Tim Carney

Tim Carney Speaking Topics

• How to Be a Family-Friendly Employer in a Family-Unfriendly Culture

  How can you make your company more competitive in the war for talent? By understanding the pressure on working parents. Best-selling author Tim Carney, author of the new book, “Family Unfriendly” has a prescription that goes deeper than the standard answers of parental leave and childcare.

  He lays out the reasons working parents find it so hard to balance career and family. And he articulates why young workers are putting off families precisely because they don’t think they can handle both at the same time. These factors combine to cost companies money, exacerbate turnover, and undermine productivity and innovation. For America to remain competitive, we must confront a fact that has rocked economies around the world: Birthrates have plummeted to all-time lows, and fewer people are getting married.

  Tim Carney, a father of six, will explore why companies must understand that the challenges faced today are more than just about work and economics: American culture, in general, is hostile to families. By understanding this, employers can take concrete steps to become more family-friendly in a family-unfriendly culture.

  Carney lays out the little things and the big things that make a workplace family-friendly. He also articulates the steps that are most transformative – many of which go beyond benefits – to right your company’s internal culture. Employment data and sociological research reveal that the workplaces with the happiest employees are the places where management says that family comes first, where this message gets to conscientious working mothers and fathers, and where they can see this commitment in visible, concrete actions.

  Tim’s inclusive and thoughtful game plan includes the best practices of the most family-friendly employers. He explains which policies don't work as well as expected. Most importantly, he spells out the cultural touchstones that make an employer family-friendly. Employees who feel supported in the most important work of their lives – marriage and parenthood – will be healthier, more balanced, more invested, more productive, and more loyal employees. Tim will equip your company to reach this new vision in a positive and affirming way.

• America's Baby Bust: Why Gen. Z and Millennials aren't having kids, why it's a problem, and how to fix it

  America's birthrate has fallen to record lows, childhood anxiety is at record highs, and optimism about the future is disappearing. These trends are all connected, and best-selling author Tim Carney (a father of six) has written a new book that diagnoses the roots of our demographic decline, explains how it affects all of us and points toward solutions.

  Economics is a factor here, but the real problem is that our culture is family unfriendly--and every parent knows this.

  Parents are expected to do much more than earlier generations were: more helicoptering, more travel sports, and more "enrichment." This max-effort parenting has resulted in anxious kids and exhausted parents and has made parenting look less appealing to the younger generations.

  Also, our culture now treats parenting as just another lifestyle choice and treats kids as a consumption item--have as many kids as you like, just don't bother anyone else. Parents, as a result, feel they owe everyone an apology if they bring their kids on a plane to visit Grandma.

  The problem isn't the kids or the parents. It's a family-unfriendly culture. Carney has the prescription for fixing this.

Overcoming Political Polarization

Many Americans feel democracy is in peril or that they can't express dissenting opinions in public. Our politicians have rarely been polarized, and so our government has rarely been more dysfunctional.

The average American wants to get along with folks of different political and religious persuasions. But our politics and media make that harder every day.

Why are we so polarized in a country that wants to get along?

Tim Carney, author of the best-selling "Alienated America," lays out the root cause, which is at once surprising but immediately intuitive: It's about the breakdown of the local community.

The average American lacks the sense of belonging that defined the landscape two generations ago: The local pub, the community library, the congregation, the bowling league.

Armed with reams of sociological data and two decades of man-on-the-street reporting, Carney lays out the true causes of our polarization.