Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be

The bestselling author of Alienated America traveled the country asking families and experts the same two questions: Why is parenting so hard now? And why are the results so bad?

Our culture tells parents there's one best way to raise kids: enroll them in a dozen activities, protect them from trauma, and get them into the most expensive college you can. If you can't do that, don't bother.

How is that going? Record rates of anxiety, depression, medication, debts, loneliness and more. In Family Unfriendly, bestselling author and Washington Examiner columnist Timothy P. Carney says it's time to end this failed experiment in overparenting.

Have more kids, have more fun, cancel the travel soccer games, let your kids wander off, and give them deeper sources of meaning than material success.

This is an old-fashioned view, but every day the evidence validates it. Drawing on rigorous research—both as a reporter and as a dad of six—Carney demonstrates why modern parenting is so misguided. The high standards set for modern American parenting are unrealistic and setting parents—and our kids—up to fail.

Researched over three years and written in between rec baseball games and church picnics where nobody was watching the kids, Family Unfriendly is deeply wise, energetically told, and destined to be the most consequential book about parenting in years.

© 2024 Harper (Audiobook): 9780063236493

Release date

Audiobook: 19 March 2024