Parents are spending more and more time with their kids than in the past, and yet kids are less happy and less healthy.

Given that the population of children is shrinking in America at an alarming rate and beyond America,

we need to figure out what is going on and adjust accordingly.

Could it be that our culture is making, raising

kids far harder than it needs to be? That is the suggestion of our guest today, Tim Carney,

parent of six kids, and the author of Family Unfriendly. I'm your host, Sean McDowell. I'm your co-host,

Scott Ray. This is Think Bivocally, a podcast brought to by

Talbot School Theology at Biola University. Tim, thanks for writing a great book and for joining us.

Hey, thanks for having me. Let's just jump right in because in the preface of your book, you say,

I wrote this book in order to shout as loud as I can, the tiger moms and helicopter parents are doing it

wrong.

Tell us what you mean and the motivation behind writing Family Unfriendly.

Well, so I noticed the falling birth rate.

I mean, that was an issue that jumped out.

And you had the surgeon general say that there was an epidemic of

childhood anxiety. I also noticed people saying, well, the following birth rate is a good thing because

parents are choosing quality over quantity. Now, I always hope that my kids, my six kids,

didn't hear that there's a quality quantity tradeoff.

But also I didn't, I decided I don't think it is quality quantity tradeoff. And sure enough,

a lot of child psychologists came out and were like, you know, I think the problem, one of the

problems is that kids aren't having, don't have enough free time. That's why I thought, wait a second,

the thing that parents are like destroying their lives

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