Transcript: Tim Carney

My interview with the author and Washington Examiner columnist

Canada recently reached a grim milestone — the lowest fertility rate in recorded history. We are now well below population replacement, at 1.33 births per woman. My guest on the show this week has studied this crisis in family formation in the West. And he says we need to take a look at our culture.

Tim Carney is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a columnist for The Washington Examiner. His new book is Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs To Be.

This is an edited transcript for paid subscribers. You can listen to the episode for free here.

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TH: I really enjoyed the book, as you know. And it comes at a particular moment in Canadian history. The Canadian fertility rate recently hit the lowest point in recorded history. We're at 1.33 births per woman — and we are in danger of becoming one of the “lowest low” fertility countries in the world. To start today, I want to talk about what brought you to this topic. You have six children. What inspired you to write a book about declining family formation in North America?

TC: I had studied the collapse of community in the U.S., and in the West, and I wrote a book about that a few years ago. I thought, “What are the most important consequences of that — of the fact that we don't belong to as many things, the fact that we don't know our neighbours as well, the fact that we don't go to church as much?” As Robert Putnam wrote in Bowling Alone, we don't belong to bowling leagues. There are lots of negative consequences that I talked about: deaths of despair, political alienation. But I thought the most important one was the collapse of the family — even just on the numeric level.

Marriage rates are down. As you're saying, birth rates, in the U.S., Canada, and Europe, they are at record lows. And they're still falling, shockingly. Also, childhood anxiety is an epidemic. In the U.S., President Biden and the pediatricians, they've all said that there are record high levels of mental illness and anxiety for kids. All of this pointed to the fact that parenting was harder, kids were less happy, and we were getting fewer children. I believe that there is a cultural, not merely an economic, cause for all of these pathologies.

TH: I want to dig into that culture now. This is a really personal issue for me. I did not have children, even though I really wanted to. And there was a lot of factors for that. One, I met my partner later in life. But also, I had large student loans, and housing is an issue in Canada. So, a lot of structural issues. But as you get to in the book, there was also a cultural issue. I come from the progressive left. Feminism, and the way that feminism framed this issue — I've come to the conclusion that it was not helpful for me. Let's unpack this cultural question that you write about in the book. Part of the problem is economic precarity, as you write, and structural issues like housing. But you argue that we can't really attribute the problem to these factors.

TC: Housing in the U.S. has really become a problem in about the last three years. But the collapse in the birth rate and the other bad things I talk about — childhood anxiety, et cetera — have been going on for 15 years. In 2019, before housing prices skyrocketed, we still had basically record-low births. And birth rates that have been falling for 12 or 13 years. It doesn't help; anybody who wants to fix these problems does need to address rising housing costs.

Other affordability costs don't quite play in either. Because, really, when you crunch the numbers, Millennials — who are the ones not having babies right now — are not poorer when you adjust for inflation and cost of living, than my generation, Gen X. They might be richer than the Boomers. Gen X and the Boomers had more kids. They had about two kids each, compared to the 1.6, 1.7 that Millennials are having. Affordability of raising kids hasn't really gone up when you adjust for inflation. Because a lot of things have become cheaper, while some things have become more expensive.

That’s one reason why I said that you can't just look at the economics, you have to look at culture. And culture is a big word, right? It's so big, and it's so undefined at times, that economists hate it when you say something is pinned on culture. But by culture I mean, for one, parenting culture. It is too time-intensive. Local Little League sports get replaced by expensive, intensive travel sports. Parents feel they have to helicopter, like a secret service agent, watching to make sure little Connor doesn't skin his knee. Or they believe that there is a trained kidnapper with a getaway car around every corner.

Dating and mating culture are messed up, dysfunctional. Especially in the last 15 years. Especially, I would say, since smartphones came onto the scene — to the degree that a lot fewer people get married in their 20s or their early 30s. The values of our culture are off. You referred to feminism. I discussed that as one example of a place where we are more individualistic. We end up being workists and careerists. We end up being transactional instead of relational. Commitment can seem like the opposite of freedom or autonomy, and so we don't do it. The values of our culture, I think, are going to be the most important force behind these changes.

TH: On that note, there is a really powerful quote from the book that I want to read now, so that our listeners can hear it. You write, "We now see individual autonomy as the highest good and self-actualization as the purpose of life. We see other people as competitors over a finite pie. This worldview obviously fits poorly with parenthood and the self-sacrifice it inevitably requires, but it does something else we might not always notice. It erodes the social bonds that make parenthood possible for others." Talk to me about this dynamic.

TC: Absolutely. So, autonomy, individualism, self-determination — those are real values for Europe, for the U.S., for Canada. Especially in America. That is who we are, right? Us and Canadians, we all got on a boat. Our ancestors got on a boat and came over here to start anew. But at the same time, we have always been — and humans have always been — very communal creatures. And the fact is that our entering into a relationship, belonging to a community, does come at the expense, to some extent, of our autonomy. And especially if we didn't choose it.

What's the ultimate unchosen obligation? Our family, our immediate family. Your brothers, your parents, your sisters. And then, with marriage or children, even if you chose it at some point, the idea that you're stuck with these people for the rest of your life also grates a little on that idea that everything is continually consensual. But we also know that if we try to establish that autonomy at all times, what we're giving up is real belonging. The beauty that comes with being vulnerable and being dependent on others. I'm thinking of marriage in this case — being dependent on your spouse, who is dependent on you. And then, when you build a family culture and everybody relies on one another. That's beautiful. And we all know that's beautiful — even outside of a family. If you just think of a military platoon or something like that, that's something that gives us meaning as humans. But again, it all cuts against that idea that at every moment in your life, you should have that optionality, that autonomy, to choose whatever path you want. There's always a trade-off between optionality and belonging. Sometimes things go too far in the tightly-knit direction. But I do not think that's the case in our world today.

TH: There was a whole spate of articles about chosen families for a while, which you touch on in the book, basically saying these are wonderful, these are fluid arrangements. But as you say, actually, one of the things that's most indispensable about family is its permanency. The idea that we can make everything up from scratch is a burden as much as it is a freedom. I think your line was “not everyone is up to the task of a lifelong improv act.” I certainly relate to that.

TC: There's a term that I encountered in the last few years: “life script.” I encountered it in two very different contexts. One was my boss at the American Enterprise Institute, Yuval Levin. He's the head of our division there. He talks about how he has a vision of a life script as something that we are handed, and we get to fill in most of it. But there are scenes, there are settings. Those are all given to us, and we fill in within a framework. Within a template, to use a modern image.

Then, I started reading lots of the op-eds while I was working on this book. I read lots of the op-eds against having kids, or in favour of married people operating as if they're divorced and have a split custody agreement and divide everything 50/50. In all of these cases, they said what is glorious about today is that we get to write our life scripts on a blank page. You understand why somebody would say that. In a real traditionalist society, where nobody got to … if everybody had to get married, somebody who wanted to be single would be like, “Wait, I don't have an example.” But right now, we are obviously not erring in that direction. And writing a life script on a blank page is actually too hard for almost anybody. That's what I meant by a lifelong improv act.

One way to think about ourselves is we are people in relation; we are people who play roles within institutions. So, I wake up in the morning and half of my job is handed to me. I'm a father, I'm a husband, I’m a scholar, I'm a book author, I'm just a random dad at church, and I'm an assistant coach at Little League. I have these roles, and all of these roles give me guidance towards how to behave. Which makes life a little easier, frankly.

TH: There's this wonderful Canadian writer, and she has a line about this in one of her books saying, “It's exhausting having to go, what is my life about this Tuesday?” I did want to circle back to the intensive parenting, because we certainly see that a lot in Canada. I'm also Gen X, and when I was young — the same as with you — we played outside and we came back for dinner. But I think it's interesting that parenting got so much more hands-on at the exact time that women were flooding into the workforce. What do you make of the timing of that?

TC: It seems so counterintuitive, doesn't it? I compare 1975 to today, and dads spent twice as much time — according to these different measures and time use diaries — just taking care of their kids. That doesn't include multitasking. From 1975 until today, dads doubled their amount of time. On its own, I would say that is unequivocally a good measure, especially since it's at the same time that women are going back to work. Maybe dads are picking up some of the slack. A lot of dads were absentee, they thought their only job was to be the breadwinner and not to also help raise the kids.

Then I looked at the women. Mothers increased [the time they spent taking care of children] by 50% compared to 1975 — while they have fewer kids, are working more, and dads are doing more. That hourly increase by mothers was actually more hours added on than were added on for the men. That intensive parenting, what form does it take? Driving kids a lot more. Supervising homework. I don't remember my homework being supervised by mom or dad. I remember it was like, “You're in elementary school, handle it. Actually, I don't remember math that well, handle it.” My hand was not being held.

That intensive parenting seems to have come at the wrong time. But why? I actually think the falling birth rates helped cause the intensive parenting, and then the intensive parenting causes anxiety and it sets this example. And to the degree that it becomes an example, it convinces parents that they can't have more than one or two. So, it becomes a circle.

Sociologists and economists use a framework of quality versus quantity. They say there is a quality versus quantity trade-off in all sorts of things, including parenting. When you have fewer kids, you can do what they call “higher quality parenting.” Now, I don't think they're really being judgmental. That's just the way economists are used to talking. But what “higher quality parenting” is is this intensive stuff. It’s driving kids from school to rehearsal, to practice, to tutoring, and to homework, to bed. The parents have this whole full-time job of supervising. I think it’s low quality parenting.

I think it comes from a modern mindset. Like, “People used to just have a bunch of kids and ignore them. That was old-fashioned. The right, modern, grown-up way to be a parent is to make sure your kid is guaranteed success.” This did have something to do with us becoming a little more achievement-oriented as a society. Which I think goes hand-in-hand with us becoming more secular as a society — but more that your job as a parent involves these measurable outcomes and achievements, rather than happy kids who are happy as adults.

TH: That's one deterrent — people looking at the intensive parenting and thinking, “How could I possibly do this?” Another deterrent, as you mentioned before, is the dating culture on the apps. Dating is now a full-time job, and the results are pretty poor for a lot of people. It's a lot of transactional, casual sex. It's a lot of disappointments for people. There's a small amount of men, as we know, doing the bulk of the dating. A lot of men aren't getting any dates at all. How does that dynamic contribute to the low birth rate?

TC: First, just the delay of marriage is going to drive down birth rates, just statistically. If you want two or three kids, it's entirely possible to get married at 32 and still get those two or three kids. But the odds of you falling short of that desired family go up as marriage gets later. Biology does not obey our calendar.

I also think, importantly, it's tied up with the philosophical stuff we were talking about — the outlook of the individual. High-tech dating gives us this idea that there's an infinite number of people out there. It's bottomless on these apps. You don't get to the end and say, “Oh, I guess that's it.” Theoretically, you could scroll forever. It makes us more perfectionist. That was definitely something that interviews turned up. One woman said, even in person, she started to notice these little things about a man that were just slightly off. “Oh, his teeth are a little yellow.” Things you never would have noticed — except when you're looking on the app and you have so few personality cues. You become perfectionist about these superficial cues.

It gets in the way of the actual things that do hint towards compatibility, which has to do with personality. People say even sense of smell contributes to how much we like a person. I have a very poor sense of smell, so I have to take everybody else's word on that. But again, the idea of the apps is that there's this double secret consent that happens. It used to happen by passing notes to the fourth-grade girl in the middle, who would determine if you two liked each other before you talked to each other. Now it's an app.

But that prevents dating in real life. Lots of people think it's inappropriate to date without the apps. I saw this in polls. I saw it in interviews. People think it's inappropriate to ask someone out in person. Because, well, you haven't gotten their consent to ask them out, in the way that's now normal. That's just so stultifying of our social development. There was one interview [I did] with this guy named Simon. He wanted to ask out this girl on his volleyball team, but he decided that that would be inappropriate. Somehow that was an abuse of the volleyball team connection. I was thinking, “A co-ed volleyball team — the purpose is for you to meet somebody of the opposite sex. It's not the volleyball.”

TH: Yes. Even in the workplace. When I started working, it was totally normal for people to date at work. Now that is considered completely taboo.

TC: That's wild. Again, these in-person, informal things get replaced by formal structures. They can seem more rational to people: “Put the dating where the dating belongs, the work where the work belongs, and the volleyball where the volleyball belongs.” That seems nice and neat, but it's like having a downtown carved up into business/commerce/residences. You're like, “It was nice when we used to be able to walk to the corner store.” That divvying up of everything that naturally went together, that's a very modern, rationalist mindset. And I think it ends up backfiring.

TH: We should probably talk, too, about the sex recession. Which is surprising, but not surprising at the same time. Why are all adults, but particularly young adults, having less sex than their predecessors?