Make our way to where we want be. Good afternoon. Welcome to the American Enterprise institute. Im yuval levin v, and its 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. Hes 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. Tims 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 its 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. Its 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. Tonights 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 forums. 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. Were 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, were going to watch a quick video about tims book and then tim is going to step up and talk about the book for a while. And after that hell 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. Shes 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 shes 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 its also going to show that these kinds of issues are not really in any simple way left, right, the two of them. Well talk for while and then they can draw all of you into to the people in this room. If youre watching us online, then right next to where youre 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, well a Little Something about the book and then well hear from tim and go from there. Americans are having fewer and fewer kids every year. Politicians and commentators assume its just about cost. But they dont 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 its 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 todays 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. Youve 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 couldnt sleep and katie was asleep, the baby had been wheeled into sort of makeshift nursery out in the and there we go. Thats the first day, makeshift nursery in the hallway and. I walk out there and just staring at this Perfect Little face and im thinking, what, what . What you going to look like as a toddler . Are you going be a big sister of how many siblings . Whats your future going to hold . And thats when nurse tapped me on the shoulder and said, sir, youre your is three bassinets over . You are currently staring at somebody elses 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 midtolate is it going to be a baby boom . Obviously it wasnt. 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. Heres 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 than did at the last census, not as a percentage of the population, but the raw number is lower in this census. This is whats normally called the age pyramid. Its an age onion. I think now you can see the one of the skinniest bars is down there at the bottom but two of the skinnier bars are down there at the bottom. So we have a legitimate real baby bust in our lifetime the Us Population is estimated to beginning to begin shrinking. Well should say in the lifetime of some people in this room but yes. And so a real baby bust, i think its the most important story of the next 30 years. And americans are just starting to realize it now. A natural question is why should we care . Why is this bad . Some people are creeped out. They think its like a handmaids tale or a thing that i care about. Other people not having enough babies. So this is a friendly feminist, liberal on twitter, Laura Bassett and just said honest question considering overpopulation is literally killing the planet, why does it matter to you why . Why do you insist on more births . Another liberal journalist i regard highly lidia to pilhas, she looked at the data by a study a study from Brookings University of maryland scholar melissa showing that the economic explanations dont really explain the falling birthrate. And she said, surprise younger women might just want more out of life than just children. So, yes, why do we care . I divided into four reasons. One economic reason the dependent ratio how many retirees compared to workers as grows that reduces economic wellbeing. Two women actually do still want babies. Three the baby boomers reflect, something unwell about our culture, even if you dont care about there being fewer babies. Whats causing it is something should care about. It has other root causes and other excuse me, other effects that are not great. And for you should mine there being fewer babies because babies are actually good. So lets start with that first reason. The economic the dependency ratio, we now have more americans in their sixties than. We have children under age ten. So along with that, the working age population which used to steadily climb has now flatlined. So were not getting more potential workers. What does this mean . One easy example is favorite restaurants used to be open for lunch. As a as a writer, sometimes you get the benefit of getting to work from an irish pub. Right. And. Now the fact that i now have to wait till 4 p. M. To start working from an irish pub is not in itself a problem. A reason to worry about this. But you do other things like that. What about . The fact that the wait time for one one calls in montgomery county, maryland or in d. C. Is getting longer because theyre having trouble stacking, filling all the jobs for dispatchers. Thats a real problem. Economists alan cole put it this way. No, neither savings nor government pension schemes work unless there are enough workers to meet the needs older americans. Now its possible that Artificial Intelligence is going to solve all of these problems, but it will at take a while. And i think that gemini, fixing your leaky pipes might be a little subpar. So thats the the economic story. More important reason, women actually still want kids. This is gallup always asked what, is the ideal number of kids in a family. The number has actually been going up in recent years to 2. 7. Theres no difference, by the way, between how women answer poll and how men answer this poll. And millennials are still way above two. Theres a great economist, demographer lyman stone, who came up with a graph. This is sort of the low ball estimate of what the ideal family is using different surveys to point kids. But then another question how many children do you intend to have the answer to among millennials . Was 1. 9. So right there, you have a little bit of gap between the ideal and the intended. And then the actual number of babies is a little below 1. 7. So are setting our goals lower than our ideals and were not even meeting those lower goals. And so to get into the nuances for a second, thats the baby bust reflects you see two different gaps. One is a reduced desire for family or a desire for a smaller family. And then the other is a failure. Meet what people want want. And so if we want more kids, why arent we having them . So im going to take a break from those four reasons for now and consider this or the broader question why is the birthrate falling so quick story from my book. I got to travel all over the world. I got to go to israel. I got to to places where the birthrate was collapsing. I got to go to where it was fine. Utah has a pretty high birthrate. And so i went i walked around Salt Lake City in a neighborhood that looked like one of the best neighborhoods to raise kids called. The avenues you had trees on the streets. You had nice family houses that were you know, everyone had a little yard. And one of the things i noticed was i didnt run into any families at all. So finally, i run into this couple. Their name is isaac nicole, and theyre walking down the sidewalk. And i ask isaac and nicole, id say, hey, im writing a book and you talk to me. Im writing about family. And nicole instantly blurts out. We dont want kids. And so i say, sure. She said, yes, i why not . I said, we cant afford it. I said, what exactly is like the main affordability. The main affordability problem youre facing . And isaac says everything. Health care. But if im being honest, really just selfish. Then he says, i always sit in a cold. Other people are watching teletubbies and cleaning up vomit. And were going to be drinking margaritas in paris. And then at that moment, woman came down with a stroller, greeted. And nicole is a double stroller. Both the passengers in the double stroller were. So i walked away from this scene with my mind reeling for all sorts reasons. One was this was like a scene out of p. D. James is children of men, too. Why . You go to paris to drink. But those reasons, affordability and selfish. Eddie gave are the standard reasons. I dont think hold up. So for one thing, the baby bus has gotten worse as the economy has often gotten better. Thats the birth rate, that gray bar was a great recession. People have a lot more babies during the recession. They did in 2019 when we had the best economy in years. And that study from Melissa Kearney that lydia pillar cited saying little evidence to the usual economic explanations for places where rent went up. Did nazi were rent went up more did sea greater decrease in birth rate places Student Loan Debt went up did not see a greater decrease. Same with rising childcare costs. They didnt predict greater in the birth rate. Millennials think that they poorer and for the most part theyre not really. So lots of economists this is from jeremy hospital all have looked at the actual wealth of across a generation and found that millennials and gen z are about as wealthy as gen x and probably little more wealthy than the baby boomers. Yet they have a lot fewer babies. So this was jeremy who did a study of how many weeks of work does it take . The median american male to earn as much as it the estimated cost of raising a child. So the estimated cost of raising a child goes up the the Median Income goes up. Guess what the Median Income is going up higher. The estimated cost of raising a child. Since 2010 while the birthrate has been falling that right bar the 12. 2 weeks. That means takes less time to pay for for a male to pay for the raising a kid than it did in 2010. So the other estimate other explanation is that selfishness causes the baby bus. Surely its there. But you cant blame selfishness for falling birthrates any more than boeing could blame gravity for falling airplanes. Selfishness is always there. If i had made a chart for this one, it would start at zero. And then adam and eve, the apple, it goes up to 100 and then its flat. After that. But what does change over time across places is the the ability of society of civilization to offset that selfishness. Thats what the jobless society and civilization and culture is, is to steer people selfinterest towards 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 theyre not just failures to give people, you know, massive houses with wraparound porches. Were falling short. Our culture is falling on helping people achieve something incredibly important, which is family. Its a deficit of flesh, blood. And thats something that we really should care about. Again, another piece of evidence that culture is a problem. Those are those are the countries in the oecd, what their birth rate is. The average is just above 1. 5. Theres one outlier there. Its israel. Israel is not richer or poorer than the average country. Its about in the middle, in the oecd, its education levels a little above average. Its welfare state is in the middle of all of those countries. Its birth rate is about twice average. Israel differs from the other countries, mostly in its culture. We can get more into that. But this again points to the problem. Something unwell in our culture, our is not delivering what should which is the support of families. Parents dont just the appeal the decision the ability to have children isnt just an individual between two people. Its something that requires surrounding institutions neighbors to do a wise woman put it well once when she said it takes a village to raise a child. Yeah. If our village is failing, thats problematic. Even you dont care about the lack of the children. So how is our culture broken . One parenting culture is broken. My video pointed towards that. So ill race that. But parents spend a lot more time now. Mothers spend a more time now than our grandmothers did. Or mother said back in the 5670s. Even though dads doubled their dating time, which is very. Women have increased to work outside the home which is very good. So you would think that mom would get a break compared to her mom or grandma. But no, this is a you survey thats ours solely. So not counting cooking, not counting any family activities. Its driving kids an event. Its its watching them making sure they do their homework. So thats parenting culture gone haywire. Some people think thats good. I keep quoting Melissa Carney at brookings. She said smaller families among higher income people could a quantity quality tradeoff. I hate that phrase not just because it implies that my wife and i chose the quantity half of that because we have six children. But but because i think its false. But isabel sawhill, excellent scholar at brookings, she puts it this way with fewer children support, parents and society can both invest more in each child. And thats supposed to help children. I dont think it does. I think that the rise in childhood anxiety that is a sister problem of the falling birthrates. The journal pediatrics, a lot of you saw they said that a primary of the rise in mental disorders in Young Children is the loss of freedom to play without being supervised by parents. That loss of freedom, high quality, high intensive has bad outcomes not just for parents, but for kids. One instance of that is how youth gets replaced by travel sports. The idea that sport, baseball is good in and of itself, that sports is for building virtues gets replaced by relentless desire for achievement excellence, beating the next. The demand for helicopters here. I quote katie a ltlmore free range and she is. And when i do something that s