all right, everybody, we can

make our way to where we want be. good afternoon. welcome to the american enterprise institute. i'm yuval levin v, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to this discussion of timken this wonderful and important new book family how our culture made raising kids much harder than it needs to. tim is a senior fellow here at aei and a columnist at the washington examiner. his work is a lot of us know he focuses on family and on civil society, on religion, american politics. he's published widely beyond his columns, too, in the new york times, the wall street journal, the washington post, the atlantic and elsewhere.

you see on tv a lot. tim's work is unique. he describes broad social trends by beginning from the experience of real people. he thinks from the bottom up, not from the top down. and for that reason, i think he has an understanding of how people thrive and how people fail. what holds together, what divides us. that is just deeply humane and sympathetic, even as it's always rooted in some moral fundamentals. his goal really is to prove your grandmother was right. if you want to be happy, you should get married. you have kids, you should go to church. you should show up for your neighbors. you should people well. but he also wants to explore what it is about modern life that makes it so hard. do what your grandmother told you to do and to see the value of these things. it's very much what this wonderful book is about. it looks at the various confused and complicated ways that our society has made life harder for

parents, sometimes on purpose, but very often not on purpose. and it some ways forward. tonight's conversation is going to take up all of that. this event for us today, part of a serious we call it the edward and helen haynes book forum's. these are public events that are really intended to facilitate some conversation about important books on issues that touch on crucial public questions by aei scholars, but also by others. we're very grateful to the hans sues for their support of these events and of i our format is going to be very simple. after i step down, we're going to watch a quick video about tim's book and then tim is going to step up and talk about the book for a while. and after that he'll be in conversation about with alyssa rosenberg, the wonderful washington post columnist who writes family and culture and a lot of the kinds of questions that tim takes up in his book. she's also just as of the last few days, the community and letters editor is there write letters and community editor at the washington post shows she

gets to hear from all kinds of very interesting people. and she's really i would say her stuff gets forwarded to me more than just about anything else in the washington post, mostly from my wife. and it is always profound and interesting. she takes up these same subjects, but from often a different angle than the one that tim might take and their conversation in a certain way could be a left right conversation. but i think it's also going to show that these kinds of issues are not really in any simple way left, right, the two of them. we'll talk for while and then they can draw all of you into to the people in this room. if you're watching us online, then right next to where you're watching us, you can how to participate in that conversation and to where to send an email or tweet. you must and to take part in in the discussion. and so with that, we'll a little something about the book and then we'll hear from tim and go from there. americans are having fewer and

fewer kids every year. politicians and commentators assume it's just about cost. but they don't tell the whole story we need to take seriously the feeling that parenting has gotten harder. these days. parents need to be countercultural if they want to avoid maximum effort parenting. the feeling that it's not okay anymore to your kids run around is mostly misguided cultural expectation and norms. but also our world is just more hostile to letting kids. for the sanity of today's children and parents, we need to regain mindset. we neighborhoods and reshape our culture in a way that makes easier for parents to let their kids. go free. thank you. you've all. thank you, all of you, for joining me tonight.

this this book has truly been a labor of i want and in that regard i want to specifically thank my wife katie for for coming i was able to write with some knowledge about having six kids because of her. thank you, katie. i remember with crystal clarity so of the moments of my first day as a father, i remember that when we first met the baby and that was sort of a shocking moment. but i also remember that night of we moved to the labor and delivery room all of the emotions. what i think of as the burden of love that was falling on me. i also remember in the middle of the night when i couldn't sleep and katie was asleep, the baby had been wheeled into sort of makeshift nursery out in the and there we go. that's the first day, makeshift nursery in the hallway and.

i walk out there and just staring at this perfect little face and i'm thinking, what, what? what you going to look like as a toddler? are you going be a big sister of how many siblings? what's your future going to hold? and that's when nurse tapped me on the shoulder and said, sir, you're your is three bassinets over? you are currently staring at somebody else's child, but reason that the nursery was in the hallway is because there. we were in an overflow wing, sibley hospital, because 26 saw a uptick in the birth rate. everybody was having babies. everybody famous person you can think of. so brad pitt, angelina jolie had a baby and suri cruise was born there. heidi klum. britney spears, they both had babies around the same time. we did. and then it went up even in 2007, you everybody following brad pitt, angelina jolie and,

me and and started having and we had the number of births of any year in history there was a belief that this could become a real baby boom because the millennials were just hitting their prime childbearing so rising birth rates, the millennials, a larger generation turning into their mid-to-late is it going to be a baby boom? obviously it wasn't. it was a baby bust almost every year for the past 15 years, the number babies born in the united states has fallen. and one of the results from, 4.3 million babies down to 3.6 million. and this year last year, 2023 might end up being lower, even than 2020. the pandemic year. here's important measure of the total fertility rate is a number most people are familiar with. 2.1 babies per woman is replacement level, at which a population will remain steady without immigration. we ticked above that again,

thanks to brad pitt. tom and me. we ticked above that in 27. but have falling almost every year since. and sorry about that y axis not down toward zero, but down towards 1.6, 1.7. so one result of this is we now actually have fewer children in america we now have fewer children in america thann we did not as a percentage of the population but the raw number is lower in this sense. this is what's normally called the age pyramid or an age onion i think now. you can see one of the skinniest bars is down there at the bottom. both are at the bottom. so we have a legitimate real -- in her lifetime the u.s. population is a to begin shrinking in the lifetime of some people on this room but yeah so it's a real baby -- the most important story the next 30 years and americans are just

startingus to realize. a natural question is why should we care? some people are creeped out and they think it's a handmaid's tale caring about other people notes having a babies so this ia friendly interlocutor on twitter. laura said on the question considered overpopulation and why does it matter to you? why do you insist on more births and another liberal journalist i regard highly looked at the dater -- the data by study from brookings and carney showing the economic explanations don't explain the falling birthrate and she said surprise young women might want more out of life than just children so guess why do we care? i divided into four reasons. one economic reasons. the dependence ratio and how many are tires -- retirees there

are compared to workers and is that grows it increases economic well-being and women do still want babies, three the baby bump reflect something unwell about our culture. even if you don't care about there being fewer babies what's causing it is something you should caret. about. it has other bird causes and other effects and four babies are actually good. so let's start with the economics. the dependency ratio, we now have more americans in their 60s and we have children under age 10. so along with that the working population has flat-lined so we are not getting more potential workers. what does this mean? one example is my favorite restaurant used to be open for lunch and as a writer you get the benefit of getting to work from an irish pub right?

the fact that i had to wait untilt 4:00 p.m. to start workig from an irish pub is not itselfl a problem but you do have other things like that but what about the fact that the wait time for 911 calls in montgomery county maryland or d.c. is getting longer because they are having trouble filling the jobs for dispatchers and that's a real problem. economist allen cole put it this way, nos private savings or government pensions means work unless there's enough to meet the needs of older people. it will take a while and i think gemini might be a little subpar so that's the economics point. more important reason women still want kids. gallup asked what is the ideal number of kids in the family and the numbers of me going up in recent years to 2.7. there's no difference by the way

between how women answered this how men answered this poll and millenials are still way above. it's a great economist demographer named lime and stone who came up with a distractor who took the estimate of what the ideal family is and it's two-pointoi three-fifths but thn another question how many children do you intend to have? the answer among millenials was 1.9 so right there you have a bit of a gap between the ideal and the intended and then the actual number of babies is a little below 1.7 so we are settingoa our goals lower than e ideals and we aren't even meeting those lower goals. so to get into than once as per second that's what the baby bust reflects. you see two gaps when is the reduced desire for family or a desire for a smaller family and the other is a failure to meet what people want.

and so if we want more kids why are we having them? i'm going i i to take a break fm those four reasons and consider this. the broader question why is the birthrate falling? a quick story for mymy book. i got to go to israel and places where the birthrate was collapsing and i got to go to wear where was fine. utah has a high birthrate so i walked around salt lake city in a neighborhood that look like one of the best neighborhoods to raise kids called the avenue. they had trees on the street and niceat single-family houses and everyone had a little yard and one of the things i noticed was i didn't see any family so finally i run into this couple named isaac and nicole and i asked them hey i'm writing a book can you talk to make? i'm riding that families and they said we don't want kids. so i said are you sure and she said yes.

why not? >> we can't afford it. >> what's the main affordability problem you are facing an isaac says everything. health care, and if i'm being honest i'm just and then he says i always say to nicole other people are watching teletubbies and cleaning up and we are going to be drinking margaritas in paris. at that moment a woman came down with the stroller greeted isaac in the cola double stroller and both of the passengers in the double stroller were chihuahuaua said. i walked away from the scene with my mind reeling for all sorts of reason could one because it was like a a scene ot of pd james children of -- and why did you go to paris to drink margaritas [laughter] but three of those recent affordability itself is a standard reason. i don't think it holds up.up for one thing the baby bust has gotten worse as the economy has

often gotten better. thatlo was the great recession. people r have a lot more babies during a recession than they did in 2019 when we had the best economy in years and again that study from carney had little evidence to support the ual economic explanation. places where rent went up more did not see a greater decrease in birthrates. places where student loans as one loans as when it did not see greater increase in the same with riding childcare costs. they didn't rising costs in the birthrate. millenials think they are poor for the most part they are not so this is from jeremy have you looked at the actual wealth across the generations and found millenials and gen z are as well off as gen-x and the more wealthy than the baby boomers. yes they had fewerhi babies. he did a study of how many weeks of work does it take the median american male to earn as much as

the estimated cost of raising a child to the estimated cost of raising a child goes up an estimated medium income goes up and the median income is goinghe up costs faster than the cost of raising a child. the 12.2s weeks that means it takes less time to pay a male to pay for raising a kid than it did in 2010. the other explanation is selfishness. as a cause of the baby bust. surely it's there but you can't blame selfishness for falling birthrateses any more than boeig can blame gravity for falling airplanes.es selfishness is always it. if i made a charter to start at zero and adam and eve goes up to 100 it's flat afterer that. what does change over time is the ability of society and

civilization to offset that selfishness. that's what the culture is to steer people self-interest towards the common good. so that to me suggests what we have is a failure of culture. that gap between the attained family and the desired family and the gap between the desired family and the ideal family those are failures of our society and they are not just failures to give people massive houses with wrap around porches. we are falling short, art culture is falling short of helping people achieve something incredibly important which is family. that's something we should really care about. so again another piece of evidence that culture is a problem those bars are the oecd and what their birthrate is. there's one outlier there and it's israel. israel is not richer or poor

than the average country. it's about in the middle in the oecd and a little above average and it's welfare state is about in the middle of all the countries yet as earth rate is twice the average. israel differs from the other countries mostly in culture. we can get more into that but again this points to the problem. something is done well in our culture. our culture is not delivering what it should to support a family. parents don't just come to a decision for the ability of children isn't just the decision between two people is something thatrr requires surrounding institutions ands neighbors. the wise one put it well once it she said it takes a village to raise a child in our village is failing. so how is our culture broken? parents in culture is broken and my video pointed sport that

parents spend n a lot more time now, mother a lot more time now that our grandmothers did orer r mothers did back in the 50s, 60s and 70s even though deaths have doubled their daddy time which is very cool and women have increased ability to work outside the home which is very good say would think mom would get a break compared to her mom for her grandmadm but no it's a time survey that not counting cooking or any familyny activities like driving kids to do that but it's making sure they do their homework so that's parenting culture gone haywire. some people think that's good. i keep quoting melissa carney airport things. she said smaller families among higher income families could reflect the quantity of quality trade-off. i hate that phrase just because my wife and i chose -- since we have six children but because i

think it's false. she's an excellent scholar birthing at brookings and she put with fewer children support families -- that's supposed to help the children now don't think it does. the rising childd of anxiety is the bigger problem of the fallen birthrate in the journal pediatrics a lot of you saw this they said the primary cause of the rise in mental disorders in young children is the loss of the freedom to play without being supervised by parents. that loss of freedom the high-quality high-end tenants parenting has bad outcomes not just for parents but for kids. one is about how youth sports is replaced by travel sports. sports is replaced by a relentlessly desire for achievement and excellence, feeding the next dad.

the demand for helicopters here quote katie i'm a little more free-range than she is and what i do something that she thinks prses the boundaries she repeatedly says i'm not afraid of kidnappers taking her kids i'm afraid child protective services. we lived in silver spring where there were parents who got in trouble for letting their kids walk to the park and on of our old neighborhoods there was an attempt to put in a sidewalk near an elementary school in one of the women who objected to the sidewalk said little kids like that shouldn't be walking to school by themselves anyway. our culture is family unfriendly and specifically this way that they don't want kids to be free. this is one of the chapter titles of my book. you need walk ability in the street. we don't have walkable streets but a lot fewer kids walk to school school school than they used to but partly a lot fewer kids just run around and are

told right back your bike just picture your home before the street lights are on. our culture is broken because their culturebe of dating is totally dysfunctional and it's dysfunctional and i'm going to drum us a little bit because it's dysfunctional way that i think is telling. dating apps kate julian who is a writer told a story by the dating apps of and this one guy was on the co-ed volleyball team you want to ask about this girl he decide it would be or incredibly to ask a girl out because they played volleyball together and somehow that was abusing the rights of the volleyball team? when i talk about this to college kids are young adults i say you're on a co-ed volleyball team to point out that is to meet people of the opposite. it's not to play the [laughter] but there's a deeper problem

here. and it involves the fact that thee dating apps give double double secret consents and that's how it's supposed to be okay. even askingg somebody out could be an affront and a deeper roots come here's a quick excerpt from the book. i don't do relationships explains jesse might bartender and -- he is risen above the southern baptist upbringing with it's traditional mores. i'm a feminist explains. these are all connected for jesse and his romantic life which flows fromm the apps tindr and bumble and he explains him on this. i don't do dating. they are in. lot of women who ae into that because they bit them possesses relationships for that says the opposite of liberated the revolution was fought as the millennial author kristine amber put it on the belief to achieve ideal for the ideal world that t

we desire we just need toli realize freedom more completely. by freedom remain more privacy, more space for less connection and less constraints of today's culture prefers to understand people as freewheeling individuals looking out for number one.li you can see why this liberated unconstrained modern approach to dating and marriage known as the hookup culture since the 1990s would be fun for guys like jesse. hauser working out for everybody else? i don't think it's working outut well. i think there's a sadness you see in allee the stories to dely marriage and the fear that putting yourself at risk in asking somebody out or going on a date but it's also an aversion to connection a commitment and this again points to her cultural values. autonomy and consent that the

dominant values. these aren't the only values that of her day in such a culture you can't just bring kids autonomy kids are capable of consenting to much would also kids become one morees lifestyle choice. stefanie stephanie murray has a great quote it shows up "family unfriendly" many times. kids are personal choice and therefore personal problem any believe. have as many as you want to make sure they don't bother the rest ofn, us but republican senator n johnson put it in his own words when opposing the tax credit for families parents decide they have families and people decide to have families to become parents but the cost is something they need to consider when they make that choice but it neveri' really felt it was society's responsibility to take care of other people's children. i think there's a good debate to have about tax credits for families but it's not society's

job to help people raise their children. this is the sad point that is behind the problem. again kristine amber lights by freedom we need more privacy more space left connection and if this sounds that it's because it is sad. i think it's sad. so this is my least virus and all raced to the miley cyrus section of this talk because i wanted to build the book around miley cyrus but my editors advised against that.e she said we are getting a handed a piecese of planet and she refuses to hand it to her child and that's why she is not going to have a child. is something heard all the time overpopulation for this is an newspaper article fromhen i was a kid near times no problem the growth of the reproductive rate of the human species. virtually all human suffering can be attributed to the

crushing eect of the population that's too numerous. i like the illustration on this becauswere all breeding like rabbits but those are bunny rabbit that they were downo-rth which is a large head of cabbage. the point of the op-ed was not just the babies were bad but telling schoolchildren that babiesal are bad and the rider s a principal at an elementary school a public elementary school. the john pettibone school in new milford, connecticut. they closed down 2014 due to low and falling enrollment. [laughter] by that overpopulation ideas running rampant. pessimism about the future is increasing. a massive increase in eight years as herof kind of "the new york times" had a good explanation. he said that fear that our planet is on fire is just a cover story. especially in a rich western world. i take it a step further.

i think the climate guilt he's talking about is a deeper sadness. again the earth can handle it my reciter says. the earth can handle us. the earth can't handle humans. it's a deeply sad idea. a civilizational sadness is causing the baby bump and that a woman named amanda who was on my tribute came one night and when i said i had had six kitschy sunoco that sounds. i asked her she has a good job at she's married and she doesn't have kids. i asked g her opinion of the hun racene and she said in general o i think people are good? no i think we are the cancer of the earth. i think that's telling. that mindset not necessarily expressed is behind this civilizational sadness that's causing anxiety and a lack of babies. pope francis has said the opposite and on the same premise but he said birthrates reveal

how much happiness as present in a society so what we are seeing now is pressing in our society and the baby boom was not a make up for the babies that were born during the war this was an unprecedented generational totally and predicted increase in the number of babies. why? think aboutt it. ouran men got off the boat and landed on the dock is the women were waiting there and that kept the economy going for four years so they meet on the pier in the smooch they go back get married in the chapel and they have a bunch ofe kids. because theyre knew we were good because never before has it been so clear to americans we are good. the flipside -- thank you. the flipside of that is what happened in the axis countries. it was 10 years ago i noticed

the japan germany and italy were three of the lowest birthrates in the country. they couldn't say it. my final argument though is in fact we are good and babies are good but humans in general that green park their that is the number of humans who are living abovee the poverty level in the red is below so you see the percentage of humans living below the poverty level so who is pulling people out of poverty? maybe it's climate change maybe it's google gemini pulling us out poverty but more likely it's humans. some humans do that but the good that's done by humans outweighs the bad. a lot of my friends are common as and they say it's an economic concern. the expected value of the human is positive. i want to end with a couple more

ways to try to argue that humans are good. one study looked at found that people get more money to charities when children are around like throwing money in the bucket and a more important one is this the first two-thirds of family unfriendly are arguing how to be moreen family-friendly bu' anyone who's done it knows that raising children is the hardest thing you'll ever do but it's the easiest if your goal to where you're trying to get his value. if you want to be a man or woman of virtue i think parenting is the easiest of the road. it's not the only road obviously. the catholics have many great sayings who never had kids but for those of us who are not at the level of the average well-known saint of the catholic church we might need some help. princeton for bible says feed the hungry clothe the. i wake up inin the morning and there hungry people right there in my house. [laughter] there waiting for me.

such is the end with one excerpt from the end of the book it's about mrs. anastacia preschool teacher who taught five of her kids and she helped up in the parish for 20 years. she sent an e-mail to refund that too late she wouldn't be there for the final day so for her final day of the second to last day of school that's where my excerpt begins. we owed mrs. anastacia the greatest of all last day of school presence but what the early start to summer vacation we didn't have time to get anything so the next morning on last day at proctor the only thing i could, my kids. mrs. anastacia opened the doors 7:35 today give to the east, sean, meg, brandon and charlie. she cried and hugged my crew all of whom she had taught. it's common to my parent for believing a child is gift to the world so very literally children

very literally children are gift to us.er myus children or give to others not because my children are special but because my children are children but humans are good. that truth is obscure at times by her own self-absorption and brothers imperfections but children are innocent reflects mankind. if you want to -- charles dickens the protagonist is a kind and generous tile. an oldld man rented to know when she's lost in need of help. she gives him herp, trust and friendship and feels instantly cheered and guilt inspired by the man in a way that almost any reader would understand. i love these little paper the narrator says and it's not a slight thing was they who are so fresh from love us. if i i have helped by your confidence i still get that

feeling. even after 17 years in again and again i fail to deserve it. so it's easy to believe these days that wet are good but the love of a little one reminds us that we are good and you are good. could you the pattern could itee better? yes but nothing will inspire you to be better more than taking on your back that burden of love. thank you very much. [applause] >> i do not know how many of you in this room have been lucky enough to get an early glimpse at tim's book which i think i was one of the first people to read it in which i just adored. i only have two kids to your but it was and i know this isn't asking a question but it is a book that if you are a parent will make you want to be a

better parent and if you think about family policies it will make you want to do more for families. it's a beautiful andnd important book so i hope everyone here goes out and buys it. i don't want you to have that pleasure delayed. it's just terrific. to start off i want to ask a personal question because this is a book about what you learned in the process. you write about politics and you live in a public world. how the parenting change your political views? >> the main way was teaching me, showing me how complicated everything was. you can imagine i've been a libertarian like a lot of my friendsn in high school and they came out as a conservative and i thought a lot of things are very simple and then you have kids and i think i quote mai tais and

saying everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. similarly everyone can have a simple ideology until we are dealing with children. that's the main way. i don't know and i don't want to say it made me t more liberal maybe more bleeding heart that made me more understanding of people who are struggling. mostly it made me realize things are muck more complicated. >> it's interesting because i feel i've had that same experience as well. ramos 20w, years i grew up, my m worked for villa absented and she had a hilarious --

some of your presentation may be a little gloomy but i think both of us see potential good news in the political sphere if not in the larger culture. i think one of the things that we have seen is people have come to realize how was illustrated by the shutdown by the pandemic i think we have seen a lot more unity around the idea that our political system needs to be more for american families. i'm curious what you think if anything changed on the right to open up a conversation about the child tax credit and the conversation on that because as a liberal part of what i see some movement on the right towards policies that have been parties on the left for a long time. i'm curious what if anything

changed that conversation. >> there a ton of things. the one moment that jumped outnt at me is when he was running for president in 2012 and in response to their line a rising tide lifts all boats which is true he said not the boats that have -- and that was the moment of railings we have an obligation to stimulate the economy as much is possibly free markets etc. but also some people need extra connotations but he was talking about people who were suffering long-term unemployment and disability and in a way parents suffered disabilities. if you've ever carried your child on a chess where you're pushing a shopping cart around or opening a door, the idea that we need to give everybody equal

opportunity and old conservative idea but then the idea that some people need to be accommodated that's true anymore we look at reality the more it's true. i can talk about donald trump conservatism but the philosophical point of view. >> do you see the left evolving on childhood policies? >> one interesting thing if you look at canada they are trying to a national childcare program and the government there is very clear that the point of national childcare is more women in the workforce, more mothers working 40 hours a week. i don't think that's a worthwhile goal to dedicate a

lot too but in the u.s. when i talk to the biden people they said yes there's a debate between whether our goal should be more women in the workforce for supporting families. that i think is a pack away from 1990s era feminism and embrace of the idea that okay we should beul supporting women wear for e r. not trying to push this idea of motherhood it is a patriarchal thing so you hear those ideas over time sort of anti-marriage antistate home mom. that's more thee magazines. when i look at democrats who are involved in government in the u.s. especially compared to canada they seem to be more interested inwo helping women regardless of what path they choose. >> it's interesting because i think some of this cultural coming together around the idea that families ought to be altuve make a range of different choices, that people have different preferences and that's

fine makes policy somewhat more complicated. it's one thing if they open a bunchly of daycare centers but it's more politically complicated to say the easiest way to accommodate all these different preferences on childcare would be to get very very would be the gavrie prevented $10,000 a child that they could use either to payay r care or a nanny or as a salary as a stay-at-home parent. >> building a granny flat for your mom or whatever. one of the things i get into in "family unfriendly" is that debate if you are spending money to help get how effective is and how should you do in that subsidizing childcare directly is a way to do it. that money is just better giving it to parents. childcare subsidies are basically work subsidies and there's lots of data fromom eure were they subsidizede child

childcare and they get an uptick in the birthrate had dropped too the floor and polls show them becoming, start valuing work more thanov family. also the other conclusion i came to, when anna i went to this i wanted to have a big bowl conclusion where, for a massive child tax credit or no child tax credit instead i came up with a slight increase in the child tax credits if you do it too much it has negative side effects of discouraging marriage and if you don't have it where it'sn' now t i fear you are basically families.ting against >> oneea area consensus and it should be something the tv is federal policy. >> there are lots of those. >> a lot of welfare programs as well. it's interesting because i think given the economy requires

accepting that you make not just different choices but choices that some people find objectionable orhe incomprehensible and using a recent pilot where no strings attached sums of money are given to parents in d.c. and that they wrote about how they it and in some cases they it on big things in some cases it was a chance to take a family vacation that they would never have otherwise and i just think one area that's interesting to try to square a circle on her for conservative and liberals working together is how do we create more tolerance for other people's choices and sometimes that's going to mean somebody wants to stay home and someone that d will want to it on a trip to disney world and how do you

foster that trust and that respect for other people's family choices which they think has not always been forthcoming. >> and people think if you're getting tax dollars make sure you are spending the dollars to harm yourself and you are spending -- not spending the tax dollars are on 30 packs of miller high life or gambling or drugs. the voice amateur we should give you that money in the maternal wisdom comes in when the money comes in which is another reason to not make it too large. i like to think that from a conservative perspective if your choices are give people the money and hope they spend it well or increase government and bureaucracy and get more involved in everybody's life and ifif i'm giving -- given those o choices i will give them money and hope they spend it well. >> i also want to ask about

their risk in this presentation in this book. i think one clear driver of a more family-friendly policy on the right has been the thought that we need more babies and for more people to have more kids what happens if we do alll these things in the birthrate decreases? do we need to make a case that we should do things that make life easier for parents because they are inherently good and we should do things to support children. >> we are in the public policy thinkic tank here so my first reaction was to say if we can reduce childhood anxiety in a measurable way that's also good and you phrased it better. if you make parents think it's happier that's good so it's one of the tricky things i'm talking about about culture in general. we always want to have these measurable outcomes but what

actually matters in the end is not always measurable. sometimes when you say explaining my culture is rolled her eyes. that's why i'm skeptical of a lot of things that involve spending money. i don't thinkyo you can raise te birthrate without changing the culture specifically change in the culture to make people who are parents or would-be parents feel more supported. that's not an easy thing to do but you can't snap your fingers and become israel obviously. so that's why for the book i went out to your topic you can't snap your fingers and become a mormon community and you can't and become thers communities of our wife -- my wife and our kids raise their families in very catholic irish and some kids don't have shoes on and you're not surprised and you can't just do that directly through policies.

but you can ask which policies can change and move and nudge the culture in the right direction. >> i think culture overlaps with we see a branding here. there's a certain reaction on the left because i think people react perhaps rightly against the idea of follow xi jinping and have a lot of babies for the glory of the united states. but how do we rebrand the parenting? this is something you and i talked about that i've thought about a lot. >> hire mckenzie to come up with a new name. t >> parenting wasn't reallyal a verb the few years ago and maybe you were the one that introduced me to that but it's kind of what you did. that's part of the problem is

that for conservative i see the idea that now can we get the name. he finished school and you get a job you marry a girl and you have kids and if you don't want to do that it still find that that's the normal course of events. i think there's a lot of value in not being the normal course of events and the stephanie mari quote i used you wanted to become an individual choice. part of thevi intentional living and now is the right time for me to have a kid among all the other choices that could be opened to me this is the one i choose that became a more pressure to do it right and b your problem is it was put. so i don't know if i could rebrand it as much as just sort of establish hey hey anybody who doesn't feel they are called don't have k kids. i'm a cap economic favor priest don't have kids but if you are,

if we have it as the norm than yeah most people try to get married and you get married and have kids in if it becomes more normal becomes less of a big deal then we can kind of rebrand it as sort of an easier more fun thing to do. parent thing in my experiences trading out happy hour for backyard barbecues with a lot more friends around. >> i mean to critique my own side of the aisle i think there hasen been a real trend in somef the conversations in the cephas andn publishing recently of reckoning with motherhood by talking about how it is. i read books like mom rage or good mom, bad choices and to be honest i don't recognize my own experience in them because having children i can spend the

entire month in l.a. and chicago and a television association film festival which is the high west end of suburban communities but i can't do that in choosing the constraint is one of the most liberating things ever did because all of a sudden i had a rubric where new is important and i knew what the priority was. and you know i wonder if that pendulum needs to be yanked back and if there needs to be more of a public conversation about the joys of parenting and the joys of having a kid. i sort of chose do we need to bring that to a family sitcom? >> one of the problems is that socialal media replace tv and on

social media is the only two kinds of mom content i have seen are the perfect mom flew answers who what i noticed and put in the book was they always have an affect of these. it always looks like were just running around and we snapped this family photo. so the 3-year-old roy would be wearing his socks outdoors in they all live and farm houses which means they have exposed joyce and raptors and that just makes it look even that much more natural. natural light so that's intimidating. it makes a social comparison that mothers or would-be mothers have that i can't pull that off. i'm not a ballerina who can make my own cereal from scratch or whatever. but the other half of social media is parenting is just on social media.

it makes other parents feel seen that social media works differently than a magazine or tv show. the algorithm pounds more and more. >> and is not contextual. you don't have time to absorb and consider or even reject information. >> if we could somehow get a love -- a lot of mom influencers who are like hey i had this one good moment today today and heard us and this made all the rest of it worth it or it's going to say i made this. this is what i wanted it to look like and this is what it looked like. guess what, for kids ate it. those are the sorts of mom influencers we need. >> i was heartened by the rise of the congressional dad caucus and is mostly democrats but jimmy gomez who founded -- found

after spending most of kevin mccarthy's adventurous right to speakership. crenshaw was having his first kid it was like this is great. it's hard but it's fun and i think more those images of fatheringea. >> we should field some questions but i'll make one more data point. some of the best news i came across was the increased amount ofds time doing parenting parenting that dads have done over the last few generations compared to the past and there was a hearing on capitol hill the other day where one woman said how can we involve men and equitable way in caregiving and i thought by not talking about it that way. equitable caregiving is not

attractive. how can we tell dads they should be dads and it's awesome to be dads. one of the things i was doing the other week posting on twitter means defeating all of my sons in basketball. some -- one of my sons is arguably taller than i am and can certainly jump higher than i can in the other one is even morets awesome because he says t ends when he shoots i just swapped the heck out of the ball. being a dad is totally awesome and the study shows you should be entertained or dads or moms that's not going to be appealing. i don't think katie likes to destroy well she doesn't get as much pleasure at destroying her children as i do. >> i feel that some of the big discoveries for my husband. you get to play with construction toys and you get to play with train sets again and

it's awesome. i could talk to youwo forever. i'm sure many of you have questions so leah? >> i also have the pleasure of reading the book already in his excellent. one question i'd like to ask is a topic that hasn't come up which is about family-friendly policies in the workplace because you make a number of suggestions that employers subsidize few rentals for robotic bassinets the rock the baby in a kind of way. i don't want computers watching my kids. anyway it was when someone gets a raise for having a kid. and more flexible or -- flex

work and most of these are his illegal as far as i know some carries d the think the family-friendly economy and requires us to overcome antidiscrimination laws? >> i'm not a lawyer but i know there are some lawyers in the room so giving a guy a raise because he is a kid or giving a woman a raise because she is a kid theoretically could be illegal and on the other hand the way the economy works and what i say in the book is imagine you are a high school english teacher at a high school you love and part of what you get compensated for you get paid to read books and talk about them. that's not as valuable once you have kid number three and you say yes honey i know stella could use a pair of sneakers but can i tell you that about the conversation we had aboutrn hawthorne text you need to get paid so that school might pay thatat guy more than would thate illegal? i don't know that i certainly

think the idea, so guiding somebody who wants to be a stay at home parent or a stay at home, if you have a reporter that the beat reporter to tell him or her hey become an editor and will start working with you now and by the time you leaving come back from maternity leave you'll be an outside contributor and imagine schools to imagine schools teaching people and this will be tricky because it would mostly be women and girls who think they want to be stay-at-homees moms but some lis of work allow for this whether the stay at home job or something like nursing which you can dial down to zero snap your fingers and have as many hours as you want and i'll back down. there are some lines of work that are more family-friendly. i don't see anybody guiding young people towards that. all of these things are taught in a culture in a symmetrical

equality culture. and tying family benefits for a liveve debate and a household wo has written a lot about childcare is pushing back against the idea that concerned we will follow the sameam path. but childcare benefits that we follow with health insurance. they are interesting risk there. we also see family-friendly policies like encouraging things that are fertility delay policies. i think not offering on-site childcare question whether that's family policy or whether

that is we, would really like u to wait until you take maternity leave. >> in the back. >> noting a single adults released adults who have children tend to perceive the world in a very different way do you think that maybe the rise and radical ideologies and the mental health crisis among younger adults is due to the relative decline in childrearing and a lack of perspective that comes with a? >> i think that's a great point it's probably true if only the intermediary of alienation from comedy which is to say when you become a parent you desperately need to go along to something more than you did when you were a free agent so parents are more

likely to go to church and parents are more likely to show up at story hour at the library more likely to be connected and i think that connection and belonging are key inoculations against extremism and your ability to sort of hold on to as i was saying early radical simplistic ideas that really gets to the impetus for getting married. and you raise a good question not everyone is called to have children not everyone is able to have children and one thing i think we see culturally that's unfortunate is the polarization of childless by choice people and families with children and a classical example how dare you bring your baby on the airplane but there's an interesting question to be asked which is how do we knit together people who don't choose to have children of people who can't have children and people who do

have families. i have childhood friend to play an incredibly important role in our kids lives. we live in between two divorced women in the 50s who are incredible figures in our children's lives. how do we build a community where everyone whether their parents are notor valued childr, value family and get meaning out of being in the community together as well the family-friendly policies. that's a historical precedent which is the uncle i never got married the aunt who never got married that they are part of the kid's life is certainly a great h tradition with recent history going back so it's not a radical idea to say that in fact i had the margaret mead "back in their that said depriving people of the ability of the opportunity to interact with

kids is really inn fact. >> i think children benefit from having adults in their lives to see them as people who aren't related by blood or obligated to them. it's interesting. >> he can be indulging and who can be curious about them can be a sounding board for them about their parents. i think that's really important. >> my kids are very shocked when their cousins or friends are like your parents are cool. my kids don't get that experience.n we have time for one more question. >> in the back. >> a great discussion and i can't wait to read the book. it's good to hear your voice because i think you're one of the most outspoken social conservative as in the case for reform at a time when the issue

is more in the cultural war space so you talk about how you see perform as part of this. >> i'm glad you asked that because when i say that costs can explain the 15 year baby bust the cost of housing is traditionally really explain down takes in birthrates and what's happened the last three years across the u.s. has been a deterrent. some people think the way to make it affordable is to subsidize demand to drive up the cost. my argument would be to increase the supply as much as possible. the tricky thing is that the nimby pause i followed them on twitter naras posting massive

apartment towersbe that are als. your to subscribe to an brutalismho aesthetic who beliee there should be more housing for the family-friendly would be a different thing from a conservative like i don't want any more houses in my town because you know the wrong kind of people move in or too many and it will clog up the parking lot etc. but so that's tricky but again i'm talking about discrimination here and saying local government should say stand up for more families and they are doing the opposite but i quote in my book a local leader in l.a. saying families are costing businesses are an asset but if you bring in family utep you have to build more schools and more playground so that's my prodevelopment urbanism would be explicitly be family-friendly.

>> since we are allowed to stay here all night thank you for your beautiful book and think you all of you for joining us. [applause]