A review of Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be, by Timothy P. Carney

One of the saddest measures of the state of the family in America is the gap between the number of children people would like to have and the number of children they end up having. A Gallup survey last fall showed Americans see 2.7 as the ideal number of children. But in the end they’re only having 1.7. A surprising number of couples end up with fewer children than they want. Most telling is the fact that only 2% said having no children was ideal, while more than seven times that ended up not having children at all.

Timothy P. Carney, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, believes this gap is driven by a “family-unfriendly culture that makes parenting harder than it should be.” The result of this culture is less marriage, more childless adults, and smaller families. 

In a new book, Carney explores a range of negative cultural influences from “maximum-effort helicopter parenting” and the “Travel Team Trap,” to cities and neighborhoods that aren’t walkable. He shows how smartphones and social media have “changed everything about human relations,” and how a sexually-liberated society has actually led to a sexual recession. He also describes two cultural trends–a “religion of workism” and “an individualistic, self-determined, autonomy-centered religion of independence”–that are incompatible with family making. 

Carney’s assessment of these and other problems delivers all you might expect from a book called Family Unfriendly. The negative title echoes similar books, including Baby Bust, Empty Cradle, and What to Expect When No One is Expecting. Like those books, Carney thoughtfully presents the problem and even goes further in considering the growing anxiety, fear, and sadness of a family unfriendly culture. But his negative title doesn’t convey the depth of his hopeful vision for renewal.

Even as he surveys the cultural influences that he says are “hostile to raising kids,” he also takes readers to “family-friendly oases.” There, parents, children, and communities flourish within cultures that lighten the burdens and increase the joys of parenthood. Carney’s community is one of those oases. Throughout the book he threads his experience of being shaped by the Catholic community around him, his wife and their six children. In that community, the shared ideas like “the church’s teaching that love, sex, marriage, and family formation are inseparable” mix with the earthiness and even messiness of fish fries, free-ranging children, and short-notice drop-ins that make up a family-friendly culture.

“As our culture becomes more alienated,” writes Carney, “we begin to think only of the marketplace and the government” to address our needs. While Carney explores potentially helpful economic and policy changes, he makes clear that “no economic reality will restore our desire to build families or the belief that it’s doable,” and “no policy suite will reverse our Baby Bust.” 

He points readers to a better way “that involves mothers-in-law, pot-lucks, sidewalks, neighborhoods, pickup basketball, and low-stakes tee-ball.” At the individual level, he encourages “reinvigorating the sentiments of neighborliness and duty to others, and family over career.” He also calls churches, local schools, employers, nonprofits, Little Leagues, and community centers to take the lead in making America more family friendly. 

What emerges in Carney’s assessment of the various attempted responses to dropping birth rates, is the significance of faith. Religiosity, says Carney, is the single most important predictor of birth rates worldwide. “The causality goes both ways: being religious makes adults more likely to have kids and likely to have more kids; having kids, in turn, makes adults more serious about religion.”

Carney believes we may need a religious Great Awakening to make our culture more family friendly. “Churches, synagogues, and mosques,” he says, “along with religious schools, in particular, should ask what they can do to make it easier and more attractive to have babies.

Family Unfriendly gives direction and inspiration to grow a more family-friendly culture. That culture, especially where it’s grounded in faith in the Creator, can help young adults see children with new and hopeful eyes. As a result, they may be more likely to experience their ideal family size, but also to experience an unexpected gap in the other direction as they grow families beyond what they expected or imagined.

Bonus for parents of adult children: In an email exchange, I asked Timothy Carney what advice he would give to parents for how they can best support and encourage their adult children toward starting their families (in addition to buying his book). I loved his simple and encouraging response:

“The best thing parents can do is communicate to their children how valuable and meaningful child-rearing was to them--and that they hope their own children get the same blessing. Then offer to help babysit.”