
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:04:59
Tim Carney
Everything in the youth is all those activities are are towards building towards the next level of that. And that
00:05:08
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:05:09
Tim Carney
So now I just spoke to a bunch of congressional s staffers earlier, and they were like, yeah, we were all kind of raised on this sort of perfectionist achievement thing. And that's one of the things that scares us away from having our own.
00:05:18
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah Yeah, like now now they're
Academic Pressures and Family Decisions
00:05:20
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
grown up. now they're Now people who were raised this this way are having kids because it really started in like the late 90s, early 2000s.
00:05:27
Tim Carney
Yeah. Or they're not having kids because they think they can't afford the travel coach.
00:05:30
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Or they're not, yeah.
00:05:33
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Oh my God, yeah. Okay, so this is this is a good place to start. So, you know, I'm going to patch Vivek Ramaswamy in and he can explain why... ah
00:05:46
Tim Carney
I was just thinking about vava why we should all be studying calculus for extra tutoring.
00:05:50
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right, they should all be doing math.
00:05:54
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
All right, I'm going to tell a story. so um
00:06:00
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
i i'm I'm trying to think how much of my private life to reveal, but I just had a discussion with my kid about her math scores, which are fine, but they're... They're sort of trending down, so we're having a discussion about it.
00:06:14
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And anyway, when she was ah younger, ah they were not fine, and so we decided to try out Kumon.
00:06:22
Tim Carney
Mm-hmm.
00:06:22
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
i think a lot of people know about Kumon.
00:06:22
Tim Carney
Mm-hmm.
00:06:24
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I did not know about Kumon. Somebody told me about it. And we decided to try, and it was the funniest thing in the world because, at least here in Paris, you would you would go into this basement in a building, and you would have a basement...
00:06:40
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
like A room like this, like not a very big room, just chock full of Asian kids, all of them sitting in rows doing mass. like It's like, oh my god.
00:06:51
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:06:51
Tim Carney
we We did remedial math for our daughter. And when we showed up, this was in McLean, Virginia, which is like the one of the richest suburbs of DC.
00:06:57
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yeah
00:06:58
Tim Carney
Nobody else was doing remedial math. It was all kids who had A's, but they were had A's at grade level and their parents thought they should have A's at two grades above grade level. um And so, but that like achievement focused parenting, it's one of the reasons people are afraid like China's going to beat us, right?
00:07:19
Tim Carney
Like they're, they're,
00:07:19
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:07:20
Tim Carney
that we as Viva criticized, like our kids are like hanging out and like going for walks in the woods and fishing and doing all that stuff
00:07:26
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right, right, right.
00:07:29
Tim Carney
And my argument is that our kids should be fishing and that parenting would be easier.
00:07:31
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right. Yes.
00:07:34
Tim Carney
You'd have more kids if you thought you could just let them run around the neighborhood.
00:07:38
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah. And like, so I, I w I was bringing, bringing up the Vivek thing as a joke, but it's, it's actually a good angle because ah there was some really good responses.
00:07:49
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And like the biggest, the bigger one was that, you know, we talk about innovation and creativity as the source of sort of competitive edge, especially for America, for the West.
00:07:57
Tim Carney
Yeah.
00:08:00
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And like people who, you know, make rockets that go to Mars or or, you know, come up with cancer cures or whatever.
00:08:11
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
They work really hard, yes. And they worked really hard in school, but they also... had other interests. right They didn't spend 80 hours a week working.
00:08:19
Tim Carney
yeah
00:08:21
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
They also went fishing. they also And that's that's when the great insights happened. Albert Einstein, you know I mean, I don't know a specific story about Albert Einstein, but like he went on walks and like probably had ideas about general relativity when he went on walks and not just when he was at his desk ah doing math.
00:08:34
Tim Carney
Yeah.
00:08:41
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And so, um
00:08:45
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah, basically there was this idea of like, you know, if you look at American schools, they're actually pretty good if you take out the bottom 20%. And the good schools in America are as good as in Finland or whatever if you look at the tap test.
00:08:45
Tim Carney
Well, that we don't.
00:08:54
Tim Carney
hmm.
00:09:01
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
There's a problem with this sort of American underclass that – brings up brings down the average, which is not to say that's not an important issue. It's just that if you look at the average, it doesn't tell you the whole story.
00:09:12
Tim Carney
Yep.
00:09:12
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Like most Americans are sending their kids to schools that are as good as the schools in Finland or whatever your your sort of test case for like a good school is.
00:09:23
Tim Carney
Yep.
00:09:23
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um but they're And so they're they are doing good academics. It's just that they also, you know, they do sports, they do whatever, music, band or whatever, and it sort of broadens their interest. And that's how you get this sort of American attitude that's sort of innovative, that tries new things and so on and so forth.
00:09:43
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
So circling back to what you were saying, you know, if you turn... the music into another job, if you turn the sports into another job, then you don't get that effect.
00:09:55
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um Anyway, I was just sort of rambling there. So, okay. So to bring it back to the topic of the book, why specifically does this hurt families?
Over-Parenting and Secular Cultural Norms
00:10:06
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Because you can say it's bad in general, but like, why does it make America family unfriendly?
00:10:06
Tim Carney
Well, yes.
00:10:12
Tim Carney
So it first of all, a lot of the parents who are over-parenting, very few of them are like dads trying to live vicariously through their sons.
00:10:22
Tim Carney
Yeah.
00:10:23
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Interesting. Right.
00:10:24
Tim Carney
And they're people who do it because that's what they think the norm is. So we have now in the middle class and the upper middle class, a norm of doing something that's bad for kids, which is a part of it's over specialization.
00:10:31
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
right
00:10:38
Tim Carney
mean, I said the kids should go fishing, that sort of thing. um But and then part of it is the that turning it into a job, taking away the fun of it.
00:10:49
Tim Carney
And so parents end up without thinking. This happened to us. One day, I mean, I think I let my son try out for a travel baseball team because I assumed he'd get cut.
00:11:01
Tim Carney
And he was he was better than I thought he was. And they put him on the team. And then they started their winter workouts indoors in January. Some, you know, indoor batting cage.
00:11:13
Tim Carney
And the after it's over, i asked Charlie how it is. you know I'm sitting in the parking lot in the freezing rain, and Charlie gets back in the car and he says, the first thing the coach said was, baseball isn't fun.
00:11:28
Tim Carney
Winning baseball is fun. This was two 11 and 12-year-olds.
00:11:33
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Bye.
00:11:34
Tim Carney
And like how you don't get away with that just by being like a psychotic maniac coach. You get away with it because people like me, without thinking about it, we're like, oh, I guess this is the way I make my son the best possible baseball player he can be.
00:11:50
Tim Carney
And then that belief in specialization, that also gets trickled down. People say, you know, you got to pick your sport now at age 14. No, you don't. You don't have to pick your sport.
00:12:01
Tim Carney
Maybe your senior year in high school, if there's a scholarship on the line and you need the scholarship, ah pick your sport. So the culture teaches that. But i mean there's a deeper thing if you're willing to get like a little philosophical.
00:12:15
Tim Carney
We're increasingly secular.
00:12:15
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Never.
00:12:17
Tim Carney
We're increasingly don't have any explanation for what the purpose of humans are. And so it becomes... a substitute purpose.
00:12:27
Tim Carney
Oh, my purpose is to be the best shortstop that there is
00:12:30
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right. And people make themselves busy so that they don't have to think about ultimate questions.
00:12:35
Tim Carney
Yes. And workism is another one of these aspects. That's a term I take from Derek Thompson. And I think he's probably going to write a book on this. He's a good Atlantic writer. And he says, we, he says we have many atheisms here, which, you know, the godless religions and, know,
00:12:44
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:12:52
Tim Carney
that workism is a big one in the US. Now, this is interesting because my very shorthand discussion is that um Northern Europe has workism to Southern Europe doesn't. I'm allowed to say of my best jokes that always lands is nobody ever talks about a Catholic work ethic.
00:13:11
Tim Carney
oh But I think that in the US, because we're essentially a Protestant country and in Northern Europe, there is this elevation of work over family.
00:13:24
Tim Carney
And this points to the problem with a lot of the policy solutions. Because the economic, there's a couple economic problems. The main thing, the the thing that competes with family the most, that takes us away from our kids the most, especially when they're younger, is work.
00:13:39
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:13:40
Tim Carney
And so it's, and then Claudia Golden, she's Nobel Prize winning economist. And she said, in America, there's a pay gap between men and women. And it entirely is due to the fact that women, to mothers demand flexibility.
00:13:56
Tim Carney
So the pay gap is, mothers getting paid in flexibility and childless women and men not demanding it.
00:14:01
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
right
00:14:05
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yes
00:14:05
Tim Carney
So
Cultural Influences on Work Ethic
00:14:07
Tim Carney
her what she says is, but one of the ways she proves this is by showing different jobs,
00:14:13
Tim Carney
that where like like my job, I hand in an article by 11 o'clock on a Friday and hand in a book by September 1st.
00:14:23
Tim Carney
I have deadlines. When I do the work, where I do the work doesn't matter. That's a family friendly job. And she found that among writers, for instance, there's not a pay gap. Computer programmers, there's no pay gap.
00:14:36
Tim Carney
The sort of job where you need face time with the boss, you have to do stuff in these certain hours, massive pay gap. So the Northern European and the Democratic Party in the u their solution is, well, if if this demand for spending time with children is what's dragging down women's wages, let's keep them from spending time with children.
00:14:43
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
interesting.
00:14:57
Tim Carney
And that's where universal daycare comes in.
00:14:57
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yes, yes, yes. yes Yeah, i mean i i i I mean, the point about the Catholic work ethic. So I had this sort of viral tweet about what's known as the blue banana. Do you know what that is?
00:15:12
Tim Carney
I do not know the blue banana.
00:15:14
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah Well, apparently it's a European thing. So the blue banana, if you if you visualize the map of Europe, you sort of like draw a banana that goes from England over the Netherlands, Belgium, the east of France, France.
00:15:30
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
West Germany and Northern Italy.
00:15:32
Tim Carney
See, we would call that a crescent, but maybe you guys are really sensitive about that over in Europe.
00:15:32
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
and
00:15:36
Tim Carney
I don't know. So your blue, your,
00:15:38
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
It's the croissant of Europe.
00:15:41
Tim Carney
Yes, your blue croissant.
00:15:42
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
It's the blue croissant. And basically it's the economic heartland of Europe. It's like where like 90% of the economic creativity happens.
00:15:49
Tim Carney
Yeah.
00:15:53
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And I was like, well, you know, England, Protestant. Netherlands, Protestant. Belgium, Catholic. Eastern France, Catholic. West Germany, mostly Catholic.
00:16:05
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah Switzerland, mixed, Protestant, Catholic. Northern Italy, italy Catholic. So...
00:16:05
Tim Carney
Mm hmm.
00:16:11
Tim Carney
See, I didn't know that West Germany was mostly Catholic, so that's news to me.
00:16:14
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes.
00:16:14
Tim Carney
Yeah.
00:16:15
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it depends because it all dates back to the Holy Roman Empire and all that. But Bavaria famously is Catholic, and Bavaria is in the blue banana.
00:16:23
Tim Carney
Yep.
00:16:25
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
It's like it is the, you know, it's – I don't know if it's technically the richest region in Germany, but if it's not, then it's number two.
00:16:26
Tim Carney
Got it.
00:16:35
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um It's the Texas of Germany.
00:16:35
Tim Carney
Mm-hmm.
00:16:40
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Minus the oil and with different funny hats.
00:16:41
Tim Carney
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
00:16:43
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Anyway, ah so um i was I was just making this point about the Catholic work ethic because I i agree with you, but at the same time, you know I want to fight the stereotype that Catholics are just a bunch of lazy do-nothings who don't know how to to do commerce and business.
00:17:00
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um
00:17:03
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I guess so... OK, so there's one cultural problem, which is this sort of me meritocratic ambiance, which is ah you know there's the work side of it, which is you know you have to go for the brass ring, you have to make the most money, you have to get the corner office, blah, blah, blah.
00:17:20
Tim Carney
Kivolowitz-
00:17:23
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And therefore, people prioritize that. They don't have time for kids. OK, there's the meritocratic side of education. you know Your kid has to have these extracurriculars so he can get into a good college, blah, bla blah, blah.
00:17:34
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
OK. um
00:17:37
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I agree with that 100%. um I wish you'd talk about the broader culture.
00:17:44
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um And you know this ah this is something you'll confirm. I think one thing which is very weird, and it's this is specifically something that my American friends report, which is that you get host hostility from people if you're visible with a large family.
00:17:44
Tim Carney
yeah
00:18:05
Tim Carney
I think that happens.
00:18:05
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Like the stories that my um that my mom friends who have three kids or more tell me are crazy and like you know like and like extremely rude things.
00:18:09
Tim Carney
Yeah.
00:18:15
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Like strangers will walk up to you and say, don't you know about birth control or something? Like just extremely rude things. And it always sort of, ah I mean, it's it's incredible.
00:18:26
Tim Carney
i don't I don't know whether – sometimes I think it just mostly happens to women. It doesn't happen to men. But then there's also the the confounding factor that I have a high enough self-opinion that I take all these comments as compliments.
00:18:41
Tim Carney
When somebody is like, kid number five, you should get a TV. I'm like, that doesn't sound better than what we're doing that's getting us all these kids. Like I take that as like a verbal high five or something.
00:18:55
Tim Carney
um And so ah but, you know, I don't want to tell mothers who feel put upon that it's not happening. But um I my wife has certainly been told in the aisles of the grocery store, somebody a total stranger said, you know, you don't have to listen to the Pope.
00:19:13
Tim Carney
And the funny thing is that she was more likely in most circumstances to get confused for an Orthodox Jewish mom because of where we lived in Maryland. If you know Bethany and Seth Mendel, we were their neighbors.
00:19:25
Tim Carney
There's two, these two synagogues and, you know, people would stop her from buying the pork sausage because she was there with, you know, five kids in the checkout aisle.
00:19:27
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:19:33
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
That's really funny. I mean, your wife looks extremely Irish, though.
00:19:35
Tim Carney
But I, and
00:19:38
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
though so
00:19:39
Tim Carney
well, but yeah, I mean, she's got curly hair.
00:19:41
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
you're you're You're the most Irish-looking people I know on the planet.
00:19:41
Tim Carney
Maybe that helps.
00:19:45
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I just want to say the Carnies.
00:19:45
Tim Carney
And so maybe somebody, i and I take that as a compliment, however you intend it I take it as a compliment.
00:19:50
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Oh, it's ah it's it's it's absolutely laudatory.
00:19:54
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
It's
00:19:54
Tim Carney
Would it be a compliment if I told you you looked French?
00:19:56
Tim Carney
I mean, yes.
00:19:57
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Of course.
00:19:59
Tim Carney
And then Roman, that's a little complicated because that almost sounds like saying you look at Italian, which I don't think that would be taken as compliment. um But so there is some of that
Societal Attitudes Towards Family Size
00:20:08
Tim Carney
judging. But then the interesting way you see it in like the policy world and the horrible online precincts that people like you and me hang out in.
00:20:17
Tim Carney
um On the right, there's definitely a ah very strong... worry about welfare queens. Americans, and I don't know if this is true in Europe, but Americans, and especially conservative Americans, are very afraid of poor people or non-rich people.
00:20:27
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
right
00:20:36
Tim Carney
get or anybody Americans don't like anybody getting undeserved benefits. That's one of reason that when I write about crony capitalism, it's a big hit.
00:20:40
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes. Yes. wait wait
00:20:44
Tim Carney
But
00:20:44
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Which, in general, is a healthy instinct.
00:20:46
Tim Carney
Yes. But then when I think it goes overboard and when it gets applied to worries about people being welfare queens, um they do you know think that we are external. And there are professors who will go out and say having multiple children is externalizing the costs and internalizing the benefits.
00:21:08
Tim Carney
And I mean, I think you could argue the opposite, but I like to not engage in the debate of my children as economic units or that sort of thing.
00:21:12
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes.
00:21:16
Tim Carney
But, and then,
00:21:18
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Well, I mean, it's not just an economic point to say that children are an investment in the future of the society.
00:21:18
Tim Carney
yeah
00:21:25
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
like it
00:21:25
Tim Carney
yes, that's a a moral point and historical point.
00:21:26
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
There is an economic component to that. it's It's broader than economic, but there's an economic component to that.
00:21:30
Tim Carney
Yeah.
00:21:32
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I think it's fine to say.
00:21:32
Tim Carney
But a related point, I remember there was a, Discussion of the UBI, i don't know, 15 years ago.
00:21:43
Tim Carney
And Dylan Matthews, and new ad, I think, Wonk blog in the Washington Post. Maybe this was pre-Vox days or whatever. I asked him when he was touting this, you know, a $10,000 a year universal basic income.
00:21:59
Tim Carney
And we had just had our sixth kid. I said, would I get $80,000 year? He's like, no, you would get $10,000 your would get $10,000.
00:22:07
Tim Carney
And I said, but we have a people in our household.
00:22:08
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:22:10
Tim Carney
He said, if you and your wife choose to spend your income on that particular consumption, go ahead.
00:22:14
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right. Right.
00:22:17
Tim Carney
And then he followed up. He said, well, maybe actually if we sent the money directly to the kids, that would be amazingly emancipatory and could be good policy. So it's this like...
00:22:31
Tim Carney
You really need to, I mean, to talk about different worldviews understates the problem.
00:22:36
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
right
00:22:37
Tim Carney
But that worldview that children are a consumption choice shows up not only in the ah you know libertarian and liberal neurodivergent world, but also in the i don't, I really am angry at welfare queens.
00:22:42
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes, yes.
00:22:51
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right, right.
00:22:51
Tim Carney
and that we are taking up too much space, that we are using up too much public services. And so that is part of the cultural thing. But there are so many subcultures. i don't That's not what I encounter on a day-to-day basis.
00:23:07
Tim Carney
I mean, again, in at my conservative employers, the examiner and AEI, they make it very clear that family comes first.
00:23:08
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right, right.
00:23:15
Tim Carney
In our our neighborhood that we moved to, in our Catholic parish, in our Catholic schools, you know ah send us your kids. Thank you. I mean, now that our oldest is...
00:23:23
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Well, you would you would hope that the Catholic parish and school would be child-friendly, although, you know, you can always have surprises, right?
00:23:28
Tim Carney
Yeah. And and they they could be more and not all of them are there. And I'm sure you've got listeners who have been like given a dirty look because their child cried during, you know, the expert homily.
00:23:35
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:23:37
Tim Carney
But my experience is, you know, there's lots of crying and people are welcomed. And if you have a kid, you know, people are going to open a door for you.
00:23:47
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah, yeah, i I had something I wanted to say and then I forgot, which is terrible if you're trying to do an interview. ah Please bear with me.
00:23:58
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um
00:24:01
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Okay. No. Let's talk about... um Yes, no, let's talk about this idea of children as a consumption good because I think it it's very bad. Oh, I remember what I wanted to say.
00:24:17
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I remember. so about the So the thing about the welfare coins, it's not purely American. So this is something that I tell all of my sort of pro-family policy friends. um In the UK, I recently found this out.
00:24:30
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um So in the UK, they have a child allowance. But you can only get it for two kids. If you had the third kid, you don't get an allowance for that kid. And the reason for that is that The Sun, which is the the country's huge tabloid newspaper, which is this populist. It's like the New York Post, but national, basically.
00:24:53
Tim Carney
Mm-hmm.
00:24:54
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
oh and happens to be owned by the same person. Yeah. For years and years and years, like every almost every day, they would have like a front page story about a mother on child benefit with like eight kids who doesn't work.
00:25:09
Tim Carney
Oh yeah.
00:25:11
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And so it's not at all an American thing. um It's not a racial thing, by the way, um because this was true also. you know They also did this in the 80s and 90s when Britain was like 95% white or whatever.
00:25:21
Tim Carney
Yeah.
00:25:26
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
it's just It's just a a a human i mean yeah it's a human thing. like I disagree with it. ah But for some reason, people find the this concept extremely triggering. And I think when it's connected to worklessness,
00:25:41
Tim Carney
Yeah.
00:25:41
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um i I agree with it, actually.
00:25:44
Tim Carney
No, I...
00:25:46
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
But... Yeah, i just just on that point, it's not an American specificity.
00:25:48
Tim Carney
But one, I mean, the the bleeding...
00:25:51
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
It's just it's just a human think people thing. think that you know you have poor people who don't have jobs, aren't educated, and there's a perception, which may be real in some cases, but there's a perception that they just pop out babies as a way to get a check for the government in exchange for nothing.
00:26:06
Tim Carney
Yeah. So a couple of things. My way of combining sort of bleeding heart Christian with policy wonkish person is to say the welfare, if it's deterring work from somebody who could be working, and if it's teaching the kids that you can grow up without a working,
00:26:27
Tim Carney
without working
00:26:27
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right, right. That's a legitimate worry as well.
00:26:29
Tim Carney
The victims are the are the children of the welfare moms.
00:26:32
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:26:33
Tim Carney
They are suffering more than the taxpayers who are subsidizing this.
00:26:36
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:26:37
Tim Carney
um
00:26:37
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
That's a very good point. Yeah.
00:26:38
Tim Carney
So that's that's my way of of sort of combining those two things. The other thing is that from what I can tell from the statistics in the United States, at least,
00:26:50
Tim Carney
Most unwed mothers are not ah you know the one with four baby daddies and six babies. that That is a almost statistically insignificant portion.
00:27:02
Tim Carney
Most unwed mothers are future you know married mothers. They're 20-year-old girls who got pregnant at age 18. And a significant number of them will never get married.
00:27:09
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:27:12
Tim Carney
They just raise that one kid. They get on with their life and a significant number of them will get married and they'll they'll blend a different families.
00:27:14
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:27:20
Tim Carney
So that idea that we're sort of popping out babies because of a welfare check is mistaken. But that also then comes to make it harder for governments to subsidize babies they want with a child tax credit.
00:27:36
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right. right
00:27:38
Tim Carney
France, I don't know the relative movement in the last couple of years, but France has basically had Europe's ah highest birth rate for over a decade.
00:27:47
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes, yes.
00:27:50
Tim Carney
um
00:27:51
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Much longer than that.
00:27:51
Tim Carney
what's your What's your explanation of that? And it's not just Muslims. none Native-born French, at least, are higher than any country in Europe.
00:27:58
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes, yes, yes. yes ah Well, I mean, it is pro-family policy, and we have a pretty good natural experiment for that, which is that
Impact of Pro-Family Policies in France
00:28:11
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
in 2013, we had a total loser of a president named François Hollande, if you remember that guy, ah who was a sort of international joke.
00:28:20
Tim Carney
Mm-hmm.
00:28:24
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um And this was during the whole Euro crisis. And so basically, Angela Merkel sort of took him to the woodshed and said, you have to cut the deficit.
00:28:34
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And Hollande, being a socialist, was like, well, what kind of spending can I cut? Oh, I know, family policy. And you had an immediate drop in the birth rate, like the...
00:28:46
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
the year after. And so it, like, if you pay people to have kids, they will have kids. Like, it's pretty, and, you know, I did a previous podcast with Lyman Stone, who I'm sure you're familiar with, so he can explain this with, like, all the numbers and the things, but it's it's pretty, it's, I mean, I i think it's true.
00:28:56
Tim Carney
Mm-hmm.
00:29:06
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
The point he makes is that, you know,
00:29:10
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah If you have a child, that's a cost of you know many tens of thousands of dollars over his lifetime. So if you give somebody a check for like a thousand bucks or whatever, you know you will get an impact, but it will be a small impact, which is logical to me.
00:29:27
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um But on um the fundamental fact that you know if you pay more for something, you'll get more of it. I think that's true. I think that's pretty well demonstrated.
00:29:36
Tim Carney
I think the elasticities in having a kid are a lot smaller than people might think precisely because, i mean, you couldn't,
00:29:47
Tim Carney
pay somebody enough money to live my life if what they want to do is sleep around.
00:29:53
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:29:55
Tim Carney
I mean, I, there was this guy I was listening to. He was the intern on the local radio show. And on his last day, they interviewed him and he was talking about who he admired. And it was like Johnny Manziel, who's this former failed the NFL fan.
00:30:08
Tim Carney
quarterback and the descriptions of all the men he desired is that like they'll just get on a jet and fly to Vegas and like play high stakes poker that day. And so there's a lot of young men for whom that's the desired life.
00:30:19
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
right
00:30:20
Tim Carney
And if you said, how about instead of that? We paid you $50,000 a year. And what you're going to do is go to church on Sunday, coach Little League on Monday and have to go to like a via out of tune violin concert on Tuesday.
00:30:35
Tim Carney
And by the way, you're going to be changing diapers with other people's crap in it. Like you literally couldn't pay anybody enough to do that.
00:30:41
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right, right, right.
00:30:42
Tim Carney
So that's one of the reasons elasticities are lower and that money doesn't do as much as you might think. But another thing, and this is my theory about Hungary, and I don't think Lyman would disagree, but if he did, he would call me names while disagreeing because that's the way he disagrees.
00:31:00
Tim Carney
um Or not call me names, but call my ideas really stupid. But my theory on, so Hungary has tried all sorts of family policy things, successfully stopped their decline, but they've declined again in the last couple of years.
00:31:12
Tim Carney
um I think they did a couple of things that money can definitely do. They sped up the tempo of births. People who are like, one day we'll have kids, were like, okay, now we can do it.
00:31:22
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Interesting.
00:31:25
Tim Carney
That's a good thing. But in a lot of policies that speed up the tempo of birth, like in Europe, subsidized daycare tended to speed up the tempo, but not increase the number.
00:31:35
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Interesting. Interesting.
00:31:37
Tim Carney
But the other thing I think they did is there is a sliver of the population that is very responsive to cash for cash for kids. um And that's either religious or otherwise family oriented people who are in the working class in the middle class.
00:31:54
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:31:56
Tim Carney
So literally, I mean, we have these friends here who it's not even that their incomes are low. It's that we live in the super expensive place to live. And they're like, I want to have six kids, but we live in a one bedroom.
00:32:09
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:32:09
Tim Carney
Those people are not that numerous.
00:32:09
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right. Yes.
00:32:13
Tim Carney
But if they are, if they get that money and that's and so Hungary has tried to focus the money on them.
00:32:13
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Well,
00:32:19
Tim Carney
But that's such a small portion of the population that I don't think it'll show up that well in the long term.
00:32:26
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
So this is so this is ah this is usually my argument when people say, oh, nobody wakes up one morning and sees that the government has a new child allowance scheme and says, oh, now I'm going to have a child.
00:32:39
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And my answer to that is always, well, that's not who we're talking about. What we're talking about is a married couple who has either zero, or one or two kids and wants another thinks, can we afford this?
00:32:54
Tim Carney
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
00:32:56
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And that's a lot of people, actually. that's That's most – I mean maybe not technically most people with the collapse of marriage these days, but it's it's it's like it's almost most people.
00:33:06
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Like a lot of people um are married and have zero one kid, and and they would like another, but they don't know if they can afford it. Like, I mean I have tons of friends who are in that and that category.
00:33:18
Tim Carney
Mm-hmm. And the... Yeah. I don't... I think that, and I think Lyman Stone would agree with this again, the only, almost the only way to do it is direct cash.
00:33:33
Tim Carney
So my study of the French system is that they just sort of do everything, that like all spigots to try to support the family and including universal daycare for three-year-olds and maybe younger,
00:33:33
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:33:47
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right, which is sort of fake, by the way.
00:33:50
Tim Carney
But also – basically a stay-at-home mom benefit. On your first kid, the government pays you your your ah your maternity leave for what, six months?
00:34:01
Tim Carney
And then on your second kid, it's like two years.
00:34:01
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:34:03
Tim Carney
And so like if you have three kids in a row, you can be ah out of – mom can be out of work and getting paid for about four of those first five years.
00:34:12
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah, yeah.
00:34:13
Tim Carney
And that's – yeah.
00:34:13
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And she still has her job, technically. Like, it's, it's you know.
00:34:17
Tim Carney
And they have to give it back to her like and under contract.
00:34:20
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:34:21
Tim Carney
But so you could consider that paid leave and keeping her attached to the workforce, or you could consider it paying stay at home moms.
00:34:29
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah, yeah.
00:34:29
Tim Carney
That's an amazing thing. Like I would absolutely.
00:34:31
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Oh, I fully support that. But I didn't want to have a big conversation in the whole like child tax credit or child allowance thing, because I think what's interesting about your book is is that ah that's not the main focus.
00:34:45
Tim Carney
Correct.
00:34:46
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um So talk about all of the other policy stuff and you know because i i don't know if you still identify as a libertarian, but certainly libertarian leaning.
Policy Solutions for Family Life Enhancement
00:34:59
Tim Carney
ah sir
00:34:59
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
you know you think a you You talk about all of the things, you know instead of what more can we do, let's first talk about all the things that we're currently doing that we shouldn't be doing.
00:35:14
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And I think that's also very interesting. I mean, I'm not a libertarian. I want the big checks for people to have kids, but I also I'm I I'm enough of a sort of small government guy or whatever you want to call it, that I agree that there's definitely lots of affirmative obstacles to having kids.
00:35:22
Tim Carney
Yep.
00:35:32
Tim Carney
Yeah, and so Kamala Harris actually gave a good answer on this almost. She got asked, on it might have been the Call Her Daddy podcast podcast or whatever.
00:35:44
Tim Carney
And the question was framed like,
00:35:46
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Best podcast. I listen to it all the time.
00:35:49
Tim Carney
25% of ah women my age don't ever want to have kids because they can't afford it. What can you do? The premise is a little bit it's worth discussing, a little bit false, a little bit terrifying.
00:36:01
Tim Carney
um And Kamala's answer was, well, housing needs to be more affordable. And that is the one place that I think the affordability answer really does hold that
00:36:10
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yes
00:36:13
Tim Carney
And because, and by the way, it's a reason that affordability isn't as it's a nice full of an answer for the baby bus as people think it is because the baby bus started when housing prices were falling.
00:36:28
Tim Carney
The baby bus accelerated when housing prices were flat. And the baby bus has kind of considered a pace in the last four years when housing prices skyrocketed.
00:36:34
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right, right, right.
00:36:38
Tim Carney
But, but There's evidence from England, evidence from the United States that if it's more expensive to own a house, and I think for Americans, this is even more true, it's more expensive to own a house, people are going to be less likely to start a family or to increase their family.
00:36:54
Tim Carney
And part of this, it is an American thing. You want to own it and you want it to have a yard. before you have kids or before the kid is walking.
00:37:00
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
right
00:37:02
Tim Carney
So, you know, i've some Spaniard will lecture us that, you know, in a flat, you can raise kids just fine. And I'm i'm open to that. And by the way, we should talk about urbanism and that sort of stuff, too.
00:37:14
Tim Carney
But on housing, one of the big things is Regulation makes it very, almost totally uneconomical to build a modest single family single-family house.
00:37:27
Tim Carney
the The fixed costs of environmental, labor, safety, etc.
00:37:27
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:37:34
Tim Carney
make it so that if you have a parcel, it's got to be multifamily, big unit, or 5,000 square foot McMansion.
00:37:44
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
That's very interesting. That's because That's really interesting because it sort of presents a third way between the people who want everybody to have a McMansion or who, who, you know, who are NIMBYs and people who want to turn everything into apartment blocks.
00:37:58
Tim Carney
Yeah.
00:38:04
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
That's fascinating. Can can you can you give a little more more detail on that?
00:38:06
Tim Carney
Yeah.
00:38:08
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Did I understand right the first?
00:38:10
Tim Carney
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so the... The single family home or the like the duplex or the townhouse or something that you've got your own front door.
00:38:22
Tim Carney
and when you've got a really little kid, like a toddler, like a little fence in backyard and a picnic table.
00:38:22
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:38:28
Tim Carney
So you have two other couples over and you've got a grill.
00:38:30
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:38:30
Tim Carney
I mean, the the backyard.
00:38:31
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah. Like almost a row house, like a semi-detached.
00:38:33
Tim Carney
Yeah, it could be the size of this. That's still very family friendly, in part because and one of the things you have to push back on.
00:38:40
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
What used to be known as a starter home, right?
00:38:42
Tim Carney
Yes. and the And it's funny, it was more liberal writers who started to write about the disappearance of the starter home that and landed on regulation as as a problem.
00:38:55
Tim Carney
and I've seen that these pieces in the New york Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, and they say, okay, so maybe we do need to do something
00:38:55
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right. Right.
00:39:02
Tim Carney
about regulation that'll make it easier to build this. And part of the idea of the starter home is if housing prices go up at like a normal pace, you buy this house and then at some point when your career takes off or kid, you're they're all teenagers, you sell it and you trade up for a bigger house.
00:39:13
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
right
00:39:20
Tim Carney
So the lack of the starter home, it creates a problem. And then here's a problem with a lot of the YIMBYs. The YIMBYs will...
00:39:32
Tim Carney
say, well, just increase quantity. And that's right. Increase supply. You will, you know, in general drive down the price. But if it's just tall apartment buildings, that ends up not being pronatal.
00:39:47
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes.
00:39:48
Tim Carney
I don't know if you know Dan Hess. He and I used to be at the same swimming pool. He's more births is his name on on Twitter. And so he studies this stuff.
00:39:54
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Oh, yes. yeah Oh, yes. He's great.
00:39:57
Tim Carney
<unk>s he's He's great. And, um,
00:39:59
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
he sent me DMs.
00:40:00
Tim Carney
Yeah. and he makes pretty convincing arguments that tall apartment buildings are antinatal.
00:40:07
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes.
00:40:07
Tim Carney
And so Tokyo, for instance,
00:40:07
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
i I was so happy when he wrote this because it's something that I believed for many, many years and I had no way of proving it.
00:40:14
Tim Carney
Well, I think they're antisocial too.
00:40:15
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And I sort of...
00:40:16
Tim Carney
You would think like ah college dorms, we all like hung out and knew each other. So a tall apartment building theoretically could kind of be like a college dorm.
00:40:23
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
right no
00:40:24
Tim Carney
You don't even have to put on shoes, grab your six pack, walk over to your buddy's house. No, you don't end up meeting people in these apartment buildings in the way you do in a single family neighborhoods, front porch.
00:40:31
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
no
00:40:35
Tim Carney
It's kind of Norman Rockwell stuff is more conducive ah
Kid-Friendly Environments and Suburban Walkability
00:40:40
Tim Carney
to meeting people. And so what would be a family-friendly housing mix and housing policy?
00:40:47
Tim Carney
I don't have the answer to that in the book, but I said, this is what we should be looking for. This is actually the study I want to do at AEI is to just first review all the data and ask how many of these people who were looking at housing availability, housing affordability, were asking the question of what would help people have the number of kids that they want?
00:41:03
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:41:06
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah, no, that's very good.
00:41:10
Tim Carney
And then walkability is like, I thought that was like a weird liberal thing when I lived on Capitol Hill. There's a guy running for city council. He says, you know, a livable, walkable city. And I was like, why does he care? why is that even worth mentioning?
00:41:24
Tim Carney
Partly because I was just, I took it for granted. i lived on Capitol Hill. I lived in Greenwich Village. i had lived in a really nice small town in New York and I could always ride my bike and walk everywhere. What was he talking about? And then I moved out to the suburbs.
00:41:38
Tim Carney
And we could see a grocery store from our front porch, but we couldn't let our kids walk there because there was like an eight-lane county road in between.
00:41:46
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:41:48
Tim Carney
And then when you have to drive your kids everywhere, I call it car hell in the book. And if you're going to more than one place, you're because they have to be in these car seats, right?
00:41:58
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Okay, so you and I are going to disagree with on this, but go on.
00:41:59
Tim Carney
You're Buckalum.
00:42:01
Tim Carney
yeah You have to buckle them. You have to unbuckle them. When they're little, there's ah like the five points. And one of the points is under their butt. And so you're reaching your hand multiple times a day into this slurry of like chewed up goldfish, spit up, butt sweat.
00:42:15
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:42:20
Tim Carney
That's just not – you're going to sit at home and put the put on Teletubbies and and let the kids watch that. So I think – liberating parents, but mostly liberating kids more than like parents should be able to walk wherever with their strollers.
00:42:34
Tim Carney
I care. Kids should be able to get kicked out of the house, go get a job, go to the the corner store, go to their friend's house for the basketball court without needing to get driven there.
00:42:38
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
right
00:42:44
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right, so, OK, so one of my conferring takes is that walkability is anti-family.
00:42:51
Tim Carney
Okay.
00:42:52
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And I mean, i mean you you can fact check me on this ah because you're the one with the big family, but it is not, you know, I i had a tweet about this and it went viral and people were like, oh, but you live in Paris.
00:43:04
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And I was like, yeah, precisely. Have you tried taking kids on the subway, like a brood of kids on the subway?
00:43:09
Tim Carney
of
00:43:11
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
It's a nightmare. ah It's much better to just shove them in your SUV. And I agree with you about the car seats, but that's a car seat issue. That's not an urbanism issue.
00:43:23
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah
00:43:24
Tim Carney
Car seats are contraception. and And as my vice president pointed out, yes.
00:43:25
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes, the the the vice president of the United States sort of famously made this point. um And so... I see that as a car seat issue, not a urbanism issue.
00:43:38
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And so, and also people seem to be under the impression that walkable means no cars. And it's like, no, you there's there's no there's no like significant,
00:43:51
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
area in the world, certainly no European city where there are no cars. It's just there are fewer cars. And so you still have to like teach your kids you know to be careful when they cross the road or whatever.
00:44:03
Tim Carney
Yeah.
00:44:06
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And if they're too small to do that, you just have to... like manage them or physically handle them or whatever. so you're not actually you're not removing the problem of, you know, if my car, if my kids go into the road and there's a car ah they might get run over.
00:44:23
Tim Carney
Yeah, no, and I, I was hoping I was gonna.
00:44:23
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um And so, car you know, if you have, if especially if you have more than one kid, cars are just the easiest and most most convenient way to take your kids from point A to point B. That's sort of my, and, you know, if you look at walkable neighborhoods, it's all places where you have, you know,
00:44:42
Tim Carney
Well, very low birth rates.
00:44:43
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
more pet more pets than more dogs than children in in the city.
00:44:44
Tim Carney
Yeah.
00:44:49
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And, you know, you have like weirdos with nose piercings and tattoos living in lofts and not, you know, families going to the market.
00:44:56
Tim Carney
Yeah. No, I was hoping I was going to i was hoping i was goingnna disagree with you more.
00:44:57
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
So that's that's my hot take and feel free to disagree, but that's
00:45:03
Tim Carney
And I've made this point. Like every time, once in a while, I read articles in Reason Magazine and I get to the end and I said, the person who wrote that and edited that has never met a child. And then one of them is about ah how you don't, nobody will own their own cars because they'll all be on-demand robot cars.
00:45:13
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
and
00:45:20
Tim Carney
And I just thought, Where do you keep all the swimming pool stuff if not in the trunk of your minivan? but That's literally the storage thing from Memorial Day to Labor Day. There's a bag if you've got younger ones with the floaties and the swim diapers and the goggles and everything. And it doesn't it doesn't ever come in your house. So you need to own that mobile storage locker.
00:45:42
Tim Carney
And So that's part of it. And yeah, and that like the kids spitting up and making that gross mess in their car seat in some ways is preferable to them make it in public transit where you actually have to clean it up that day.
00:45:53
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes, that's also true.
00:45:54
Tim Carney
My son gets hired to clean up a car, of a fellow parishioner, like, ah and he has it done like once a month instead of on the spot. Like that's ah a luxury.
00:46:06
Tim Carney
So that's why I distinguish again between kid walkability and grownup walkability. Grown-up walkability is probably correlated with lower birth rates for all the reasons you say. that like and And some of our libertarian friends will be like, well, the reason people aren't having kids is there's more fun things to do as a single adult. that might be right. like There's better food, there's better cocktails.
00:46:26
Tim Carney
And so the closer the more ah nice cocktail bars in walking distance, that might drive down birth rates. um Although maybe a good wine bar would drive up birth rates by increasing the romance.
00:46:39
Tim Carney
I don't know.
00:46:40
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right, right.
00:46:40
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes.
00:46:41
Tim Carney
but the But so kid walkability is very compatible with suburbia.
00:46:47
Tim Carney
And in fact, I've been attacked when I wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal about kid walkability. ah This one guy on Twitter was like, Tim Carty is a horrible right winger from horrible AEI. That happens to make a good point.
00:46:59
Tim Carney
But why is he so obsessed with the suburbs? Because most parents want to live in the suburbs. And that means that I'm going to probably, as ah as a New Yorker, I used to insist on living walking distance because in D.C., our so our subway comes out to the suburbs.
00:47:05
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yes
00:47:14
Tim Carney
Now I gave up on that. So I use a car either to get dropped off at the metro by my daughter or my wife or to drive into work. But what i want is sidewalks that allow my kids to get to their friends without having to walk in the road.
00:47:32
Tim Carney
And what i paid everything i ever earned for was a house that was two blocks away from my sister-in-law and my buddies from the parish.
00:47:32
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:47:41
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
OK, so yeah. So please be more specific about what you mean by kid walkability versus adult walkability.
00:47:49
Tim Carney
Mm-hmm.
00:47:51
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
like what What does that mean concretely?
00:47:53
Tim Carney
So it what the main difference is I'm not talking about but being able to walk to a large business district that employs all the dads in the area.
00:48:05
Tim Carney
I'm not talking about people not needing a car. My vision, and by the way, chapter three of my book, you'll like the title, is if you want fecundity in the in the sheets, you need walkability in the streets.
00:48:19
Tim Carney
and
00:48:20
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:48:21
Tim Carney
ah So what I've, my vision of kid walkability is what Gen X Americans grew up with. Like, kid Your mom says, come home when the streetlights turn on.
00:48:33
Tim Carney
like And they don't know where we are.
00:48:33
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
right
00:48:35
Tim Carney
And you know you're you're going free. And so that means, so the the big county roads that a kid can't cross just vastly constrict the area in which a child can wander.
00:48:51
Tim Carney
The lack of sidewalks bumps up the age
00:48:51
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:48:54
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah, that's true. I mean, that's when
Encouraging Unsupervised Play for Childhood Resilience
00:48:56
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
when I've been to sort of like inner um and know America, fly over America.
00:49:01
Tim Carney
listen
00:49:02
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
and because i I'm a Parisian, I like to walk ah and fly over America is one of the most wonderful places in the world. And it's true, there are many places where it's not just that it's inconvenient to walk, which is okay, fine.
00:49:16
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
That's just the way the city set up.
00:49:17
Tim Carney
Yeah.
00:49:18
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
It's not physically possible to walk because there's no sidewalks.
00:49:21
Tim Carney
Yeah. and um My brother, John, he lives... You could almost hear the softball field, the Little League field from his house, but he would never... let his kid walk or ride her bike to her softball game, even though it's only a mile away, because she would have to walk along a county highway where there's inadequate shoulder and people are going 55 miles an hour.
00:49:41
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right. Right.
00:49:44
Tim Carney
And so I want my niece to be able to walk to or ride her bike to her Little League game that's a mile away. And that's kid walkable. Now the hardware store, like I love, you know, urbanism, local, yada, yada.
00:49:59
Tim Carney
I'm still going to drive my SUV or my minivan to the hardware store, especially if I'm buying like eight foot long pieces of plywood.
00:50:04
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
right
00:50:07
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And it's also part of the lifestyle.
00:50:07
Tim Carney
And so yes,
00:50:09
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Like I, you know, ah if you go to like a rural city in France, like ah a mid-sized town, it looks like ah an American, you know, urbanist think tanker's dream. It's perfectly walkable, blah, blah, blah.
00:50:24
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Everybody still drives because it's not part of the culture.
00:50:28
Tim Carney
Yeah.
00:50:29
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah Like i I've been, you know, I remember like staying with friends or whatever or family
00:50:30
Tim Carney
Yeah.
00:50:36
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
and then be like, oh, let's go down to the shop. And the shop is like a two minute walk ah away. and and And I'm like getting up and expecting we're going to walk there and they get into the car.
00:50:50
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I'm like, it's like, I can see it. Like I can see it. It's down the street. And and it's just it's just the thing you do when you don't live in a big city.
00:50:57
Tim Carney
yeah
00:50:58
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Again, it's not an American thing.
00:51:00
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
If you don't live in a big city, you just take your car everywhere. So if people are are already taking their cars everywhere, you know
00:51:00
Tim Carney
But when and when you're an adult,
00:51:07
Tim Carney
Yeah. When you're a adult, though, that's almost like an aesthetic judgment. You and I would rather walk.
00:51:12
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:51:13
Tim Carney
Somebody else would rather drive or they don't even think about it. When you're 14 and you don't have you can't legally drive, then that difference is a difference between whether you get to do something or not do something.
00:51:20
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right. Yes.
00:51:25
Tim Carney
And so the it was the American Academy of Pediatrics, their journal had an op ed that I thought was great that said, There is an epidemic of childhood anxiety and the leading causes a lack of unsupervised play by children that you get to age 14.
00:51:40
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
So hang on, can you repeat that?
00:51:42
Tim Carney
The leading cause of there is a ah'll start over again. There is an epidemic of childhood anxiety in the United States, and the leading cause is the lack of unsupervised play by children.
00:51:49
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes.
00:51:56
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
OK, I can believe that, but how do they prove this?
00:52:00
Tim Carney
Um. i mean I again, read the op-ed. It's an opinion piece.
00:52:03
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
you've just you've just read that You've just read the headline of this study.
00:52:04
Tim Carney
um you It's an opinion piece, but I i mean i absolutely believe that...
00:52:11
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah, no i I agree with it.
00:52:13
Tim Carney
the ability to make decisions and just like being over-programmed and not just like wasting time, making up your own game. And we used to walk into the Bronx and like come home with like all these ticks on us.
00:52:23
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
so
00:52:27
Tim Carney
And and that was sort of what we did. and And I think it builds a level of resilience. So there's two aspects to that.
00:52:36
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yeah
00:52:36
Tim Carney
One is, you know, the safetyism, and the other is the over-programming related to the over-parenting. My child's wasting his time if he's just throwing stones into the river while he could be being enriched by a travel baseball coach or listening to Mozart or, yeah.
00:52:43
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:52:53
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
but Talk a bit about the safetyism, because you and I know what you mean, but maybe not everybody watching does.
00:52:58
Tim Carney
Yep. So American parents... think that if you leave your kid outside, you know, your 10 year old unsupervised for an hour, he's likely to get kidnapped.
00:53:11
Tim Carney
um I think Lenore Skenazi, who started the whole free range parenting, ah she said, you if you left your kid out for about 700 years, at that point, it goes above 50% that they would get kidnapped, which is say it's a one in a million thing.
00:53:12
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:53:16
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes, yes, she's the.
00:53:29
Tim Carney
A stranger abduction is a one in a million. The most dangerous things that any parents do in the United States is have a swimming pool or drive on the interstate with your kids in the car.
00:53:39
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
right
00:53:42
Tim Carney
I mean, really, it's letting your 16 year old son drive, which I'm doing today.
00:53:45
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right. Yeah.
00:53:46
Tim Carney
So, you know, almost every day, pray for him. But that the the things that we think are dangerous are not. um And that little injuries are intolerable.
00:53:59
Tim Carney
And so that mom and dad always need to be there. that ah That really does.
00:54:04
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yeah
00:54:05
Tim Carney
And that you should, and Emily Oster writes about this, that like you you're supposed to wear the mantle of fear at all times, otherwise you're a bad parent.
00:54:15
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right. Oh, that's that is such a depressing way to put it. um ah but But so real. um So ah on this point, you know, oh, you know, parents just let their kids, you know, roam around and they didn't care and it was fine, blah, blah, blah.
00:54:30
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah There is a sort of collective action problem. um It was our friend Michael Brendan Doherty who wrote about this. He's like, one reason why parents let their kids do that is because they knew people in the neighborhood,
00:54:37
Tim Carney
Yeah.
00:54:43
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
They knew that if their kid, you know, sort of tripped and fell over and and sort of twisted his ankle or something, there would be someone in the neighborhood who would be there who would sort of take care of them, drive them home or drive them to the hospital whatever.
00:54:58
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah Or that, you know, if they got into some trouble, they could just knock on a stranger's door and there would be somebody there and they would take care of them.
00:55:04
Tim Carney
Yeah.
00:55:07
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And now that's not true anymore. So, or it's much less true or it's much less frequently true.
00:55:09
Tim Carney
ah so
00:55:13
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And so that makes it actually rational to behave in this way ah for parents' day.
00:55:19
Tim Carney
I mean, I a like the causality always points in both directions. On this book, on my last book, this is what I'm always telling people.
00:55:23
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:55:26
Tim Carney
Smaller families makes more over-parenting, makes smaller families, yada, yada. Fewer kids on the street makes the streets ah less inviting to letting your kids run around.
00:55:36
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes.
00:55:36
Tim Carney
Yeah. So, A, there's a reason, you know, I moved to the the neighborhood i moved to. um And B, part of it is, you know, the ability to... Sorry, my kids are coming home now, so my dog is barking.
00:55:50
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
That's fine.
00:55:50
Tim Carney
The... Yeah.
00:55:50
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
that's fine my ah My dog is the co-host of my podcast, but ah she's taking a a French break.
00:55:51
Tim Carney
So the...
00:55:56
Tim Carney
<unk>
00:55:56
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
so so
00:55:58
Tim Carney
oh yeah so the The other aspect of that that I would point out is, well, with Doherty, so he actually argued against my anti-travel team stuff on similar grounds.
00:56:11
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Oh, yes. He wrote an article about that.
00:56:11
Tim Carney
He said, because, um because you know, my i can't just my kid can't just play stickball in the neighborhood, got sign him up for travel.
00:56:12
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:56:21
Tim Carney
Because I don't have neighborly connections organically through my parish, I'm going to find it in this expensive little clique where what we all have in common is that we love Irish dance.
00:56:33
Tim Carney
And what I think that leaves out is that these sort of attempts to replace community, natural human level community, also displace natural human level community.
00:56:42
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:56:46
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:56:47
Tim Carney
So that would be my argument.
00:56:48
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
OK, but once it's done, what you do you
00:56:49
Tim Carney
It's like you're you're killing your neighborhood by doing the the intensive Irish dance.
00:56:53
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right, right.
00:56:53
Tim Carney
So, yeah.
00:56:54
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
be Be the community you seek to see in your community.
00:56:58
Tim Carney
Yeah. And so I want to make a final point, sort of go back to the fear.
00:56:58
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah
00:57:04
Tim Carney
And you talked about broader cultural things. I think the broader cultural thing is that people don't think they're that we're good.
Cultural Sadness and Declining Birth Rates
00:57:12
Tim Carney
um I think that we... Hi, Eve.
00:57:16
Tim Carney
Come and wave and say hello.
00:57:17
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Hello.
00:57:20
Tim Carney
So that this is my youngest. So we're you can see we're way out of the the diapers phase. um Actually, since the dogs are barking, can you shut the door? Thank you.
00:57:33
Tim Carney
we ah I don't think the belief in human goodness is as strong today as it used to be. Why did we have a baby boom?
00:57:41
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yeah
00:57:43
Tim Carney
Well... Our men got off the boat in 1945, having just saved the world from two evil empires. And you know the the women met them on the pier, having just kept the economy running for four years.
00:58:00
Tim Carney
They smooch on the pier. They go back to the chapel, get married, have a bunch of babies because they knew – at more than before or since, that we were in fact good. And where did the baby bus, the 20th century baby bus begin?
00:58:13
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah
00:58:15
Tim Carney
Germany, Japan, and Italy. When they asked the question, are we good?
00:58:17
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
hu
00:58:18
Tim Carney
It was harder to say yes. So what what the what affected the minds and the hearts and the souls and the culture of Germany in 1970, I argue is what's happening in a lot of the US s and a lot of Europe.
00:58:30
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
That's fascinating.
00:58:32
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
That's fascinating.
00:58:32
Tim Carney
So that's my last chapter is titled Civilizational Sadness.
00:58:36
Tim Carney
And it's one reason.
00:58:36
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And it also explains why Israel is the sort of standout.
00:58:39
Tim Carney
Yes. Because they both believe that a lot of them believe that they were created by God, but also because they sort of, they've got an enemy face to face and they look around and they're like, oh, wait, we're the good ones.
00:58:41
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
That's fascinating.
00:58:52
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah. Yeah, that's fascinating. Okay. ah I'm going to clip that. Okay. ah Well, we're running towards the end of of the hour. We sort of ranged all over the place.
00:59:05
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah This is why I don't prepare for these things. Joking. um So we have a traditional final question that we ask all
Book Recommendation: 'Unbroken'
00:59:14
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
guests. ah You're here to promote your book, but I'm going to ask you to talk about another book. So the question is, recommend a book. It can be any book, nonfiction, fiction.
00:59:24
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
a dead author, recent, whatever, that's not in your area of expertise.
00:59:30
Tim Carney
that's not in my area of expertise. Um, the good thing is I don't have an area of expertise. ah
00:59:38
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
So you can't recommend any book because everything is your area of expertise.
00:59:40
Tim Carney
No, no.
00:59:42
Tim Carney
Um, uh, un, um, well, yeah, I would say unbroken. Now forgetting the author's name. Um, but, uh, uh,
00:59:54
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I don't think I know that one.
00:59:56
Tim Carney
So am I am I getting the title wrong? The American runner um who Louis now. ah Yeah, Unbroken is the name of it, who was captured in a POW.
01:00:09
Tim Carney
And so to just to give you an idea of how good this book is without telling you much about it. um I read books in part to fall asleep instantly at bedtime. And I go to bed at like 830.
01:00:23
Tim Carney
And my wife will stay up and take care of things in the house because the kids have gone to bed and she can do it and watch a show or something. she wants you know She put me to bed with my book at 830 and then came back at 1130 and I was still awake reading it it. It was absolutely the most gripping read. And the only negative thing about this, and I'm sure you've experienced this too at times,
01:00:45
Tim Carney
I just got filled with ah particular sort of envy, writer envy, where I said, sometimes I see a story and I think, oh, I could have written that.
01:00:56
Tim Carney
This book I read, i thought neither I nor anybody I've ever met could have written this book this well. It's just, it's masterfully done.
01:01:05
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Okay, well, that's that's a great ah that's a great endorsement. Okay, so people should buy to your book first and then Unbroken.
01:01:16
Tim Carney
Yeah, by Family Unfriendly.
01:01:16
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah
01:01:17
Tim Carney
And if you listen to the audio book, I'm the narrator. So if my dulcet tones really got you going in this last hour.
01:01:22
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah the The Irish Brogue.
01:01:24
Tim Carney
yeah
01:01:26
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah All right. Thank you very much, Tim. this was This was a lot of fun. This was very interesting. It's a very good book. ah And I'll catch you later.
01:01:37
Tim Carney
Thank you.