Tim Carney: Our culture made raising kids harder than it needs to be

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I've got a great panel. We're going to analyze what we learned today and the mistakes President Biden won't own up to. Joining us now is Tim Carney. He's got a book out now. It's called Family Unfriendly.

I know you can relate to how our culture made raising kids much harder than it needs to be. But you also know, in Tim Carney, you have a guy who's very politically oriented. He's a member of the American Enterprise Institute, writes about, with the Washington Examiner, a lot about politics and the economy. Tim, welcome. Thanks for having me, man.

What prompted this book? Well, my wife and I, we raised six kids. And we know the difficulties.

We know what we need to do it. And then you look out and you see there's an epidemic of anxiety. Kids are so much more anxious. Parents are stressed. And then the birth rates collapse.

You know, we're at record lows on the number of babies, the total fertility rate, all of that stuff. And so you realize that our culture is not doing its job. It's due to the fact that we have a family unfriendly culture in a hundred ways. For starters, parenting culture is out of control.

Little League gives way to some super intensive, expensive travel sports. You got dating and mating culture is crazy. People in their 20s aren't getting married. The apps seem to have broken their brain. Feminism is seeping in. They're causing problems. And ultimately, our families, our culture's values are not family friendly, where we don't value commitment, tradition, family and faith.

And so you see all these problems. People aren't having kids and the kids are being stressed out and realize our culture is not doing its job. You also talk about, with your kid, you let him try out for the travel team. And in baseball, soccer, baseball, basketball, it never stops. You call it a trap. Yeah, the travel team trap is absolutely one of the worst parts of parenting culture today, where you do it because maybe some people are super hyper ambitious parents and they want their kid to get a D1 scholarship. Maybe you just, somebody's like, oh, they got better coaches if you go to travel.

Or maybe you just do it unthinkingly. That's what we did. We let them try out for travel baseball instead of playing in local Little League. They have these winter workouts in the gym. You're not allowed to play basketball too. It's got to be baseball year round. And the first thing the coach says is, baseball isn't fun.

Winning is fun. And this is to 12-year-olds telling them, we're about to do something for the next six months that's not even fun unless you happen to win. And so it's this real problem that instead of just letting kids be kids, we professionalize everything. And it's the same sort of thing with the fear that, you know, you have to watch your kids at every minute, watch all of their, they got to meet all the milestones. You can't let your kids wander the neighborhood without worrying about some neighbor calling child protective services on them.

So these are the cultural problems. Remember when we were kids, it was ride your bike, come home when the street light turns on, or you don't get dinner. Nowadays, parents feel they can't do that anymore. You said, too, living close to each other, having that connection with the extended family used to be important.

It's not really being taken advantage of now, right? Now people think that growing up means getting away from your parents. You have no idea how many colleagues I have in the media who the main thing they're proud of is now they live in New York or D.C. instead of, you know, in Woodburn, Indiana, the backwards hometown where they grew up.

Guess what? Their friends who stayed behind in Woodburn, Indiana, are now married with kids and getting help from grandma and grandpa. And so what I do in family and family is I do reporting where I'm on the ground talking to families. I talk about my own experience raising six kids, but I also crunch all the data and a couple of the numbers that really jumped out at me. If you have help from your own parents in raising kids, you're more likely to have a second kid or third kid. And that in Israel, the only wealthy country with a birth rate that's above the replacement level, they're 70 percent of moms get help raising kids from their own mom and the rate is down like 35 percent in Europe.

So actually being close to family is one of those old fashioned things that really has value. So it's so interesting because you say in Israel they have double the birth rate, right? Yeah, they're double Europe's birth rate, three babies per woman instead of 1.5. And because they live within 20 miles of each other usually.

Yeah. And so but then religion is at the core of that. So it's not only religious people, though, who are having babies. In Israel, the secular Jews are 2.0.

And I walked all around Tel Aviv talking to people and there are people who said, oh, I'm not religious at all. But what's happened is Israel's built up a culture because of the religion, built up a culture where it's OK to bring kids. But you don't have to apologize if you bring your kids on a plane or to a pizza place or on the train. You and everybody's helping out everybody else raising kids. It's normal to let your kids walk to school. And it's just kind of expected that that's what you're going to do when you grow up. You're going to get married and have kids. Not everybody has to do it.

But it's not some, you know, intentional living, totally deliberated choice. You grow up, you get married, you have kids. That's what you do.

And guess what? You're going to get help from your mom. You're going to get help from the community. You're going to get help from the religious institutions. America has that in some subcultures.

I visited Mormon places, my own Catholic schools. They really support families. But that's not the norm in American culture, unfortunately.

Well, there's a couple of things going on right now. I look at, for example, Hungary. They were concerned about their population. They wanted to make the Hungarian culture flourish. So they incentivize.

They almost pay you to have more kids. Is there a role for government in this? It can only do so much. I mean, Hungary, what they're trying to do is trying to change the culture.

And that's what you have to do. But just paying people money, that will drive up the birth rate a little bit. It'll make it so that there are some families that are financially on the edge who desperately want a third kid who say, OK, you know what, we can make it by with a few extra thousand dollars.

So Hungary has stopped its decline, but it really hasn't caused things to go up. Certainly the Biden administration's pro-family ideas are really bad. They just want to subsidize daycare because what they want to do is not help families, but make sure that every mother is in the workplace 40 hours a week. And but most mothers don't want that. Most mothers want to work part time or have their full time job be raising children. But the Biden administration has an ideological approach to this where they say, no, we want you. They call it off the sidelines and in the job market. How horrible is raising your kid, teaching them how to read, take them to the park, that that's the sidelines in their mind. So there is a role for governments, but really it's a very limited role. The main role for government is that cities and towns have to have more sidewalks, have more playgrounds, take down the sign that says you're not allowed to play on the baseball field unless you have a permit, have to make a family friendly infrastructure.

I don't want government getting really involved in families because we know that that will be ideologically infected and not in the favor of my own view of a conservative view of family. From the Fox News podcast network, I'm Janice Dean, Fox News senior meteorologist. Be sure to subscribe to the Janice Dean podcast at Fox News podcast dot com or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And don't forget to spread the sunshine. So you mentioned a couple of things to do, Tim Carney, who wrote this brand book, Family Unfriendly.

You guys can probably relate to this while listening around the country right now. So what are a couple of things that you would like to do or pick a community that is supportive of this? So some things you're looking for. You mentioned, you know, let the kids play pickup ball on the official field. Don't tell everyone you need a permit to go out there, play pickup soccer, pick up baseball, football. So I mean, we could start with sports just because that's that's what I love.

That's sort of my language is baseball. But yeah, so encouraging kids to play pickup stuff, not over scheduling them. I would want schools to say to tell parents, hey, by the way, if your kids already doing a sport and an instrument, maybe cut it off there.

And if your kids doing one sport year round, stop doing that, talk them out of that. Schools, though, where they're most important is they need to encourage, discourage cell phones, smartphones and social media for kids. And some school districts, they basically force kids to have a smartphone.

One place, the bathroom pass is an iPhone app. So they need to help parents say, hey, you know what, if you don't want to give your kids phones, we'll support you on that. Because it's another place where you need community support to make the right decision for parents. And finally, parents need to be empowered to do the primary education of their own children. Schools are our partners in raising kids. Nowadays, so many public schools try to take over and pull kids away from their parents. Schools have to say, no, parents, you're in charge and we're going to be your supporters in this regard.

That would be a huge change. That would be family friendly. All right, Tim. Tim Carney, congratulations on the book. Go pick it up. It's called Family Unfriendly.

How our culture made raising kids much harder than it needs to be. Tim Carney, thank you. Thanks, Brian. Kudlow on Fox Business is now on the go for podcast fans. Get key interviews with the biggest business newsmakers of the day. The Kudlow Podcast will be available on the go after the show every weekday at foxbusinesspodcasts.com or wherever you download your favorite podcasts. Listen to the show at free on Fox News podcast plus on Apple podcast, Amazon music with your prime membership or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.