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Speaker 1: On this episode of News World, the high standards set

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Speaker 1: for modern American parenting are unrealistic and setting parents and

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Speaker 1: our kids up to fail. Our culture tells parents there's

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Speaker 1: one best way to raise kids. Enroll them in a

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Speaker 1: dozen activities, protect them from trauma, get them into the

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Speaker 1: most expensive college you can. If you can't do that,

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Speaker 1: don't bother. And we now see record rates of anxiety, depression, medication, debts, loneliness,

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Speaker 1: and more in America's children. In his new book Family

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Speaker 1: on Friendly, how our culture made raising kids much harder

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Speaker 1: than it needs to be, best selling author Timothy Karney

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Speaker 1: says it's time to end this failed experiment in overparenting.

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Speaker 1: I'm really pleased to welcome my guest, Timothy Karney. He

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Speaker 1: is the father of six children, a senior fellow at

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Speaker 1: the American unerpresence' An, a columnist at the Washington Examiner.

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Speaker 1: Tim welcome and thank you for joining.

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Speaker 2: Me on news World. Thank you for having me.

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Speaker 1: You and your wife, Katie have six children. In your book,

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Speaker 1: you wrote the quote childhood anxiety is a result of

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Speaker 1: helicopter parenting. What does that mean?

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Speaker 2: So with helicopter parenting you can mean a couple things,

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Speaker 2: but just the image of the parent hovering literally or

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Speaker 2: figuratively over the child. When I was a kid, we

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Speaker 2: played little league. I rode my bike to the fields.

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Speaker 2: My parents came to a couple of games if the

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Speaker 2: weather was nice, and they thought that that was the

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Speaker 2: nicest thing to do on a Friday night. That's out

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Speaker 2: the window now. It's intensive, expensive travel sports where you're

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Speaker 2: in Delaware for a field hockey tournament every other weekend.

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Speaker 2: It's cracking the whip on homework every night and hiring tutors.

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Speaker 2: It's also when they're little, a constant fear that there's

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Speaker 2: some kidnapper, well trained kidnapper with a getaway car around

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Speaker 2: every corner. And so it's a safetyism. It's an over ambition,

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Speaker 2: a parental anxiety that trickles down into a childhood anxiety,

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Speaker 2: and it involves forgetting that childhood is supposed to involve

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Speaker 2: freedom and fun. And it really started in the upper

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Speaker 2: middle class, this overparenting, but it's trickled down to the

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Speaker 2: middle class and the working class, and so it's driving

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Speaker 2: down birth rates. You know, new we have record low

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Speaker 2: birth rates now less than one point seven babies per woman.

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Speaker 2: And also this epidemic of childhood anxiety. There are economists

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Speaker 2: who like this. Belsaw Hill, who's a friend of mine

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Speaker 2: at the Workings Institution, she praised quality over quantity parenting.

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Speaker 2: But my argument is that it's actually low quality parenting

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Speaker 2: to make childhood into this sort of constant audition for

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Speaker 2: getting into Princeton. That high pressure is not good for anyone.

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Speaker 1: So how do you think this evolved.

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Speaker 2: It's got a lot of roots. One of them really

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Speaker 2: has to do with the secularization of our country. Frankly,

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Speaker 2: so in this book, I talked to all sorts of fates.

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Speaker 2: I went out to Mormon Utah and Idaho. I went

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Speaker 2: to Jewish neighborhoods in Maryland, and I went to Tel

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Speaker 2: Aviv and Jerusalem. I write it from a Catholic perspective.

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Speaker 2: All of these parenting pathologies show up in all of

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Speaker 2: these communities, but a lot less because I think if

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Speaker 2: you view humans as sort of naturally good, then you

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Speaker 2: not as worried about their outcomes. But in a more secular,

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Speaker 2: more materialistic world, I think we'd say, okay, well a

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Speaker 2: I'm going to plan a family super planned postpone it agonized,

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Speaker 2: get married in your thirties, have your kid, in your

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Speaker 2: late thirties know that it's just the right moment. Once

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Speaker 2: you've done that, it becomes so much more pressure to

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Speaker 2: get it exactly right, rather than you grow up, you

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Speaker 2: have kids and you try to teach them well. So

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Speaker 2: that's part of it. But also just the idea that

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Speaker 2: the humans value is in their worldly accomplishments. I think

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Speaker 2: that leads to this added pressure. So I really do

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Speaker 2: think our culture's values have driven this.

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Speaker 1: And you make the point that this is also a

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Speaker 1: real problem because we have this false sense of how

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Speaker 1: dangerous the world is.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean people really do think that kidnappings

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Speaker 2: happen around every corner every day, and so kids aren't

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Speaker 2: free to wander the neighborhood. There are neighborhoods that are unsafe,

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Speaker 2: and we had a crime wave in twenty twenty. In

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Speaker 2: most of the country it's gone down, but in a

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Speaker 2: lot of places it hasn't. My wife and I we

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Speaker 2: moved out of Montgomery County, Maryland into Fairfax County, Virginia,

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Speaker 2: in part because the government there wasn't taking the crime

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Speaker 2: wave seriously. But in any event, America is much safer

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Speaker 2: today than it was when I was a kid. In

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Speaker 2: the eighties and nineties, just by any measure of crime

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Speaker 2: is way down from them.

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Speaker 1: And you make a void, which I think is startling

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Speaker 1: that while there are these very high value and greatly

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Speaker 1: paid attention to events with young kids, the fact is

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Speaker 1: to something like one hundred abductions a year in which

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Speaker 1: a stranger grabs a child.

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Speaker 2: Out of a population of three hundred and thirty million,

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Speaker 2: So that is it seems to happen every day.

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Speaker 1: That's a staggering number. Unlike everybody else, when one of

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Speaker 1: these things does occur, they can be two weeks of

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Speaker 1: news and it makes you feel like it's around the

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Speaker 1: corner and everyone's at risk, and based on your data,

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Speaker 1: in fact, it's so unlikely that to warp your life

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Speaker 1: around it is almost a psychological problem.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, your child is as likely to be killed by

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Speaker 2: a lightning strike as is to be abducted. And when

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Speaker 2: something is that rare, you can't really protect so well

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Speaker 2: against it. I mean, at least with a lightning storm

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Speaker 2: you can see the clouds coming, I guess, but it's

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Speaker 2: incredibly rare. It's less than one in a million occurrence,

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Speaker 2: and so you shape your life around that. Now, there

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Speaker 2: are real risks to children, you know, drowning, car accidents,

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Speaker 2: these are the things that the actual accidental, horrible things

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Speaker 2: that happen to children. And I'm hyper aware and on

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Speaker 2: guard around a swimming pool or at the beach with

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Speaker 2: the kids. But the fact is that we were much

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Speaker 2: more likely to get on the beltway and drive with

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Speaker 2: our kids, which is much more dangerous than to let

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Speaker 2: them walk to the park that's three blocks away. And

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Speaker 2: so what that does then is it sets a cultural norm,

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Speaker 2: and the parents who want to let their kids go

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Speaker 2: to the park, some of them feel like they're being judged.

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Speaker 2: And I tell the story from Montgomery County of parents

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Speaker 2: who did let their kids go to the park and

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Speaker 2: the police busted the parents for it, took the kids

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Speaker 2: away for a little bit because they thought it was unsafe,

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Speaker 2: and the parents said, show me one point where they

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Speaker 2: were in day. The only danger was the Child Protective

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Speaker 2: Service is taking the kids away for a few hours.

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Speaker 2: So those threats that parents worry about are based on

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Speaker 2: how a national media, even before social media, just they're

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Speaker 2: being a national media. If it happens, you know, once

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Speaker 2: a week somewhere in America and you hear about it

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Speaker 2: every week, it sounds like it's happening around you all

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Speaker 2: the time. But it's again a one in a million.

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Speaker 1: So in a sense, you have a kind of fearful parenting.

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Speaker 1: My child won't get into the right college, my child

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Speaker 1: might will be in danger physically, my child won't have

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Speaker 1: the right skills. I need to keep them so busy

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Speaker 1: that they can't do drugs. It's almost like the paranoid parent,

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Speaker 1: if you will.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I call it a mantle of fear that we

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Speaker 2: feel we're supposed to wear like. And again, I talk

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Speaker 2: to parents who feel that they should be afraid that

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Speaker 2: when they let go and let their kids wander the neighborhood,

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Speaker 2: they feel guilty about it, and so that it really

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Speaker 2: is a cultural issue. And I try not to make

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Speaker 2: it be an individual thing, but I do. It takes

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Speaker 2: effort to overcome it. It takes community saying, you know,

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Speaker 2: we are going to let our kids wander. I know

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Speaker 2: dads who have done that, who gathered the other dads

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Speaker 2: in the neighborhood and said, Okay, can we all agree

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Speaker 2: our kids can run around the neighborhood. And if somebody

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Speaker 2: else's kids run into your house like kids are allowed

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Speaker 2: to come into my house, I might kick them out,

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Speaker 2: but you know, we're going to let the kids run

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Speaker 2: the neighborhood, and that takes an actual effort these days,

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Speaker 2: when the norm is the paranoid parenting you're talking about.

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Speaker 1: I think back to my own childhood. There was a

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Speaker 1: very relaxed attitude about my wandering off. I lived in

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Speaker 1: a small town till I was eleven, so that may

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Speaker 1: have been part of it, but there really was no sense.

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Speaker 1: You could just go out and wander around and as

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Speaker 1: long as you got home for dinner, they didn't care.

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Speaker 2: And so this stuff that we didn't really think about

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Speaker 2: that was kind of the wisdom of our parents. Social

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Speaker 2: science and psychology are actually showing the value of it.

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Speaker 2: In the American Journal of Pediatrics recently, they said there

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Speaker 2: is an epidemic of childhood anxiety, and a primary cause

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Speaker 2: of it is the lack of independent play by children

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Speaker 2: unsupervised by adults. One writer who was this sort of

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Speaker 2: upper middle class liberal writer realize her husband said to

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Speaker 2: her when she was working on a book about parenting,

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Speaker 2: and says, oldest is ten years old. How much time

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Speaker 2: do you think she's spent unsupervised? And the mom said,

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Speaker 2: in her ten years, probably less than an hour in

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Speaker 2: ten years, and that's what they realized that they had

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Speaker 2: because that's what they had absorbed from other parents, and

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Speaker 2: so they had to deliberately intentionally unschedule their kids. My

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Speaker 2: wife and I were similar, where we put our daughter

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Speaker 2: in a valet program that was close by because people said, oh,

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Speaker 2: it's the best, the Maryland Youth Ballet. They produce prima ballerinas.

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Speaker 2: We thought, oh, of course, we want to give our

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Speaker 2: kid the best, and then we realized she was doing

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Speaker 2: three hours a week at age eleven of the best

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Speaker 2: valet and that this is horrible for everybody. And when

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Speaker 2: we pulled there, we were all so much happier. So

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Speaker 2: we had sort of backed in thoughtlessly to this hyper

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Speaker 2: intensive parenting.

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Speaker 1: How much of that relates also to a underlying fear

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Speaker 1: and if I don't keep you scheduled, you'll end up

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Speaker 1: either doing drugs or in some way getting into trouble.

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Speaker 2: Well, I will say that the valid thing that parents

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Speaker 2: fear is too much time on social media, the internet

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Speaker 2: and smartphones. So this is a new and Jonathan Hate

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Speaker 2: just came out with a book on this too, called

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Speaker 2: The Anxious Generation. But in Family and Friendly I talk

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Speaker 2: about that's one reason that some parents overschedule their kids,

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Speaker 2: as they say, oh, well, the only other alternative is

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Speaker 2: that they're going to be on Instagram or TikTok for

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Speaker 2: many hours, and I do think that that's harmful for kids.

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Speaker 1: So I read somewhere that, particularly for teenage females, that

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Speaker 1: social media is a major source of bullying and a

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Speaker 1: major source of anxiety.

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Speaker 2: Anxiety, so social compare Who's the term I learned while

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Speaker 2: working on my book that you look at it, you

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Speaker 2: see the party that you miss. You look at this

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Speaker 2: filtered and perfectly posed picture, and you're envious of the

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Speaker 2: other girls. For boys, the danger is porn. It's like

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Speaker 2: an unending supply of it. And when I talk to

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Speaker 2: young women now, they say, you're writing a book about

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Speaker 2: how people are getting married and having kids. Well, half

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Speaker 2: the men my age are addicted to porn. And so

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Speaker 2: these are real dangers. And the answer to both overscheduling

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Speaker 2: and to the online dangers, a lot of it is

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Speaker 2: let your kids be bored, let them roam, let them

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Speaker 2: play pick up basketball. And obviously it's not possible to

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Speaker 2: protect your kids from every harm. One of the middle

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Speaker 2: chapters in the book, though, is about the tech and

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Speaker 2: about how the dating apps delay marriage and they don't

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Speaker 2: actually accelerate it, but how social media sort of rewires

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Speaker 2: our mind and it uproots us from community who are

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Speaker 2: on social media all day what they're doing. If you

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Speaker 2: think about it, you were wandering your small town, you

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Speaker 2: were in some ways becoming more rooted in where you

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Speaker 2: were from. In social media, you're becoming uprooted, uprooted from

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Speaker 2: your family, from your community, from your faith. And that

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Speaker 2: ends up being really bad for kids. And so this

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Speaker 2: is another problem, is that we have weaker communities in

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Speaker 2: weaker extended families. That's bad. That again contributes to childhood anxiety,

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Speaker 2: and it contributes to lower birth rates. I think.

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Speaker 1: You talk about the baby bust, and you trace it

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Speaker 1: all the way back to two thousand and eight. What

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Speaker 1: is it and why did it start.

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Speaker 2: So in two thousand and six. In two thousand and seven,

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Speaker 2: my wife and I we had our first kid. In

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Speaker 2: two thousand and six. There was a lot of babies born.

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Speaker 2: Four point three million babies in two thousand and seven.

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Speaker 2: There were more babies born than even at the peak

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Speaker 2: of the baby boom. The total fertility rate, which is

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Speaker 2: the most common birth rate you hear was at two

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Speaker 2: point one, which is the replacement level, that's what would

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Speaker 2: keep a population stable over time. Since then, it's dropped

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Speaker 2: every year, down from four point three million babies down

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Speaker 2: to three point six million babies, from two point one

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Speaker 2: birth rate down to below one point seven birth rate,

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Speaker 2: basically every single year. When it first started, people said, oh,

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Speaker 2: it's a great reception. People can't afford to have kids.

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Speaker 2: But then the economy started to improve and the birth

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Speaker 2: rate kept falling. In twenty nineteen, before the pandemic, we

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Speaker 2: had the best economy in my life and the lowest

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Speaker 2: birth rate in my life. And so it's hard to

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Speaker 2: pinatus on the economy. We talked about tech. The iPhone

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Speaker 2: came out in two thousand and seven and the baby

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Speaker 2: bus started the next year. That might be a coincidence,

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Speaker 2: it might not. Obviously it's a problem too. Not everybody

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Speaker 2: believes it's the problem. And in my book I talk

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Speaker 2: about the economic problems the socials, and how it reflects

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Speaker 2: the sort of failure of our society to support families.

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Speaker 2: We sort of think, okay, have kids, but they're all

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Speaker 2: your own, you know, don't bug the rest of us.

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Speaker 2: Don't let them make noise at the restaurant and don't

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Speaker 2: bring them on the airplane, and don't expect us to

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Speaker 2: accommodate parents. I think there's a lot of reasons to

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Speaker 2: be upset about the baby busts.

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Speaker 1: And do you think it's likely to continue?

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Speaker 2: Yes, because it's all self reinforcing. When people have fewer kids,

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Speaker 2: that results in people having fewer kids. This is true

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Speaker 2: for a lot of reasons. One you look in a

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Speaker 2: place like South Korea, which has the lowest birth rate

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Speaker 2: in the world. A lot of recent articles in major

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Speaker 2: newspapers here talked about how there's an increasing push to

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Speaker 2: ban children from more places in South Korea. Once you're

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Speaker 2: not used to kids, then the world gets less built

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Speaker 2: for kids and less built for families. Just think about

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Speaker 2: neighborhoods that have a lot of kids. Once there's a

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Speaker 2: lot of kids, they're like, Okay, let's put up a

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Speaker 2: new playground, Let's make sure the sidewalks are a little wider.

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Speaker 2: There's family restaurants and that sort of thing. Those don't

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Speaker 2: happen in places where they're fewer kids. And then you

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Speaker 2: think about Capitol Hill. You remember the Capitol Hill staff.

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Speaker 2: These are mostly young childless people these days, they're the

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Speaker 2: people making our policies, some of them never see a

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Speaker 2: kid all day long, and so they're shaping our world

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Speaker 2: without children in mind. So I do think that the

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Speaker 2: baby bus causes more baby bus and so right now

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Speaker 2: we've fallen from two point one to one point sixty

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Speaker 2: five in about fifteen years. I expect that to keep

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Speaker 2: going down less of course, everybody reads my book and

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Speaker 2: we get a baby boom starting in nine months.

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Speaker 1: You cite what I think is one of the most

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Speaker 1: fascinating examples of this change, and that's South Korea. I mean,

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Speaker 1: despite all the talk about China's one child policy, it's

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Speaker 1: actually South Korea, which as a free country, suddenly shifted

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Speaker 1: years and became the lowest birth rate in the world.

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Speaker 1: How do you analyze them.

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Speaker 2: It's tricky, but I've been reading everything i can on

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Speaker 2: this and comparing it to other cultures. They have always

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Speaker 2: had a very workest careerist policy for the men there,

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Speaker 2: and it was just sort of established that working career

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Speaker 2: are the highest callings. I don't think there was a

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Speaker 2: lot of respect given to mothers, who were largely expected

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Speaker 2: to stay at home. I argue one of the chapters

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Speaker 2: of my book that we need more stay at home moms,

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Speaker 2: but they need to be celebrated and vaunted and recognized

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Speaker 2: and accommodated. And so in a culture that set its

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Speaker 2: ideals as about career success, well, once there was more equality,

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Speaker 2: the women wanted that career success. And then once a

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Speaker 2: lot of the men were competing against a lot of

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Speaker 2: the women, it became harder and a lot of men

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Speaker 2: dropped out of the labor force. So now what you

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Speaker 2: have is is women who want more career success, men

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Speaker 2: who don't necessarily want to bother the hustle in the workforce,

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Speaker 2: so they are not attractive as husbands, obviously, especially to

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Speaker 2: women who can make their own money. And so a

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Speaker 2: lot of those cultural shifts happened. Again, it's also rapidly secularized.

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Speaker 2: It's a very secular country, and so we can talk

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Speaker 2: about values, but I think a lot of it has

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Speaker 2: to do with mood. It's an increasingly sad place where

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Speaker 2: if you're just focused on your career, if you are

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Speaker 2: a man who doesn't think you have high career prospects,

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Speaker 2: if you're a woman who thinks, well, i'd like to

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Speaker 2: marry but there's not that many men out there, And

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Speaker 2: now you're shrinking because of the baby bus theres and

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Speaker 2: that exacerbates the sense of sadness. It seems like a

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Speaker 2: dying culture that's just about putting your nose to the grindstone.

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Speaker 2: The last chapter of my book is called civilizational sadness,

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Speaker 2: because I think that's what ties South Korea, Northern Europe,

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Speaker 2: Southern Europe, the United States all together. It's in different ways.

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Speaker 2: We do not see sort of the human race as

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Speaker 2: a good thing.

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Speaker 1: It's not just a Western civilization plus Japan and career.

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Speaker 1: I mean, you make the point. Mexico has collapsed in

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Speaker 1: birth rates, Brazil, Malaysia, Vietnam now now below replacement fertility race,

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Speaker 1: and even Nigeria is rapidly declining in number of children.

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Speaker 1: There's something going on worldwide in the civilization that is

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Speaker 1: sending a signal that having children is less important and

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Speaker 1: maybe for women, having a career is more important. I

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Speaker 1: don't know what it is, but it is apparently a

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Speaker 1: worldwide phenomenon.

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Speaker 2: Yep. I think that again, the idea is the modern

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Speaker 2: idea of the individual, disconnected from the community and from

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Speaker 2: past generations. In future generations, it's a very modern, overly

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Speaker 2: individualistic mindset and the places that have the most babies

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Speaker 2: are place which is not just a well, yes at

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Speaker 2: our religious but also that have robust religious communities. And

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Speaker 2: I think a robust, sort of less religious community could

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Speaker 2: play some of this role. But the more that we

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Speaker 2: are just sort of floating about as individuals, or if

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Speaker 2: you get married it's just a couple and you're alone,

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Speaker 2: the less you're going to think about the past and

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Speaker 2: the future, the less support you're going to think that

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Speaker 2: you have. And I think that that, again is sort

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Speaker 2: of part of modernity. Some of it is technology, some

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Speaker 2: of it is just again the sort of Tookville talks

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Speaker 2: about this in democracy in America, like the spirit of

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Speaker 2: equality and democracy, two great things. If they become all consuming, well,

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Speaker 2: then it does disconnect us from one another. A wise

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Speaker 2: woman once said, it takes a village to raise a child.

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Speaker 2: Now Hillary might have meant the Department of Health and

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Speaker 2: Human Services, but historically it was the extended family, the neighborhood,

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Speaker 2: the church, the school.

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Speaker 1: Well, and you made a boy, which I frankly not

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Speaker 1: thought about that. It's not a function of cost, because

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Speaker 1: a lot of people think, gee, if we could change

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Speaker 1: the income equation, but in fact, wealthier people are less

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Speaker 1: likely to have children than poorer people.

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Speaker 2: And it's not really more expensive to raise kids. So

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Speaker 2: I cite lots of economists and actually the cost of

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Speaker 2: raising kids hasn't really gone up unless you insist on

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Speaker 2: doing all the travel, sports and the private tutoring. The

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Speaker 2: exception to that, though, is housing. Housing costs in the

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Speaker 2: last three years have gone up, and more expensive housing

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Speaker 2: does deter family formation. That doesn't explain the baby bus

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Speaker 2: because that's been going on for fifteen years. That's where

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Speaker 2: I would focus policy, because we have the discussion about

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Speaker 2: the child tax credits, the Biden administration monts to subsidized childcare.

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Speaker 2: What I would focus on at the governmental level, are

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Speaker 2: there obstacles to building more housing, more family friendly housing.

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Speaker 2: Are there federal policies regulations that make it totally unprofitable

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Speaker 2: to build a starter home? Where our part of Northern Virginia,

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Speaker 2: New McLain, Virginia, every house that's less than four thousand

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Speaker 2: square feet gets torn down and replaced by this massive

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Speaker 2: mansion where people have two kids and I don't know

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Speaker 2: what they do with all their six thousand square feet.

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Speaker 2: But those smaller houses, that was what a family could

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Speaker 2: afford and buy and you ask a builder now, they

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Speaker 2: say it would make no sense, and not just in

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Speaker 2: McLain where the land's really expensive, but almost anywhere. It

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Speaker 2: make no sense for me to build a house that

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Speaker 2: somebody could buy for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars

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Speaker 2: because just the permits are going to cost me two

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Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars. So housing is a one place where

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Speaker 2: I really say policy ought to say what can we

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Speaker 2: do to make it more affordable for families? But outside

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Speaker 2: of housing, you're.

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Speaker 1: Right, does that almost become a big fight over localism.

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Speaker 1: A lot of these regulations and a lot of these

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Speaker 1: fees are deliberate.

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Speaker 2: Yes, there are people who want to keep down the

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Speaker 2: housing suck. And then an unhelpful kind of yimbie response

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Speaker 2: is that we should build massive apartment buildings in every neighborhood.

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Speaker 2: I think the next thing I want to study at

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Speaker 2: AI with housing people with family folks is what is

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Speaker 2: the actual pro family housing policy because it's not big

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Speaker 2: apartment buildings, so those are not family friendly, but it's

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Speaker 2: certainly not no new development because high housing prices. One

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Speaker 2: of the most valuable things you can do as a

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Speaker 2: parent is live close to your own parents. Now I say,

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Speaker 2: the optimal distance is just far enough that they can't

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Speaker 2: hear you screaming at your own kids. A block away

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Speaker 2: from Grandma is one of the best things to do.

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Speaker 2: And this is one of the things that makes Israel unique.

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Speaker 2: Most parents live within twenty minutes of their own parents,

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Speaker 2: and that's really hard in sort of the large metropolitan

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Speaker 2: areas in the United States because of the costs of

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Speaker 2: housing and so anything that can increase density but in

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Speaker 2: a family friendly way. That's a really complicated thing. But

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Speaker 2: it's not being studied right now because Americas just started

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Speaker 2: to pay attention to the baby bus. Europe has been

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Speaker 2: paying attention to it for fifteen years. But here, my

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Speaker 2: agent was surprised to learn that birthrate through low and

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Speaker 2: falling three years ago. It's just really hitting our radar screen.

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Speaker 1: You know. It's interesting. When I was Speaker of the House,

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Speaker 1: we did a lot of work with Jimmy Carter and

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Speaker 1: Habitat for Humanity, And when the Republicans decided to have

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Speaker 1: their convention in nineteen ninety six in San Diego, we thought,

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Speaker 1: that's terrific. We will go out and we will build

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Speaker 1: a Habitat for Humanity house. Well, the cost of the

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Speaker 1: permits in San Diego was greater than the total cost

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Speaker 1: of the house in Georgia, and that was for a

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Speaker 1: habitat for humanity house. There was no one like charitable

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Speaker 1: exams or poor people exemption. It was unbelievable how much

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Speaker 1: they charged and have never gotten over two other things

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Speaker 1: that are fascinating that you bring up one and I

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Speaker 1: did not know this. Will you make the assertion that

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Speaker 1: there's been a gap in child bearing between conservatives and liberals,

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Speaker 1: at least since the early nineteen eighties.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so some of that gap is due to the

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Speaker 2: fact that conservatives are more religious, but even controlling for religion,

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Speaker 2: I'd say most of it is due to religion, but

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Speaker 2: there's even some leftover. Even if you control for religion,

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Speaker 2: there's even some conservatives outbreeding the Libs, as you could say,

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Speaker 2: And some of the baby bus is suited the fact

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00:24:42,720 --> 00:24:44,720
Speaker 2: that young women are more likely to be liberal today

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00:24:44,720 --> 00:24:48,320
Speaker 2: than they were fifteen years ago and thirty years ago.

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Speaker 2: Why would that be one. I think that conservative people

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00:24:53,200 --> 00:24:55,679
Speaker 2: are just more likely to be rooted in a place

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00:24:56,440 --> 00:24:58,760
Speaker 2: to live near grandma, to be raising their kids in

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Speaker 2: a small town. Liberal Americans are often more likely to

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00:25:02,600 --> 00:25:06,840
Speaker 2: be trying to get above their backwards upbringing or whatever

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Speaker 2: they think. Also, a lot of liberalism in the last

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Speaker 2: thirty years has been sort of dark and brooding about

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00:25:14,080 --> 00:25:17,840
Speaker 2: the future, whether it's climate change or the racial settler

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00:25:17,920 --> 00:25:20,919
Speaker 2: colonial guilt of an American. But I don't want you

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00:25:20,960 --> 00:25:22,879
Speaker 2: to think that this means that the future everybody's going

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Speaker 2: to be conservative, because we have the public schools out

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Speaker 2: there whose job it is to turn conservative kids into liberals.

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Speaker 1: I used to teach environmental studies and taught in the

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Speaker 1: Second Earth Day back in nineteen seventy one, and in

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Speaker 1: that period, the catastrophism which still exists, for example, in

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00:25:41,480 --> 00:25:46,640
Speaker 1: climate was in part focused on population. And you had

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Speaker 1: Paul Erlick, who has been amazingly wrong about every single

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Speaker 1: thing he's written, but remains a tenured professor of Stanford

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00:25:56,080 --> 00:25:58,440
Speaker 1: with great prestige on the left. And he wrote a

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Speaker 1: book called The Population Bomb, and what she said basically

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Speaker 1: that by the year two thousand, Britain would be starving

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Speaker 1: to death. It's the last great stand of Malthusian economics.

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Speaker 1: And yet everything they said about the population boom, it's

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00:26:13,320 --> 00:26:15,760
Speaker 1: very hard for them to switch gears and realize we're

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Speaker 1: now worldwide seeing a declining rate of population, not a

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Speaker 1: rising rate. And I assume that the next generation Paul

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00:26:23,960 --> 00:26:27,600
Speaker 1: Early will write a best selling book called the Population

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00:26:27,800 --> 00:26:31,360
Speaker 1: Bust and how it threatens us or something. But are

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Speaker 1: you surprised at how totally Aerlic was wrong?

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Speaker 2: Yes? What's the first line of the book. The race

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00:26:37,480 --> 00:26:40,640
Speaker 2: to feed humanity is over and we've lost. Humans are

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00:26:40,720 --> 00:26:44,920
Speaker 2: better nourished now by a million miles than they were

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Speaker 2: when Erlick wrote that book, and the population is much larger.

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00:26:48,680 --> 00:26:51,919
Speaker 2: So to me, that's the most telling detail. In fact,

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00:26:52,520 --> 00:26:57,240
Speaker 2: we've reached about twenty years ago peak agricultural land. The

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00:26:57,560 --> 00:27:02,160
Speaker 2: human species uses up less land every year because again

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00:27:02,240 --> 00:27:06,160
Speaker 2: farming efficiency, grazing efficiency, that sort of thing. So we're

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00:27:06,240 --> 00:27:09,200
Speaker 2: taking up less of the planet, and the rural population

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00:27:09,359 --> 00:27:12,399
Speaker 2: will in the life span of my children start to

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00:27:12,480 --> 00:27:16,480
Speaker 2: shrink unless something changes. What was interesting and telling about

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00:27:16,560 --> 00:27:19,400
Speaker 2: Erlich and so I use his quotes in the last

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00:27:19,440 --> 00:27:22,359
Speaker 2: two chapters, isn't my book? Because he said, tell a

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00:27:22,400 --> 00:27:24,440
Speaker 2: woman she can have as many kids as she wants

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00:27:24,560 --> 00:27:27,080
Speaker 2: is like telling someone that they can throw as much

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00:27:27,160 --> 00:27:29,840
Speaker 2: trash in their neighbor's y ared as they want. And

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00:27:29,880 --> 00:27:32,600
Speaker 2: that to me was so telling. That idea that children

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00:27:32,720 --> 00:27:36,719
Speaker 2: are an externality, a negative externality, and that children are

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00:27:36,800 --> 00:27:39,800
Speaker 2: kind of like trash. That was reflective. And he tells

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00:27:39,920 --> 00:27:43,080
Speaker 2: the moment that he came to fear over population was

487
00:27:43,119 --> 00:27:49,199
Speaker 2: in a cab ride through Delhi in India and just

488
00:27:49,400 --> 00:27:52,240
Speaker 2: the filth he saw, all the people. He said, the

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00:27:52,280 --> 00:27:57,439
Speaker 2: people talking, people, visiting, people, eating, people, people, people. He

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00:27:57,600 --> 00:28:01,320
Speaker 2: actually says people, people, people, people as like his image

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00:28:01,320 --> 00:28:05,359
Speaker 2: of Hell, and I just thought that is so telling.

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00:28:05,680 --> 00:28:07,800
Speaker 2: There's that saying Hell is other people. And I think

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00:28:07,800 --> 00:28:10,920
Speaker 2: that's what Erlik believes. And that's why again I come

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00:28:10,960 --> 00:28:15,000
Speaker 2: back to the civilizational sadness. I think that it's trickled

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00:28:15,080 --> 00:28:18,400
Speaker 2: into the spirit of our age, especially among a lot

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00:28:18,400 --> 00:28:22,640
Speaker 2: of our elites, that people, people, people are the problem,

497
00:28:22,960 --> 00:28:25,080
Speaker 2: that what we need is sort of a more sterile,

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00:28:25,200 --> 00:28:31,640
Speaker 2: clean life, and that misanthropy of Erlick. I think, even

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00:28:31,680 --> 00:28:34,360
Speaker 2: though he was wrong on everything, I think that has

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00:28:34,440 --> 00:28:36,360
Speaker 2: sunk into the spirit of the day.

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Speaker 1: There's a certain sense on the left that Gaya, Mother

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00:28:39,840 --> 00:28:45,080
Speaker 1: Earth is offended by all of these human beings, and

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00:28:45,120 --> 00:28:47,800
Speaker 1: instead of seeing us as part of nature, they see

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00:28:47,880 --> 00:28:51,360
Speaker 1: us as a parasite, risking the destruction of nature. It's

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00:28:51,400 --> 00:28:54,840
Speaker 1: a very interesting phenomena. I think your work is fascinating.

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00:28:55,280 --> 00:28:58,600
Speaker 1: I wish you well at looking at housing policy next

507
00:28:59,040 --> 00:29:01,720
Speaker 1: and we want you to come back and educate us

508
00:29:02,200 --> 00:29:05,560
Speaker 1: when you're ready to on that topic. I'm really delighted

509
00:29:06,200 --> 00:29:09,880
Speaker 1: that you wrote Family on Friendly How our culture made

510
00:29:09,960 --> 00:29:12,320
Speaker 1: raising kids much harder than it needs to be. It's

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00:29:12,360 --> 00:29:16,520
Speaker 1: available on Amazon and bookstores everywhere, and I think folks

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00:29:16,520 --> 00:29:19,720
Speaker 1: ought to read it and understand that we really have

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00:29:19,840 --> 00:29:23,840
Speaker 1: gone down a cultural road that is ultimately destructive and

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00:29:23,880 --> 00:29:25,800
Speaker 1: we need to rethink where we are and how we're

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00:29:25,800 --> 00:29:28,840
Speaker 1: dealing with it. And Tim, I want to thank you

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00:29:28,880 --> 00:29:31,360
Speaker 1: for joining me. This is a very very interesting conversation.

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Speaker 2: Thank you, my pleasure.

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Speaker 1: Thank you to my guest, Timothy Carney. You can get

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00:29:41,040 --> 00:29:43,520
Speaker 1: a link to buy his new book Family on Friendly

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00:29:43,960 --> 00:29:47,640
Speaker 1: on our show page at newtsworld dot com. Newtsworld is

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00:29:47,680 --> 00:29:51,400
Speaker 1: produced by Game of three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive

522
00:29:51,440 --> 00:29:56,280
Speaker 1: producers Guarnsey Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork

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00:29:56,320 --> 00:30:00,280
Speaker 1: for the show was created by Steve Penley Special Things.

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00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:02,959
Speaker 1: Thanks to the team at GINGRIDGH three sixty. If you've

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00:30:03,000 --> 00:30:05,960
Speaker 1: been enjoying Newtsworld. I hope you'll go to Apple Podcast

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00:30:06,360 --> 00:30:09,160
Speaker 1: and both rate us with five stars and give us

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00:30:09,160 --> 00:30:12,080
Speaker 1: a review so others can learn what it's all about.

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00:30:12,760 --> 00:30:15,640
Speaker 1: Right now, listeners of news World can sign up for

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00:30:15,800 --> 00:30:21,200
Speaker 1: my three freeweekly columns at gangwischthree sixty dot com slash newsletter.

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00:30:21,680 --> 00:30:24,080
Speaker 1: I'm new Gingrich. This is newts World