The Parenting Trap: How Modern Culture Is Ruining Childhood with Tim Carney

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In this episode, Chris Grace sits down with Tim Carney, author of Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be. They dive into the challenges of modern parenting, discussing how cultural shifts, over-scheduling, and fear-based parenting have made raising kids more stressful than ever. Tim shares insights on how we can reclaim community-driven parenting, encourage independence in our children, and create a more family-friendly culture.

Whether you're a parent navigating the pressures of modern parenting, a young adult thinking about starting a family, or someone interested in how culture shapes childhood, this episode offers practical insights and hopeful solutions for building stronger families and communities.

Resources Mentioned

• Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be – Get the book here
• What’s the Ideal Family Size? Somewhere Between 0 and 10 Kids – Read Tim Carney’s Washington Post article (Note: This article may be behind a paywall.)
•  American Enterprise Institute (AEI) – Research on family, culture, and policy. Visit AEI

Connect with Us

• Website: cmr.biola.edu
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• Instagram: instagram.com/biolacmr
• YouTube: youtube.com/@biola-cmr

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About the Hosts
Chris Grace, Ph.D., and Alisa Grace are passionate about helping people build and sustain healthy relationships. As leaders of the Biola University Center for Marriage and Relationships, they blend biblical wisdom with scholarly research to offer practical advice for everyday relationships. Learn more at cmr.biola.edu.

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Mandy [00:00:01] Welcome to The Art of Relationships. This podcast is produced by the Biola University Center for Marriage and Relationships. Let's get right into it.

 

Chris [00:00:11] Well, welcome to another Art of Relations podcast. I'm Chris Grace here with a special guest today all the way from DC, I bet, all the way from the East Coast. And so our guest today is Tim Carney. Tim, welcome. You have just written a book that was published, I think it was published less than a year ago now. And it's about families, it's about unfriendly cultures, It's about You know what it's about. It's about a t -ball leading eventually to travel team Leading event which is a path? I don't know about you, but my kids took. And one other thing about your book that I think is gonna be awesome, we're gonna dive into some of the details about this idea of a unfriendly culture that exists out there for parents. But Tim, I just have to tell you at a personal level, one of the cool things, I have five brothers, grew up Catholic, though I was bad Catholic. I was the kind that you would see. maybe once a year, you know, alongside, you know bad Catholics, right? We come only when it's Christmas or when our mom, you know, can dress us properly, which wasn't very common. But another thing is my favorite nickname that you had for at least a year was Dirt because I had never met another Dirt, so. So my good buddy Johnny Fasetta and Danny Fasetta were the same age but they had a little brother whose I don't know his name today. His name is Dirt and so it was always Dirt This or Where's Dirt and he lived up to that name. So you got the name because you were scrappy, you hustled And I'm talking about baseball now. And every time.

 

Tim [00:01:57] And any time you hear the word scrappy and hustled, the implied is, didn't have that much talent. So thank you for not stating it explicitly.

 

Chris [00:02:04] Unless your feet rose right? Yeah, but no, you're right. It's funny Tim growing up Roses, right? Yeah, yeah. what happens in baseball, which is, first of all, why anybody should go buy your book. If you have anything to do with dance classes or the parent trap or getting your kid into, you know, some Ivy League school based upon them playing a musical instrument, or if they're a swimmer, whatever they are, but especially if they're a baseball player, because I think you and I must have grown up in a very similar town, in a very similar neighborhood, maybe in a different dimension, but it goes like this. You grew up just running around, hanging out with your buddies and going and flying a kite and yet you still made your baseball team in high school, but you did everything.

 

Tim [00:02:50] Yeah, and so now I start the book at a T -ball field, which I describe as being this sort of revelation where I showed up with my son for T -ball, and he was the oldest boy, and it was the first time joining a team, and I was a little nervous, and he was a little nervous, and slowly I'd see these other packs of kids running around, totally unsupervised. And I just thought, oh. this is this is what I need and then when my kid gets into the dugout I realize the adults are all just hanging out and maybe when their kid is up they take a turn to watch but they realize t -ball wasn't for the sake of developing these kids into d1 scholars it was for all the purposes of sports mostly just having fun but also secretly for allowing the parents to come somewhere and ignore their kids while they run around saying which was such a relief for the suburban parent. who either feels this need to helicopter or has to drive their kids everywhere or feels they're constantly trying to optimize the childhood for adult success. And those are all the themes of the first chapters of the book, are the helicoptering, the overachievement stuff, and the walkability, et cetera. And so I use those T -ball and then my own parish, Catholic parish, is then emulated that program. And I said, the T -ball was just an excuse. We're gonna feed you? Your kids are going to ignore your younger kids because they're going to be safe on the playground. And my editor said this will be a great introduction for so many parents because so many parents just think, oh, if only my kids could have fun without me hovering over them.

 

Chris [00:04:27] I love that. By the way, this is the book, you'll find it, called Family Unfriendly, How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs To Be. And just so you get to know Tim a little bit, Tim has been, well, of course, a father, six children. So I'm one of, we had six boys, five that survived. But he's a senior fellow with the American Enterprise Institute, which is, I think it's centered in D .C., somewhere in Virginia, out there, or wherever. But you've been a columnist at the Washington Examiner. You've written columns and opinion pieces for Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, quite the range, right? there nowadays. And I love this, you grew up in suburban Maryland, North Virginia, or actually in Greenwich Village. I grew up in New York City. That's right, New York City, and then Pelham. I grew up in New York City. but you've written another book called Alienated America, the big rip -off, and then also something on Obama -nomics. Did I say that right? Obama -nomics. So, great book. Tim, I love the introduction to it. I remember the first time, you know, you go to the T -ball, you show up, you know, you're the parent. and eventually you're gonna become some coach, right? You're gonna be third base, especially if you played high school baseball like we did. It's like, oh, you know how to do this, yeah. I know how to run from first to second to third. I remember, and my son comes out after, this was when they were seven, he comes back and he says, Dad, we had him out in the outfield, we moved kids all around, and he goes, Dad, what's his name? I won't say his name, let's call him Paul. He says, Dad. Dad, he thinks he's a cow. And I said, well son, what does that mean? He goes, well dad, he's out there like making noises and eating the grass. And he was our right fielder, right? So she was the center. And I said, well son, you gotta just help him out. You know, he just, he needs to, he goes, and the next thing, dad, this is getting bad. He really does think he's a cow. And I said, well son, listen, here's my advice. you kind of shift over his way and then protect the cows. Some of these animals need protecting. So the cow. What a great life lesson. Yeah, he was another animal the next week. He never made it past seven -year -old ball, but he was a delightful child, but our kids, it just, these things that happen. But what the point you were making, though, in your introduction, I think, Tim, was fascinating. It seems like maybe the first time that parents weren't required to supervise every moment of everything that this kid did, and eventually some of your parents got to a point where like, this is awesome, I can just let my kid run around and I can hang out and talk to you. Yeah.

 

Tim [00:07:14] Yes, and no, and I brought, I think we had a baby around the time of the story I tell in the beginning there, and so I just brought the other four kids who weren't playing baseball, and maybe I had to make sure the oldest sister supervised the two -year -old, but the other ones could just run around, because it was the back campus of a church, a small Catholic school, and that that was something we really had to seek out, but people, our generation, Gen X, We that was. our regular daily life in most places was, hey, come home when the streetlights turn on, be home by dinner. And that that is foreign to say millennial parents. And so it's one of the reasons that either the younger millennials or the Gen Z when they say, I don't think I could afford to have kids, it's because there's nothing that they can't, they think they need to pay for, supervise everything their kid does. And so this last summer when we moved to closer to my in -laws in Virginia, there was a street, in the book I call it Pearl Place, and we basically... called it Camp Pearl like the summer vacation we couldn't afford a summer vacation so we're just like kids go down to Pearl Place and that was and and they run around you know other parents are like I was just going for a walk and I noticed your your daughter has the largest collection of rocks ever in her backpack. summer vacation. And if they got into trouble, if my boys did something stupid, somebody else's mom would yell at them. And I was like, this was what I've been looking for. And it's what I talk about in the book, something that just supports parents that isn't either the government or something that they paid for.

 

Chris [00:09:00] You know, we have these stories growing up that way, and it sounds idyllic, it sounds like, oh, there's no way we can recreate this, but we can. You know, I think, and that's what your book talks about, there are things that we can do, but we have to get at a little bit of the deeper issues going on with some of these parents, some of the... the fear, you bring an anthropological approach, you bring a cultural approach to this, which I really admire and respect you doing that, especially as a social psychologist, because what I see going on is what you're diagnosing, but you're also giving us kind of some of the cures, or some of the ways we can go about this. By the way, Tim, I remember as you were telling that story, I remember when the street lights go on, you know, it's like, or after, much later, right? But it didn't matter, I remember running home. So we're playing tackle football. There's about 12 kids, maybe 10 kids at some neighbor's house. The goal line was the driveway. And so my brother, who's older, is charging at me. And I'm at the two on defense, you know. And I just, at the two yard line, and he's coming out, he's a bigger kid, I did, you know what, any small kid would do, I stuck my leg out and tripped him. Well, he landed in the end zone, on the pavement, and this is really bad if you don't like queasiness, but let's just say that I saw bone come out of his arm, right, okay, so. zone. I go, first of all, we all stand there like, oh no, so I run home and I know what my mom is gonna say. I run home as fast as I can, it's about a half a block away. Mom, mom, mom. I'm off. Mark got hurt playing football. Her first words were, is there a lot of blood? I go, well, not that much. She goes, can you see any bone? Yeah, I kind of can think of it. Two questions she always asks is one, is there blood and do you see bone? And if the answer was no, she'd say, we'll get back out there. But this time I went. Yeah, I'm afraid there might be something white sticking out, and so, but what's interesting though is that we seem to have lost that for a couple of reasons. You say it's culture, which I agree. That is. We seem to have bought into those that express this fear that has grown outsized, that something's going to happen to my child when I'm not looking. And there's this fear that if I don't keep an eye on them and know where they are at every moment, there is somebody, something, some nefarious thing out there. N N They can prove it. They can point to this article that shows two kids were abducted yesterday. One kid was picked up by somebody and had to get beaten off by this guy driving a car away. Tim, that seems oversized. It seems the exception sometimes. And when we see these events in our minds, a lot of parents go, well. Therefore, this must be related, right? There's this outlying issue or one event, but all of a sudden it becomes the norm.

 

Tim [00:12:14] No, and that's, and the mass media, and I don't know, I mean, the sort of very amateur evolutionary psychology that explanation I saw was we now, if approximately 100 children in the United States get abducted by a stranger, absolutely one of the most horrific things you could imagine. That means it's a one in a million chance that that would happen to your child. It's getting struck and killed by lightning is more likely. Certainly, car accidents, drowning in a pool, are. 10, 100 ,000 times more likely. But if that ends up in the news or on social media, that's once or twice a week. And then in your mind, you're thinking, this is happening in my world once or twice a week. So this one in a million thing seems like it's likely to happen. And just like risk, I call it bad risk assessment. Again, I always worry about drowning, about car accidents. And then the new thing parents have to worry about though is exposure to sort of online threats. And then when I say let your kids wander the neighborhood, the comeback from parents that's fair is there might be a computer in the house that has unfettered access to the internet and the evils that are there. And so there are things to worry about. But if we're worrying about a well -trained kidnapper with a waiting getaway car, so we won't leave our kids five feet away, that's stultifying children. And I point to the epidemic of childhood anxiety and the psychiatrist who say, well, this is because kids don't, they get to age 16 and they've been supervised every moment of their life.

 

Chris [00:13:57] and they've been supervised, and now they just don't know what to do. You know, we call this an illusory correlation in my field. What that means is, Tim, you're exactly right, right? people fear more flying in an airplane than they do getting in the car, driving to the airport, and they are so much more likely to have an accident or even experience a significant injury or death in the car, on the way to the airplane than they would, especially, let's say, now in early 2025 where lots of airplane crashes are going on. It is so infinitesimally small, the likelihood that you're going to die in an airplane. But that's what we fear. We fear the kidnapper. We fear the things that really stand out to us because they get broadly pushed out there, right? And instead, we miss the small little things that every day can be really much more of a danger, like you said.

 

Tim [00:14:53] And I think the flip side of that, the false belief that you can and need to constantly protect your kids from any risk, the flip side of that is that you can and need to set your child up for this sort of material, measurable success in life. Parents think they have more control over their kids' outcomes. I remember being surprised that my children had different personalities. Once they started the show, I was like. Wait, your older brother didn't do that? And my wife was like, you idiot, that was a different person. I said, no, but we raised them the same. I know, but they're from the same family, same genetic line. A, raise them the same as a myth, because, you know, parents are usually - I see it.

 

Chris [00:15:34] Oh, there's no way!

 

Tim [00:15:36] You learn, you slack off, the slacking off is often good, sometimes worse. And then Brian Kaplan wrote a book 10 years ago, he wrote a book called Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, and part of his argument was, you don't have to do all the inputs, the parental inputs that you think you need to do. And that's, I think, a very family -unfriendly idea, is the idea that you do need to be constantly driving your kids to the tutoring. You have to replace Little League they can ride their bike to with a travel sports team where you're ending up two states away for a tournament every other week.

 

Chris [00:16:11] Man, and you call this this idea of quality versus quantity notion, or at least part of this is there. And I think it's a great point to talk about a little bit here because Yeah Parents do fall into that trap, right? You have, all right, I'm gonna have these kids, or we have plans and ideals. And one of the things is parents, of course, who very likely are living their lives through this, right? You and I made it to, it sounds like you made it also to high school. Baseball, I did the same, and I'm looking to colleges and wanting to play, and. And but because my major league aspirations didn't work out, I remember thinking, oh, man, I better marry somebody, first of all, who's athletic, who has good genes that way. And second of all.

 

Tim [00:16:57] If I could get a lefty, you know what I mean? And I did. So I get a lefty.

 

Chris [00:16:58] So I get a lefty for our first kid and I'm like oh lord thank you for answering my prayers you know how many left -handers can make the major leagues even with the mediocre fastball right? It doesn't take much to strike out Tim Carney or Chris Grace with a good fastball but a lefty on the other hand. Well, you know, when it comes to money and marriage, we all want clarity and confidence, right? And especially unity with spouses, right? I think Lisa, that's why we get to work personally with Colby Gilmore of Blue Trust.

 

Alisa [00:17:37] That's right, Colby Gilmore, along with other Blue Trust certified wealth strategists offers personalized biblically centered financial planning and investment management services, no matter what your income level is.

 

Chris [00:17:51] Lisa, say that title twice, Blue Trust Certified Wealth Strategist, that's a tough one. I'm not sure I could. I know. So they do put clients' best interests first, and they don't sell financial products. I love that about them.

 

Alisa [00:18:03] Me too, and you know what, we highly recommend Colby Gilmore and Blue Trust for anyone looking for both financial unity with your spouse and opportunities to increase your wealth and your generosity.

 

Chris [00:18:15] Yeah, so if you guys want to check out ronblue .com or reach out to Colby Gilmore at Colby .Gilmore at ronblue .com that's Colby .Gilmore at ronblue .com I think you guys will be glad you did. So Tim, one of the things in that argument or in that notion, right, idea of quantity versus quality. I remember a comedian, by the way, he said, he goes, I didn't know how badly I wanted one child until I had my child. And I didn't know how badly I wanted a second child until I had my third. Those first two, okay, fine, but I don't know. But that leads parents, therefore, to have supposedly more time. Let's take the quality side of this. because I don't have four or five running around, I only have the one or two, our birth rates are going down, but I get a chance to invest in them and that's the beginning of the trap, isn't it? I mean, that trap is now I can get my kid because I can give them all the attention, all the travel team stuff they need.

 

Tim [00:19:31] No, and I, well, my, I had a child who was struggling with math. And so we lived right around the corner from like a math tutoring place. And when we went there, only on the second visit did my wife and I realize nobody else there was doing remedial math. This was in the upper middle class, wealthy suburbs in northern Virginia. Everybody else there was trying to get their kids ahead. And I just saw, wow, like this, it was a nice day. And I'm lamenting that my daughter is getting remedial math, isn't running around the neighborhood. And then I'm realizing these other people are doing it to get ahead. And that's what we fell into that with baseball, where when we let them try out for a travel team and when the coach said, oh yeah, no, he definitely should be paying travel ball. That stoked my ego so much. And so then we cut the $800 check instead of the 150 that we're used to cutting for rec and start to fall into this trap. And thankfully, and I start chapter one with this. the first winter workout. Now, again, little kids should not be having winter workouts. I mean, I guess here in California, you guys don't really have winter. By the way, you're bringing up traumatic moments.

 

Chris [00:20:41] the memories right now.

 

Tim [00:20:42] There's an ice storm and we drive to this indoor gym and the first thing the coach says Baseball isn't fun. Winning baseball is fun. This is to 11 and 12 -year -olds. And, and.

 

Chris [00:20:57] And you guys started off, oh, is this the year you started off? Oh, it's six. Oh, is this the year you started?

 

Tim [00:21:00] Oh, in six, yeah. But I call my wife and I say, you know what? This was a mistake. But every bad thing that happens to Charlie, it's going to be good material for my book. And the coach quit because they were losing. And there was no idea that the purpose of sports was fun. It was just getting them running around. This was after COVID. So so many of these kids, I remember. They have to sprint out a run out of ground ball and they're out of breath and so like this was so good for them Just to get out there and then to play Different roles my kid one summer He was playing on like a local rec team and he was you know The starting pitcher catcher batting lead off or clean up and then he gets into sort of his high school teams summer team and he is literally the last guy on the bench and coach is like you might pinch run, you have to chase down every foul ball. To have that back to back experience, what a growth experience that is for the kid and it's so much better than. That is for the everything being oriented towards this achievement. And so one of the arguments that I make at the end of chapter one is that there really is a misunderstanding of, the title of chapter one is have lower ambition for your children. And I said, well, this is jokey, right? My actual ambition is that my children are men and women of virtue and frankly that they are saints and so that there's no higher ambition that they are holy men and women of virtue. and do well. That's right. and BUTT view, and I point to studies on specializers, kids who are at age 14.

 

Alisa [00:22:38] Hmm, yeah.

 

Tim [00:22:38] that you have to do once for, coach is like, you gotta drop this other thing. There's no time for hiking or fishing or canoeing. And they end up not only getting repetitive use injuries, they end up being more stressed out about life. They end up having a lower opinion about their own sports ability because they encounter the highest level and they're like, oh, I'm the 1000th best shortstop in my age group. And then... That failure is as good to be exposed to, but when the failure is in something where implicitly your parents have said, this is what you are as a baseball player. That's where your mom and dad spend all their money. That's where you spend all your time. That's where they spend all their time. Then your sense of self is tied to these worldly achievements rather than, and I can't help but talk about it with the Christian anthropology, rather than that you were made in the image of God and that while you're falling. you're good and you have infinite value. And so that is, I try to drop that into chapter one.

 

Chris [00:23:42] It's great, you drop it in there and you do a great job, Tim, as a social psychologist. One of the ways in which we develop our identity, right, is A, what I'm feeling and thinking. But B, it's always in the social context, it's what my parents think about me, right? And if they believe this about me, it's going to have a great impact on me. And then what others say, eventually parents Thanks for watching! fall off the chart, right? I mean, at first, your parents are very, very important in who you are and how you see yourself, but eventually it becomes your peers, and like you said, all of a sudden, you're around peers that are way better. I love your story, by the way, of Charlie, where you say, he makes an error, and it leads to an epic comeback for the other team, and your first reaction is, I gotta go get him some ground balls. Charlie says all I wanted to do was get fly balls and to play catch and you're and then that self -realization that Okay, well he messed up I got to go get him better and and trained and do more but but I love you, you know being vulnerable in that way It's just this natural tendency, right?

 

Tim [00:24:48] I literally had in in my saner moments my son saying come have a catch with me and hit me fly balls is my dream come true Yeah, but in them in this moment of this travel team and watching that loss. I'm thinking I'm watching that lo - We got to just do grounders because he's playing short stop and da -da -da and yeah

 

Chris [00:25:07] You know, the identity issue, too, of what happens to this kid. So here's my story, I'm a great, you know, good ball player in my little town, right, in Colorado. And you're always on the all -star team, because you're around rec kids, you know, and just luck of the genes or whatever. And then, but it never did, I played everything, right? But, so I get into high school, I play a little bit, and I, I still have this belief that I'm good, okay? And so I take my first year of university at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, right? At the time, they were top five, division one in baseball. Tim, it took me probably seven seconds to realize I would never make that team. Thanks for watching! I wouldn't even be able to sit on the bench and chase foul balls like the kid that we put at the end. He says, go get them. I would be, I would probably be the trainer for this team. And it was that moment that this identity started to go, wait a minute, maybe I'm not as, am I not as good as I thought? Is this, what's going to happen now when so much. Fortunately, my parents, my friends, didn't see me as the outstanding baseball player. They just saw me in more varied ways. And that idea really hits at the heart of I think what you're getting at. We are raising children with many of these false beliefs that the parents are giving them, but there's this added pressure. And now we go to the parent side, which you spend a lot of time talking about. It's this idea of this trap we fall into as parents, right? everybody. And all of a sudden... We feel like we are not doing the best we can for this kid, so I have to double down my efforts. I have to do even more to get these kids, these one or two kids that I have, and what is wrong with me? What is wrong with us? And they become stressed. Their financial, I mean, both parents working, right? This double income idea. And all of a sudden, Tim, you have the recipe for burnout and, you know, this distance that now starts to develop between children and parents and children and community.

 

Tim [00:27:38] No, that's right. And the community is absolutely a central part of this. I have a friend, Michael Brendan Doherty, who wrote sort of a rebuttal of my anti -travel team stuff where he said, look, I don't have my neighbors. I don't know them. And so my kids need to have community. So we entered this intensive Irish dance. And this is a place where, you know, we know people, we can call on them in an instant. And is this possibly gonna lead to burnout for my daughter? Yes, is this too expensive? Are we driving too much? Yes, but this is the way that we purchase community. And it points to something about how the causality in these things always goes in both directions. Smaller families are both a result of over -parenting and a cause of over -parenting. I wrote an article for the Washington Post. They gave it the headline the ideal number of children for at least which of course The washington post readership did not take well, too I think it set a record for the most negative comments in the history of the washington post But my argument was if you have more than three kids, you're more you're less likely to falsely believe that you can control their outcomes, but then on the Uh, but so yeah that that causing Causality going both ways is is really one of the important things here

 

Chris [00:28:53] And in that article that you wrote, which I haven't read, but it was probably published alongside mine that was there that same day. But that's another story. They kind of read yours more negatively. Tim, in that, though, what ends up happening is you start to find this impact on parents. once you start to find this. the beginning of, what do I do? But the Irish dance example, I mean, at least he's getting, he's getting, they're getting exposure to other people. Right, they, at least they're now having friends or a community.

 

Tim [00:29:32] It also erodes the community, that's what I mean by that, like if you're if no good kids are playing rec ball and then you show up and you're like It also erodes a community, that's what I mean. There's been five straight walks like you just hit the five run rule with nine straight walks You're not you're gonna pull your kid out of that because it's too boring And so the the the travel team stuff erodes a community and I'd say in the book, you know I say a wise woman once that it takes a village to raise a child That's of course Hillary Clinton made that famous and so it makes the you know, the conservative reader a little uneasy But I say it's absolutely true. Everybody who's raised kids ...will immediately grant that they depend on in -laws, they depend on next -door neighbors if they're lucky, they depend on a church community if they're lucky. Thank you. I'm Sir Rocky. they depend on so much and for mentoring, for modeling, those of us with big families, we had three kids and we're just like, how the heck does this happen? And then we see, wait a second, that 10 -year -old is now taking care of the two -year -old. or you know, oh you can buy a used 12 -seater van. We never moved beyond the minivan, we just packed it really tight and it gets in the way of carpools, but you need carpools, so all of that community support. So this is another part of it that the reason the parents get stressed, the kids feel more anxious, is that I think the natural human condition, I think the nuclear family was given to us by God as the best place. for a child to be raised with a pair of married parents, and then that nuclear family is not enough. That that needs to exist in an ecosystem of community support, and not just community, but communities that say we are here to help parents raise kids.

 

Chris [00:31:15] Amen, and I think Tim, this is why at Biola we love having you here. You're gonna be preaching to the choir. This notion that community, okay, let's just. would probably accept the fact that it may not be my neighborhood anymore. It may not be the six houses around me like it was when we were growing up. That's who my friends were. That's who I went to school with. That's who we hung around with. That's who was yelling at me on the porch. You know, I was in Russia one time studying over there and we had some American students and we sat down at this restaurant waiting to get in. and my wife, we'd been married only like a couple years, she sits down on this concrete little wall place. I'm telling you, this old woman walked up to her, grabbed my wife by the ear, lifted her up, and in Russian, which at that time, I had Russian three, but I'm like, I have no idea what she's saying, but it's not good. She just went after her, and my wife's like. What? What? I'm sorry. What? She said basically at the end of the day we finally translated it is You will catch a cold if you sit down on something like that. Don't did your parents teach you anything about where to sit My wife was like, oh my god, you know Well what that meant was she's gonna parrot you in russia If you have a kid running around they're going to grab you they're gonna pick you up by the ear and say Where's your mama? Where's your daddy?

 

Tim [00:32:52] Yeah, no, and I could I could go a dozen ways with this. But one of the stories I always think about was this this kid who got home from school and ended up in the news because his parents meant to leave him a key to get into the house. And there's no key there. And it's really hot. And so he's just shooting hoops in his driveway. And he's only like 10 years old. And in the end, the police come because he was locked outside from three o 'clock to six o 'clock. How did the police come? a neighbor called the cops on. And then, as I'm listening to this news report on my local radio station, listeners are calling in and they say that nosy neighbor should mind her own business. And I say, that's just as wrong. That's just as wrong. You offer them Gatorade. And frankly, you should let them into your air -conditioned house, but nowadays people are like, oh, well that might be creepy. And so you see how the social distrust multiplies itself. And so there's a lot of parents who say, you know, I wouldn't ever chastise another kid because their parents will take the kid's side. So you have to build these sort of subcultures where the norms are. And this is it with my friends, is if they see my kid acting up, they know they're allowed to say, you stop that, you twerp, and then call me and tell me. But the places, the culture where that is more of the norm. that I write about, the middle chapter of the book, is on Israel. And my friends who have been to Israel, like the dad will be pushing in a stroller and some other mom, some grandma will just start yelling, like, that kid, you need to put the shade down, that kid's getting suffered. Yeah, that kid's getting suffered. It seems smothering or inappropriate, but what it means is everybody else is trying to help you raise your kids. And can a culture go too far in that direction? Yes. The United States is nowhere near too far in that direction.

 

Chris [00:34:44] No, we're not, Tim. I think in the subcultures that we are in, right? Whether, that is a church culture. That culture is getting to me, and for a lot of us out there, it's becoming the place where that can happen, right? I take my kids, and I drop them off on Wednesday night to a, at church, and they have this Bible program. Out here it's called Awana, and there's a lot of other different names, But - those kids are there for two and a half hours and parents go off and we recommend, go off on a date night, leave your kids. There's hundreds of kids and there's dedicated church workers that are watching them but they're running and they're playing and they're having fun. And then on Sunday, you go up and you put them in a Sunday school class and you go to the church picnic afterwards and then you go to the late night, whatever it is. and people know who the parents are, they know who the kids belong to, and everyone will take a step and say, hey, hey, hey, Johnny, come here. I need you to go talk to your mommy about this because you're messing up when you kick Sally over there, and I don't think Sally appreciates that too much, so I need you to.

 

Tim [00:35:56] But this is a massive amount of expenditure by these institutions of time, of money, using their space with the knowledge parents need support. And some of the stuff that might have been more organic in the past now needs to be deliberately done. And that's one of the big arguments that I make here is, and some churches are better than others at doing it. I talk about the Church of Latter -day Saints, which is absolutely extraordinary at doing it. Some Catholic parishes are good, a lot aren't, and... One of the arguments I make in the book is every single church should ask itself, what are we doing to support parents? And then, after you've established that, you can then turn to the twenty -somethings and say, by the way... A, we'll help you meet people the opposite sex. B, when you get married, we'll help you with marriage because marriage is hard. C, when you have kids, we will do everything we can. We'll help you spend time with them and we'll help you leave them while you spend time just the two of you or with your friends. And that, whether it's send a baby box to every new parent. This is something that the Swedish government does, but it's a box that doubles as a bassinet and it's filled with onesies. And if you're doing it from a church, put a cross to hang above the baby's wall in there too, put little booklets, etc. and that that message just constantly every time get married have kids send us your kids we'll take care of them that government does that in sweden i don't think for the most part it's a government's role I think it's the responsibility of communities, specifically churches. So this is one thing I try to say to a lot of audiences is ask yourself what is your church doing to say, hey, young people, get married, have kids, we'll make it easier and more fun for you.

 

Chris [00:37:51] Well, Tim, again, you're gonna be preaching to the choir here. Thank you for joining us here at Biola. One of the cool things at this university is the emphasis on church, I believe, that most of us will say, not only are we attenders, but participators, and much of that is what we're seeing in churches that are well -run out here. Let's talk about everywhere in the country, but I'll just focus right now on Southern California, is because of this culture, because of this stress and demand, because of the busyness of us. because of all the demands that parents have and because of this crazy culture that we find ourselves in, churches out here are finding that the non -church, whatever we call them, the un -church, are showing up because of the kids' programming. We have more people coming in. for the church programming, or at least for the, you know, for whatever's going on, because they can take their kids, because they have a great Sunday school class they have, and their kids get to run well, and the parents, sometimes they're like, well, what are we doing during this time? It's like, well, why don't we go sit in the service, go see what it's about. But yeah, it's attractive to this culture for that reason, and churches that do this well have realized the awesome benefit of A, serving their parents, the parents out there. in their community and taking over this role that government shouldn't be doing. But B, it's attractive to the world that doesn't necessarily, that isn't church. They're like, I want this. What a great opportunity to get the message out there of the role that faith plays, that we can play in bringing Jesus, bringing the hope that he's given to us to the world out there. And it's going to oftentimes be through the kids. That's amazing. Yeah, I mean, I love that and you guys found that when you I think you left and you finally got to a church At some point you left the town you were in and you said I think Someone asked you what do we do? What do we need? You said we need a rec league and we need T -ball, and what a great insight for someone who came to anything. You guys started this amazing T -ball league that everybody came to, and my guess is many of them weren't at the church. Some were there, but some weren't necessarily.

 

Tim [00:40:27] Oh, that's right. And that giving people, I mean, we also, we made sure people had food to eat. It's funny, as a Catholic, you have these lent fish fries. that end up turning into this funnest thing in the world. So during the season, that's like somber and penance. You're all going to get. And then the weather turns nice and it's Easter. And you stop seeing each other. That was like, wait, no. After Easter, let's feed everybody there. And so that was like someone's like, that was a genius idea. Feeding him. I was like, I kind of stole that one from Jesus for the fish. I think we'll shut it out like everybody there. And just an excuse to get together in a culture where it's not as organic as maybe it might have been two generations ago

 

Chris [00:41:07] Okay, so as we get nearer to wrapping this up, Tim, we've identified the problem, we've tackled some of what may be going on. The prognosis, I don't know. I think there's hope still, right? I mean, we have these isolated places that are doing it well. You talk about the Mormon church, we talk about faith groups that do this. Well, there probably are some others that maybe we're not as familiar with it, But... The prognosis seems hopeful, but at the end of the day, what do you think is going to wake us up? What's the, if you had to say, this is what I would do, you put me in charge, and I would begin to immediately institute what?

 

Tim [00:41:55] So there's no one big solution because, as you see from this whole discussion, it's on the local level. It's going to be different what different people need. Some places are rural. Some places are more car -dependent. Some places are naturally walkable. Some places have, you know, so there's going to be different solutions applied on the local level. I do, I mean, I'm in Washington, D .C., I talk about federal policy. The big economic thing, because I argue that affordability is not the main reason for the people aren't having kids as much. But the big economic thing is the cost of owning a home. That really does, because a lot of Americans, they think, it doesn't need to be a mansion, but I should have a home with a little fence and backyard for my toddler to run around. So I would say supporting housing would be good. And another thing about making housing more affordable is it would then be easier for somebody to buy a house that was right around the corner from grandma. And that would be huge. And so really, I would just, what I was saying earlier about the church is that that's where the solution is going to be. any existing institution. you have. And I think religious colleges should also be thinking about helping the community around them. Every existing institution has to think, what should we do to help parents? And why do I emphasize parents? We have record low birth rates and we have this epidemic of childhood anxiety. That is the crisis where, you know, the news media or some government administrations will say everything has to be about climate. Climate's a big issue to talk but I think everything has to be about family, about marriage and parenting.

 

Chris [00:43:26] Tim, thank you. I love that. I'll give you another real quick example that I think for us is a model and I believe with 3 ,900 and some higher education institutes out there, there's got to be one somewhere near you, even rural, right? even in Idaho, I was just in Boise, and they have Boise State, they have small community colleges. One of the ways that that could also help, and especially thinking about Biola here, is for us as parents, it was absolutely wonderful. When summer came, kids are out, now you've got to figure out, what am I gonna do, right? I mean, school is great because it takes the time. But summer is this moment of, oh boy. Well, Biola, for example, we do a week -long basketball camp. So kids of all ages, they come to this university, they hang out, they eat in the cafeteria, they get here at 8 a .m., they play according to their level, not necessarily age, and they stay, and then they get to go and see all the cool things about a university then they go eat in the cafeteria which is their favorite part by the way is eating in the cafeteria and then they get to go and play some more and then it's all day long and it's and then the next week it's basketball camp. or a swimming camp, or it's soccer camp. And so with all of the, baseball camp, I can't tell you how many camps our kids went to. In fact, they were growing up, they were supposed to come to this university because I get this non -stuition break, right? And so, and they're like. Dad, we feel like we've already gone and graduated from Biola. I've swum there, I've played basketball, I've played soccer. Fortunately, all three did COVID and enjoyed their experience. But what a great opportunity it is to find those rec leagues as well that allow for that. And sometimes it's around institutions. I hope and pray that. This allows the church to really step up and do what the word church is designed to do. It's community. It's the body of Christ. It's saying, we are this. We will help you. And then, so I love that, Tim, and the other part too that is really important, when you talk about parenting, I add one more word to it, and I think churches need to do something for parents, but I think they need to do something for their parents' marriages. Hence our center, right? Let's get in there, when they're doing this, then give a parental, a parent conference every week, Wednesday night, when you drop your kids off, we're gonna teach you how to deal with conflict, or communication, or emotion, or finances, or. things like that and so hence the purpose.

 

Tim [00:46:06] and connect them with other couple. I mean, I think that's a huge part of it is relationships and a couple that feels like it's just the two of them and the two of them, and then they're, you know, they're two -year -old and they're babies. So it's like, neither of those people have intelligent conversation. That isolation, you know, which may sound nice, like let's steal away, it'll just be the two of them. No, marriage too needs to be in the context of a broader community.

 

Chris [00:46:30] I love it Tim. I just want to applaud you for writing an amazing book by Timothy Carney is family unfriendly. It's published by Harper Collins by Harper Collins Almost didn't get to see that one and and the subtitle how our culture made raising kids much harder than it needs to be Gonna be a great book Tim comes from a well experienced background Man, thanks for taking the time to join us here my welcome to our University Well Welcome to Biola and to our Center for Marriage and Relationships. By the way, if you wanted to go find out anything more about this, other podcasts, blogs, we have interviews with leading, like the owners, let's say, of In -N -Out. She talks about being in a family and what's that like, and then we have people from the sports world and everything else on this podcast. Go check it out, cmr.biola.edu. Tim, it's been good having you on this program, my man. Thank you. OK. Take care.

 

Mandy [00:47:28] We're very glad you joined us for today's podcast. For more resources on marriage and healthy relationships, please visit our website at cmr.biola.edu. We'll see you next time on The Art of Relationships.