A Review of Tim Carney’s Family Unfriendly How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be
In 2013, when my wife was pregnant with our sixth child, we decided it was time to retire the hand-me-down minivan we had been driving for almost a decade and get a more roadworthy family vehicle. So one sunny day I drove onto the lot of a major dealership near my campus and got out to browse. When the smiling salesman walked up and asked if he could help me find something, I told him I needed a vehicle that would seat eight. He paused, frowned, and confessed, “I don’t think we have anything on the lot that will seat eight.” Just like that, I became another casualty in America’s War on Large Families (WoLF). (We ultimately ended up with a 15-passenger van.)
The WoLF takes its toll on families like mine—God ultimately blessed us with seven children—in numerous ways. Occupancy restrictions, car seat regulations, and similar governmental measures function effectively as a tax on children. Even more pernicious are the anti-family norms promoted by media and the corporate world: “childfree” public spaces, handwringing about the alleged irresponsibility of having children in the midst of “the climate catastrophe,” and the readiness of “concerned citizens” to call the cops on the parents of children playing unsupervised.
Tim Carney, a Roman Catholic father of six, is familiar with all of this. But in Family Unfriendly, he has upped the ante by making the case that American culture is hostile to any ordinary family with children, not just large families—not just a WoLF, but a WoOF. Over 14 chapters spanning 368 pages, Carney poses a wide-ranging critique of American life, ranging from travel ball and walkable neighborhoods to transhumanism and radical feminism. By the time you reach the end of the book, you might conclude that it’s providential anyone at all is still having children in this country.
Carney devotes his first two chapters to different manifestations of “helicopter parenting.” Recalling his own childhood experience of simple pick-up games with friends, he laments the more recent advent of the “Travel Team Trap,” over-organized and over-scheduled youth sports leagues that require families to travel extensively to games. For Carney, these groups are representative of all the ways in which parents have been conditioned to try to turn their children into high-achievers at very young ages. Parents who sink excessive amounts of time and energy into such activities often reason that they could not possibly have more than one or two children, if that’s what being a good parent means. Carney concludes that, as a culture, we simply must convince everyone “to have lower ambitions for their children.” A corollary to this prescription is that parents (and the rest of society) need to get more comfortable with allowing children to have more unstructured play.
The problem of “Car Hell” extends beyond the Travel Team Trap because a large percentage of families live in places where every trip for any purpose must be made by car. The built environment in most American municipalities effectively prevents functional or recreational trips by foot or bike. When families lack this kind of access to parks, libraries, and other community amenities, both parents and children are less socially engaged and prone to obesity and other health problems. Carney calls for governments to favor “kid walkability” as a policy goal as well as making “starter homes” legal again through regulatory relief that can bring down the price of construction and, indirectly, commute times as families can afford housing closer to their jobs. He also urges employers to adopt policies that send a “pro-family, pro-natal” signal to young couples.
Carney points out that the Baby Bust we have experienced since 2008 cannot simply be pinned on the oft-named culprits of affordability and selfishness. A deeper cultural shift has taken place. The perceived time commitment for child-rearing has increased dramatically, and the relentless climate catastrophism pumped into the last two generations has helped make childbearing seem downright irresponsible. But Carney argues persuasively that we cannot afford a Baby Bust. It’s not just bad economically, leading to labor shortages and perverse incentives for immigration policy. It’s also bad for us psychologically and spiritually. Contrary to the steady drumbeat from the corporate press, parents on average are happier than non-parents, and most women want more children than they think they can afford. And as nearly every parent can attest, being a parent makes you less self-centered and more receptive to habituation in a number of virtues.
Carney seems willing to take the risk of stepping on different sets of toes in different chapters. Good examples pop up in Chapters 11 and 12. The first of these is titled “We Need a Family-Friendly Feminism.” Although the chapter seeks to blow up the “Feminist Fecundity” argument—the idea that greater gender equality will lead to a higher birthrate—the call for a “family-friendly feminism” that adapts work to serve family goals will probably seem off-putting to the social conservatives who would prefer to jettison the concept of feminism altogether. But then Carney titles the next chapter “You Should Quit Your Job” and argues that we need many more stay-at-home parents, which in practice means disproportionately more stay-at-home moms since for more women wish to stay home with the kids than men do. This argument draws fire from “policymakers, journalists, and economists [who] take it for granted that both parents should be in the workplace, and that getting mothers into full-time work is an unmitigated good.” Social conservatives, by contrast, will cheer this chapter.
One of Family Unfriendly’s highlights is Chapter 9, “Posthuman: How Our Tech Has Changed Us.” Carney argues that “our smartphones and apps seem like prime suspects behind our demographic decline.” On one hand, social-media “momfluencers” project a fantastical, idealized standard of parenthood. On the other hand, the “parenting-is-hell” genre of social media make the ordinary life of a dad or mom seem impossibly difficult or not worth the effort. Even beyond the confines of social media, the attention-monopolizing technology of the screen has contributed to a collapse in mental health among the younger generations. Pornography offers a quick, cheap dopamine hit that lures millions of young people away from the pursuit of real relationships, but internet usage in general also leads to less marriage. The giant dating apps like Tinder are a well-documented disaster that push people into adopting unrealistic standards for potential mates: “everyone is toxic.” Carney urges youth organizations to stop requiring their members to have smartphones to participate in activities, and goes on to call for an outright ban on smartphones for kids “wherever possible.”
But perhaps the best chapter of the book is the final one, titled “Civilizational Sadness.” Here Carney compares the United States to low-birth-rate countries (like Germany) that have lost their self-confidence and suggests that Americans have stopped having children because they think our civilization is not worth perpetuating. Indeed, this message has been promoted for decades by climate alarmists and the proponents of critical race theory. It makes sense that people on the political left, who drink more deeply from these wells, have fewer children than those on the right. Carney points out that the “mathematically straightforward” explanation for the Birth Dearth of the past two decades is that young women have trended more and more to the left. And these days, “being a young liberal woman means being sad and afraid.” The forces of pessimism have always been present, but Christianity has provided antibodies against them. Now that the younger generations are turning away from the faith in greater numbers, they are more vulnerable than ever to civilizational sadness.Family Unfriendly contains no stirring final chapter with a ten-point plan to fix everything. But Carney’s analysis invites the reader to draw some obvious conclusions. Ending the WoOF requires re-embracing the Christian faith and living with hope for both our children and our civilization. It also requires recovering (or establishing for the first time) a healthy relationship with our technology—not just our screens, but our built environment as well. Public policy must remove the current incentives against family formation. And, don’t forget, get rid of Travel Ball.
Image Credit: Unsplash
Completely agree. With 10 kids of our own (4 have now moved out) and now 4 foster kids, we completely relate to “car hell”. The matter is worse when you live in an area where 4 wheel drive is a necessity. We had a 4 wheel drive conversion put on a Duramax diesel limo van and the kids called it the “Beast”.
We simply refrain from almost all trips to the cities and participation in travel sports and even more importantly… public school entirely.
Let me get this straight. Conservatives who, for a long time now, have complained that the left promotes a victimhood mentality for minorities, now cry that car and building regulations designed to improve safety for children and even their parents are part of a war against families. The reasoning goes that regulations make it more difficult and expensive to have and adequately raise as many children as their parents did. As result, more and more people want fewer and fewer children.
Of course that we already have over 7 Billion people in the world and their carbon footprint depends on where they live and how much money they make. And the carbon footprint that is already being produced is currently accelerating climate change at a pace that is faster than what was once feared. It’s as if the command to be fruitful and multiply will always require each couple to produce as many children as possible regardless of how overpopulated the world is.
What the above article really demonstrates is an inability to face and responsibly respond to new realities that one’s parents did not face. And because those new realities make it harder to live as one’s parents did in terms of the number of children parents can have, we now have a new and actual victim in America: the family–or the conservatives concept of what a family should be.
Certainly the demands that are put on people do make things more challenging for families. But are families being targeted here or have they become collateral damage from an economic system that seems to maximize profits by promoting a consumer society?
For every choice we make there are tradeoffs–choose, choose, choose. And so we can’t take pride in the material prosperity that we experience in America without accepting the hidden costs of that prosperity–choose, choose, choose. That the more passionately we embrace that material prosperity, the more we become a ‘thing-oriented‘ society as Martin Luther King Jr warned against–choose, choose, choose.
That as we face more and more and more situations that our parents didn’t face, the more difficult it is for us to have the kind of life that they had. The world has changed, and in many respects, so to must we without complaining that some conservatives value is a victim of a deliberate war.
Do on the one hand, having lots of children is bad because we have too many people and it’s destroying the planet. On the other hand, children and families are collateral damage of our profit driven economic system. But if more children are bad for the planet, then shouldn’t we be glad that our profit driven economic system is making it harder to have them?
It’s incredibly ironic that you speak negatively about having lots of children and then turn around and complain about how we’re becoming a thing oriented society. I’m sure you don’t see the contradiction, though.
GHH,
You really missed my point. There is no war that is targeting children and families. At worst, children and families are collateral damage. And you ask if that collateral damage is actually helpful in reducing the number of children we have, shouldn’t we embrace what is causing the collateral damage? What you don’t ask about on is the other damage, besides the already mentioned collateral damage, is occuring? Isn’t it true that our current way of life is targeting the environment, among other things, regardless of how few children we have? And isn’t our current way of life promoting a society that values things, such as gadgets, profit motives, and property rights more than it values people?
We live in a different world than our parents did for both the good and the bad. Safety regulations that require protective measures for both our cars and homes are good. I remember when we could legally ride in a car without wearing seatbelts. Was that good or was the installing and requiring the use of seatbelts, which reduced the number of people who could ride in the car, targeting families?
With the amount of money it takes to raise a family today, would choosing to rely on a single income come with accepting the tradeoff of deciding to have fewer children? If understanding how we are already overpopulated, would deciding to have fewer children than our parents had be a responsible choice? Am I saying that large families have always been bad or am I pointing out that we simply can’t deny the tradeoffs that come with today’s world and the choices it forces us to make?
This dude hates his grandchildren hahahaha
Duke,
Don’t you remember what the Scriptures say about mocking people, especially Christians? Or don’t you care? And if you don’t care about how you treat people who are made in the image of God and for whom Christ died, who is it that you are really mocking?
When you rely on MLK Jr. as a legitimate authority, you lose the right to be taken seriously.
Harrison,
Why is that the case? Do you mean to say that Martin Luther King Jr has nothing to teach us? He certainly had things to learn from us; but he has nothing to teach us?
“Mom, I don’t wanna go to Grandpa Curt’s, he just sits around all day and tells me about my carbon footprint and makes me feel bad about myself!”
Duke,
Are you saying that you’re into feel good religions?
No, but it’s clear climate changes is one of the false idols you worship.
Duke,
Climate change is not god that anyone worships. It is, however, a fact of life. There are a number of differences between facts and idols.
Thank you. You are correct. These people prefer a world where women are nothing but 3D printers to produce more males and a few more 3D printers. If that means killing millions of kids in car wrecks, they can always be replaced by the mindless creatures who exist to scrub floors, cook, and produce more people (males) and drudges.
“If that means killing millions of kids in car wrecks…”
Why do I suspect that your fine with (deliberately) killing millions of kids via abortion in the name of your preferred world.
GHH,
As you look at the exchange between you and Karen, do you see how the parable of the 2 men praying comes into play?
Curt,
That is one of the dumber and more clueless things you’ve said on here. The fact that you would accuse me of that, while having nothing to say to Karen who essentially made the same accusation against conservatives just shows how completely unserious and ideologically motivated you are.
Aside from that, the parable literally has nothing to do with anything I said. Nothing but the most twisted, lopsided reading of it could say otherwise. You constantly engage in accusatory, bad faith reasoning on here and then attempt to piously manipulate others when they point it out. It”s gross, and it won’t work on me.
GHH,
Insults like that don’t address the subject at hand. So look at your exchange. On the one hand she complains about you not objecting to kids being killed in car wrecks and on the other hand you cite her for not caring about the unborn who are murder in elective abortions.
Curt,
I called your comment dumb and clueless because I consider that an accurate description of what you said in it. Your comment didn’t address the subject at hand. It was an attempt to inaccurately and lopsidedly apply scripture to me in a way I don’t consider pertinent. I did look at the comment and I stand by what I said. Feel free to have the last word, because I’m finished here.
GHH,
And I am presenting you with what both of yous said to show why the comment is appropriate. Both of yous have legitimate criticisms of each other, but you are only paying attention to the accusations that yous are making. And that is that is the problem