{"id":2232337,"date":"2024-04-29T03:35:02","date_gmt":"2024-04-29T07:35:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/can-we-fix-a-culture-hostile-to-raising-children\/"},"modified":"2024-04-29T03:43:29","modified_gmt":"2024-04-29T07:43:29","slug":"can-we-fix-a-culture-hostile-to-raising-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/can-we-fix-a-culture-hostile-to-raising-children\/","title":{"rendered":"Can We Change a Culture Unsupportive of Parenting?"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">16<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fcan-we-fix-a-culture-hostile-to-raising-children%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2232337&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The text discusses the celebration of the DINK lifestyle on TikTok, the decline\u200c in birth rates,\u200b and the challenges\u2064 faced in encouraging\u2064 larger families. It also\u200d explores \u200dsolutions proposed by \u2063experts to\u2064 reverse the trend, \u2064emphasizing the need for \u200dcultural\u2064 shifts and\u2062 various societal support structures to address the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/amid-concerns-about-declining-birth-rates-china-announces-plan-to-reduce-abortions\/\" title=\"Amid Concerns About Declining Birth Rates, China Announces Plan To Reduce Abortions\">declining birth rates<\/a>. The text delves into\u200b the glorification of\u200c the DINK lifestyle on TikTok, the downward trend\u200c in birth rates,\u200c and the obstacles in promoting larger\u2064 families. It examines expert-proposed solutions to combat this decline, underlining the necessity of\u2062 cultural changes\u2064 and societal support mechanisms to tackle the issue \u200cof diminishing birth rates.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<p><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><\/p>\n<div class=\"article-content\">\n<p>Back in December, a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vice.com\/en\/article\/v7bjb4\/dinks-couples-sign-hyper-consumerist-symbol\">viral video series on TikTok<\/a> celebrated the DINK (dual-income, no kids) lifestyle, glorying in their ability to take European vacations, go crazy with bulk purchases at Costco, and splurge on their pets. At first, I thought it was a joke, though as Federalist Executive Editor Joy Pullmann <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2023\/12\/06\/those-dink-videos-are-making-me-so-glad-we-have-six-kids\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">helped me understand<\/a>, these unabashedly materialist young American couples were quite serious. They really believed the freedoms they enjoyed <em>sans <\/em>children were a superior form of life to the supposed drudgery that defines the lives of us hapless parents.<\/p>\n<p>Author and American Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Timothy P. Carney, a happy father of six, does not view children as an obstacle to human happiness, but rather the means of achieving it, both for individuals and society at large. Yet, as he argues quite persuasively in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.harpercollins.com\/products\/family-unfriendly-timothy-p-carney\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be<\/em><\/a>, much of the reason for our nation\u2019s declining birth rates has to do with various trends that discourage couples from having some (or more) children. And though Carney\u2019s arguments are data-driven and quite convincing, I couldn\u2019t help thinking about the popularity of the DINK lifestyle.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-2-long d-flex justify-content-center\" style=\"margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center; \" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-845663219\">\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-1379703300879-0\" class=\"mb-30\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-ecb5a45aeee1f3cecc2746d068308dc1 fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-2\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-ecb5a45aeee1f3cecc2746d068308dc1\"><\/div>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Our Baby Bust Is a Perplexing Puzzle<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Carney does an excellent job of exposing the confounding contradictions of America\u2019s relationship to our progeny. He notes that Americans are having fewer children (below 1.7 per couple) than we actually believe to be the ideal (2.7). There\u2019s also this paradox: When compared to the fathers of the 1970s, the dads of today are far more involved in their children\u2019s lives \u2014 yet, amazingly, mothers\u2019 weekly parenting loads since that time <em>have increased by about 50 percent<\/em>. Carney also blows a hole in the claim that \u201ckids are too expensive\u201d by observing that wealthy Americans are just as likely as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/virginia-parents-torpedo-democrats-crt-and-transgender-policies\/\" title=\"Virginia Parents Torpedo Democrats' CRT and Transgender Policies\">middle-class parents<\/a> to have few children.<\/p>\n<p>The post-2007 \u201cbaby bust\u201d is thus, in Carney\u2019s estimation, not one driven primarily by financial factors, but cultural ones. \u201cOur culture is increasingly hostile to family formation,\u201d he writes. And this cultural antagonism manifests itself in many forms. Travel sports, which require massive parental commitments, is one such phenomenon that discourages more children (its hyper-specialization is also causing higher numbers of injuries for youth athletes). Overlapping with this is \u201ccar hell,\u201d what Carney calls those soul-crushing hours parents spend driving their children from one activity to another. Social media in turn presents parenting as terrible and difficult (a la those aforementioned DINK videos). The design of our communities, meanwhile, makes it difficult for children to independently travel to school or other activities.<\/p>\n<p>The prevalence of helicopter parenting, which exhausts parents, also discourages larger families. As authors Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt argue in <em>The Coddling of the American Mind<\/em>, protective parents are so terrified of screwing up their kids that they are refusing them the freedom to figure out life for themselves. Yet as ample data proves, many fears, such as abductions or sickness \u2014 including the national overreaction to Covid \u2014 are incredibly disproportionate to the actual threat. Nor can we overlook the role of screens, distracting younger generations from family life, while directly undermining human sexuality vis-a-vis pornography addiction. Dating apps, alternatively, engender an unattainable perfectionism.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Reversing the Baby Bust<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Much to Carney\u2019s credit, <em>Family Unfriendly<\/em> does not lack recommended solutions to our paucity of progeny. Instead of communities unnavigable for children, he encourages the idea of the \u201cfifteen-minute city,\u201d in which schools, playgrounds, and corner stores are a fifteen-minute walk from home. He urges the federal government to sell off a small portion of its landholdings so developers can build homes to solve the housing crisis. He calls on cities and counties to repeal the outlaw of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thespruce.com\/what-is-a-granny-flat-1695933\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">granny flats<\/a> in order for owners of single-family lots to make rental revenue.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-1feae5b7cbd6b9a228b422ff4de6e518 fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-6\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-1feae5b7cbd6b9a228b422ff4de6e518\"><\/div>\n<p>Employers need to pitch in, too, by ensuring health insurance premiums don\u2019t go up for larger families, allowing employees to take their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/white-house-releases-list-of-president-trumps-accomplishments-and-it-is-historic\/\" title=\"White House Releases List of President Trump\u2019s Accomplishments \u2013  And It Is Historic!\">paid parental leave<\/a> at any point during the child\u2019s first 18 years. They could also offer bonuses to every employee who is expecting or adopting, or, more controversially, purposefully pay breadwinner parents more money.<\/p>\n<p>Government can support families by rewarding parents with higher Social Security benefits and reforming the tax code to benefit married, child-rearing adults by abolishing married penalties in the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit. We can learn a lesson from France, which has a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-decline-of-the-american-family-shown-in-4-statistics\/\" title=\"The Decline Of The American Family Shown In 4 Statistics\">higher birth rate<\/a> than many other European countries, in large part because it subsidizes mothers, through birth bonuses and monthly allowances, which studies have shown is more effective than subsidizing daycare. Deregulation of labor laws and occupation licensing laws would also help stay-at-home parents generate supplemental income for their families.<\/p>\n<p>Even religious institutions have a part to play. Carney argues that churches and synagogues can do more to encourage families to have kids through material aid, such as by offering free \u201cbaby boxes.\u201d Given that it\u2019s much more likely for churches to win new members through families than through evangelism efforts, their increased involvement seems an obvious win.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>The Baby Bust Problem Is Much Deeper<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Yet even the most aggressive campaigns to encourage more children have had limited positive results, as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aei.org\/articles\/hungarys-demographic-failure\/\">demographer Lyman Stone has persuasively shown<\/a>. Carney understands this, and that overcoming our national aversion to children would require a dramatic cultural shift. This is so, even if everyone knows that fewer babies translates into fewer workers, which translates into fewer people to pay for all those expensive entitlements (e.g. Social Security, Medicare, etc.), which translates into \u201can economy with higher prices, more scarcity, longer wait times, and ultimately lower quality of life.\u201d A childless future, even our professional class knows, is an economically fraught one.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-8b539bd480895b2157cbef355c0a68b1 fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-10\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-8b539bd480895b2157cbef355c0a68b1\"><\/div>\n<p>Unfortunately, among young professionals, children are seen as an obstacle to autonomy and freedom. The normalization of contraception has enabled us to separate sex from children, minimized differences between men and women, and inoculated us from uncertainty. Fears of environmental catastrophe have led many to opine (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/life-style\/miley-cyrus-children-liam-hemsworth-planet-earth-angry-environment-a9003546.html\">however absurdly<\/a>) that it is unjust to bring children into such a dangerous world. And a growing guilt over America, evidenced in claims that our country since its origins has been systemically racist, misogynist, and colonialist, enervates many Americans\u2019 desire to pass on their genes. With such self-hatred over our national history and identity, what\u2019s there to pass on?<\/p>\n<p>Because of this, we have what Carney calls a \u201ccivilizational sadness,\u201d compounded by a calamitous exodus of young Americans from religious institutions that for previous generations had given citizens a sense of purpose, comfort, and community. What has filled that void is a therapeutic, narcissistic, \u201ccreate your own adventure\u201d lifestyle of autonomy, self-exploration, and aversion to pain. And yet, curiously, that same cohort is lonelier and more miserable than any previous generation.<\/p>\n<p>Thus we return to the DINKS. For even the most extensive, evidence-based solutions to our childless crisis ultimately collide with a demographic, growing in number, who reject parenthood not because it is too expensive, nor because their communities are not sufficiently family-friendly, nor because they require more pro-natal benefits, but because they <em>have no interest in kids<\/em>. It doesn\u2019t matter that research demonstrates that married adults with children are happier than the childless. It doesn\u2019t matter that children, in all the sacrifices and suffering they require, will unquestionably make us better people.<\/p>\n<p>What matters, in the end, is that children used to be not only a given for the vast majority of people but a necessity for those whose lives were defined by an agricultural lifestyle always in need of more hands. Advances in chemical research and effective marketing of a little pill in the 1960s changed that forever. Because of the ubiquity of easily accessible, reasonably affordable contraception, no one needs to worry about having a family, be it large or small. We may give reasons that seem at least reasonably defensible (e.g. financial insecurity) or patently risible (e.g. the \u201cglamorous DINK lifestyle\u201d). Either way, this represents the most serious challenge for Carney and all those who love and celebrate big families.<\/p>\n<p>One would think it would be easy to persuade young adults to abandon \u201cCostco pizza night\u201d in favor of bringing new life into the world, pursuing an adventure that, while terribly taxing, is also incredibly exciting and rewarding. And yet. Either that pizza truly is incredible, or we\u2019re dealing with a culture so morally impoverished, so truly blinkered by self-worship and self-protection, it\u2019s unclear what, if anything, could rouse them from their dogmatic slumber.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-0bb90b04d295100a7c006f38a5f58d7d fdrlst__b89e9-after-post-content\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-0bb90b04d295100a7c006f38a5f58d7d\"><\/div>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\">    \t\t\t\t\t   \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In December, a popular TikTok series praised the DINK (dual-income, no kids) lifestyle, showcasing lavish European vacations, extravagant Costco shopping sprees, and pampering of pets. Initially perceived as humor, Federalist Executive Editor Joy Pullmann shed light on its significance<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":658,"featured_media":2232338,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Book-Cover-Featured-Image-11.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2232337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Book-Cover-Featured-Image-11.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2232337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/658"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2232337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2232337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2232338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2232337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2232337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2232337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}