Family Unfriendly: Do Americans Hate Children? | Timothy P. Carney cover art

Family Unfriendly: Do Americans Hate Children? | Timothy P. Carney

Family Unfriendly: Do Americans Hate Children? | Timothy P. Carney

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Faith and family are civilizational cornerstones. Remove them and the structure loses its integrity. American culture—and much of the West—has done exactly that as we’ve become increasingly “family unfriendly.”

Timothy P. Carney wrote Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be because he believes America is failing our families and that this failure is the biggest story of the next 30 years. I couldn’t agree more.

A culture that idolizes individuality does so at the cost of community. We have abandoned our obligations to others—especially to children and parents. Parenting is already hard, and yet our culture seems determined to make it harder. Having kids has become just another lifestyle choice—a far cry from historical norms and biological realities.

What changed? According to Carney, the answer is culture itself. Ours has become less friendly to parenting than it used to be—and should be. He joins Dave Hanegraaff on Commitment to Reality to talk about how we got here, what we’ve lost, and what it would take to build a culture that actually loves children.

To learn more about receiving Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be for your partnering gift please click here. https://www.equip.org/product/cri-resource-family-unfriendly-how-our-culture-made-raising-kids-much-harder-than-it-needs-to-be/


Thank you for joining Commitment to Reality, hosted by Dave Hanegraaff. Follow Commitment to Reality wherever you get your podcasts.

Also discussed on this episode:
  • Why parenthood is a cheat code for virtue
  • Helicopter parents vs. free-range parents
  • Why we owe our children freedom
  • The myth of “chosen families”
  • How to win culture wars by building culture
  • The Israeli kids waiting at street corners — and what it says about our cultural failures
  • Why we should have lower expectations for our kids (and higher ambitions)
  • Where the government should never be neutral
  • Why “babies everywhere” would be a better world
(Timestamps below.)
0:00 — Do Americans hate children?
6:00 — Why America becoming less family focused is the biggest story of the next 30 years
12:00 — When kids are around, people are better
14:50 — Reintroducing virtue to our society
21:00 — Why we need to depend more on others
25:30 — Helicopter parents vs free range parents
28:30 — The abandonment of social responsibility
33:00 — We owe our children freedom—otherwise we are harming them
35:30 — The problem with life hacks is they often avoid real life
39:25 — The myth of “chosen families”
46:00 — Have lower expectations for your kids (and high ambitions)
50:05 — Cultural institutions need to step
57:00 — You win culture wars by building culture—Friday Night on the Field
1:08:30 — The reality is that families need cultural support
1:12:10 — Where are we most eager to ignore reality?
1:13:10 — In a world that feels increasingly unreal—what feels most real?
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