Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 214 | How Where You Choose to Live Impacts Your Family

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Ep. 214 | How Where You Choose to Live Impacts Your Family · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  So it's the macro micro, right? Where I think it's okay to go hard on this conversation on the macro, but be sensitive on the micro.
• 0:09
  What's up, guys? Welcome to another 5-Minute Fatherhood. So it's important if your ambition or your desire, calling, is to build a large family, that could really impact where you choose to live. One of the things we've talked about before, but I thought I was reading an article in Christianity Today with Grace Almstead, and she said some things that I want to hear your take on, Jeff. She said,
• 0:33
  Throughout our nation's history, people with tenuous financial situations still choose to get married and have a lot of babies. So money doesn't explain everything. Instead, Stone writes, our culture and its underlying ideals most determines people's childbearing decisions. Put simply, he writes, there is robust empirical evidence that people learn fertility ideals from their parents and immediate communities.
• 1:03
  are worried about money and whether or not they have enough money to raise children. Her point, though, is that if you compare that analysis with other cultures, that doesn't really bear out. That culture and parents and communities have a much bigger impact on people's decisions than finances. And she goes on to talk about this idea of community. The difference was not financial, but it was...
• 1:26
  the presence of a supportive, multi-generational community. Even in the United States, she writes today, many communities that maintain strong family societal norms have this kind of modern village parenting style, whether it's immigrant communities in big cities or Mormons out west. Stone wrote for the Institute for Family Studies last year, unsurprisingly, these groups tend to have higher fertility rates, perhaps in part because parents...
• 1:55
  and especially women have more volunteer help on hand to assist them. And so, guys, one of the things that we want you just to think about is if you have a desire to build a larger family, it could be really important to think about where you live and that what community you choose to invest in and whether or not there's multi-generational support or community support is going to have a big impact on whether or not that decision actually plays out well for you and your family. But, yeah, Jeff, what do you think about that?
• 2:23
  Yeah, I love that. And I think, too, one thing I like about that is that seems to just reframe the conversation because I want to be careful here because I agree that there's cultural pressure. So it's the macro micro, right, where I think it's OK to go hard on this conversation on the macro, but be sensitive on the micro. Yeah.
• 2:39
  And to me, it's, it's, there's a lot of cultural pressure and there is a lot of people that are in debt and strapped and trying to, you know, get their life in order. And so the last thing they, they, they, then they think of kids, you know, in their young twenties and in medical school, all the different things. And they, the cost is the thing that is the hurdle, right? And that, and it just scares them and there's fear and there's terror almost totally understand that. I think there's, that's valid at some sense, but I would probably push back on that too, in a longer, deeper conversation. I think me and Alyssa have done a podcast on that. You can go
• 3:09
  But at the macro, I love this because I think it totally reshapes the data. It seems pretty obvious, right? That actually it's the opposite. It's not the... Basically, the richer you actually get sometimes, the wealthier you get in the Western world, actually the less kids you have. So that kind of actually is like, it totally inverts it, right? And then you go to communities that maybe are what I would call almost like second world, not third world countries where they're living in huts at some level. Even then, that probably plays out there as well. But
• 3:35
  you know, where they still have their basic needs and some infrastructure and stuff like that, but they're still very communal and tribal, for lack of a better term, have a lot of kids. So it's like, and then, you know, and maybe they're living there and then you look at their actual income and it's not comparing to what anyone in the US is making. So that just blows that out of the water, which I love that because I think it's like, that's obvious. That's obvious. So it's, it's more about at the macro, this weird Western idolatry of how much we think we need to make
• 4:03
  And almost and how much we go above what we actually make living in our means. Right. So you can make you can have plenty of kids on ten dollars if you only make eight bucks, you know, I mean, you know, or reverse that. But you know what I mean, though? And so that's like it's just living within your means. So I love that. And then secondly, I just agree. It's more complex than just that. It's everything. And like you said, one thing I would encourage people to is.
• 4:24
  don't let that be the only framework you're thinking through. Push into trust of God and say, do I really trust him now? Still within wisdom, but do I trust him? And there's so many other ways of capital. There's neighborhood capital, there's family capital, there's city capital. And what I mean by that is like, you can live in a place that you don't maybe need a ton of money to raise kids, but you're rich in other ways. You're rich in support. And,
• 4:49
  You're rich in the job you took that actually doesn't make that much, but sets you up for leading your family beyond belief. You can go on and on. So think about all the ways of capital besides just the green pieces of paper and how that capital supports your family. And that's the difference.
• 5:07
  Hey guys, can I just ask you a quick favor? If you could just pause real quick. Well, actually after I'm done with this, so it makes sense in about for about 30 seconds and just rate and review this podcast. We can 10 X the number of dads we help through this content. If our podcast can be found by more dads. And one of the weird main things about this podcast game is that how they get ranked and how they get in front of other people essentially is because of how it gets rated and reviewed. So if you can just give a quick, honest rating and review, we would greatly, greatly appreciate it. Thanks guys.