Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 142 | What Happened to All the Kids in the Big Cities?

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Ep. 142 | What Happened to All the Kids in the Big Cities? · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  And he said, what an apt metaphor for our culture, where metaphorically speaking, we've gutted the maternity ward and put up a condo. Hey, guys, welcome to the 5-Minute Fatherhood Podcast. I'm your co-host, Jeff Bethke, along with my friend and mentor, Jeremy Pryor. Join us Monday through Friday as we chat about quick tips, skills, and ways to help equip you on your journey as a father to build your multi-generational family team on mission. Stay tuned.
• 0:32
  What's up, guys? Jeff and Jeremy here. Another episode of 5-Minute Fatherhood. I love to read The Atlantic. Hopefully you do too if you're a nerd who likes to just read random long articles that take like an hour to read, which is like 10 hours in internet time. And one of my favorite journalists, authors to read is Derek Thompson. He writes for The Atlantic. He also has a podcast, and he's written a couple books. I think Hitmakers is one of his main ones. Super good, super fun, fascinating book. But he just wrote an article a little bit ago that we posted in our 5-Minute Fatherhood group.
• 0:59
  for some discussion that was really fascinating. And the topic is basically what happened to all the kids in the big cities. And he went through the data, he went through the research, but then he also was just kind of having an opinion on it. Cities are making it more and more difficult, right? Big cities, urban areas, urban centered places for families to be there. And we're
• 1:21
  And he then goes to say that really, at the end of it, cities are becoming nothing more than a place or a headquarters for rich, white, young men and women who just kind of brunch all day and do their kind of hustle and workism.
• 1:36
  Which workism is a phrase that he uses, by the way, in another article on kind of how that's our new religion in America, this idolatry of work. But a fascinating article. I thought it was really, really good. Jeremy, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. I think my favorite line was that last line. I don't remember the line, but it was so good. I still remember it.
• 1:52
  where I think he says that, you know, he's like, we've gutted the maternity, because he basically said he's moving into this condo in Washington, D.C. that used to be a hospital. And he said, what an apt metaphor for our culture, where metaphorically speaking, we've gutted the maternity ward and put up a condo. And I was like, man, that's so true. Kind of this from family to individual. But yeah, what did you think?
• 2:12
  Yeah, I wanted to, and obviously a lot of you guys, some of you may live in big mega cities, maybe a lot of you don't. But I think one of the things that I want to sort of signal what I feel like Derek Thompson is saying as well, and is that it's important to know if you are watching any element of culture, movies, TV shows, Instagram, hang out at your coffee shop, and there are no children. Yeah.
• 2:37
  you may be living in a singles theme park. And that's kind of like he uses this sort of phrase. And I think it's actually really important for us to know because I think that if you, and this doesn't just happen in the cities, like I said, it happens through almost any cultural expression that removes all the children. And this happens all the time. So he wrote, in high density cities like San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, DC, no group is growing faster than rich college educated whites without children, according to census analysis by the
• 3:07
  By contrast, families with children older than six are in outright decline in these places. The modern American city is not a microcosm of life. It is a micro slice of it. It's becoming an Epcot theme park for childless affluence, where the rich can act like kids without having to actually see any. Listen to that line. He's such a good writer. Yeah, he is good. He drops little word bombs, but this is great. So I think this is the problem, you guys. The reason why this is such a problem,
• 3:35
  Because if you don't know these trends are happening, then the story that you're telling yourself about the good life starts to subtly change. And this is where it's very dangerous for all of us. When you start to watch movies, TV shows, see cultural expressions, hang out in cities, and you're not seeing children and you think this is the good life, this is where people are really having the most fun, this is what I wish I had—
• 3:57
  instead of thinking about going out on dates and stopping by the latest foodie restaurant without children, we're talking about the good life as a multi-generational family around a table in a home. And so if you're not seeing that reflected anywhere, then oftentimes this starts to shift the way that you think about where your trajectory, what the good life really is all about. And so we've told you guys, Psalm 128 really describes the good life
• 4:26
  about a multi-generational family around a table, and if you're aiming for that, then these kinds of images that are just becoming the coolest thing of our culture can really erode your excitement about having children. You can start to resent your kids, feel like they're getting in the way. And what's happening, you guys, is this is not real life. This is a theme park. This is a micro slice, like you said, of life. It's not a microcosm of life. Real life has children in it.
• 4:50
  And so it's important for us to sort of be able to notice the difference. And when you're beginning to see whole pockets of cultural expressions without children, you know that you're not looking at the whole of what life has to offer and what a normal life really consists of. And so there are terminal problems with these kinds of narratives that are being played out in some of these megacities. And I think it's just important to sort of realize they're probably subtly influencing you, me, in various ways. And so just to call it out,
• 5:20
  like this article does, I find very helpful.
• 5:24
  Hey guys, we know it's really challenging to try to build your family team when all the tools you've grown up with or seen essentially are aimed at only helping develop family members as a collection of individuals. That's why we launched familyteams.com where you can find all the tools we've developed with tons of resources at different price points, free courses, videos, writings, etc. that help you build up and transform you and your family into a multi-generational team on mission. Check out all the resources we have over at familyteams.com.