{"id":35094,"date":"2025-05-20T11:34:10","date_gmt":"2025-05-20T15:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/?post_type=article&p=35094"},"modified":"2025-08-13T12:02:28","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T16:02:28","slug":"how-silicon-valley-can-prove-it-is-pro-family","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/publications\/how-silicon-valley-can-prove-it-is-pro-family","title":{"rendered":"How Silicon Valley can prove it is pro-family"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This article is a reply to Katherine Boyle\u2019s
\u201cThe Great Tech\u2013Family Alliance<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\t<\/div>\r\n\t<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n

Katherine Boyle\u2019s speech is a sign of a new song making its way through the tech world: one that trills the importance of investing into our social infrastructure, strengthening our nation, and, yes, building families. It\u2019s a hopeful message. But like tech\u2019s early forays into politics \u2014 which began as a vague mood board of civic aspirations before coalescing into real policy efforts and wins \u2014 the pro-family cultural shift still has a long way to go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not to say there isn\u2019t real movement happening, and, as a parent, I\u2019m grateful for it. But I still feel the gap between rhetoric and reality as I navigate the tech world as a writer and researcher, particularly when visiting the San Francisco Bay Area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dinner conversations still tend to circle around whether children are worth having at all, or they treat global fertility rates at arm\u2019s length. Many in tech embrace a borderless lifestyle that implies constant mobility, hosting events in cities like New York and Austin, which doesn\u2019t blend well with family obligations. Children are rarely present at social gatherings. I\u2019ve had the strange experience of bringing my child to events where I\u2019m praised for this act as some sort of pro-family ideological flex \u2014 which, while flattering, misses the much less glamorous truth: with no evening child care available, I didn\u2019t have a choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s something telling about this disparity. Tech is clearly eager to recast itself as pro-family, but it hasn\u2019t yet internalized what is required to support families day to day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boyle, as a parent herself, is right to highlight pragmatic changes as the scaffolding that\u2019s required to build a pro-family culture: flexible work, improving and reducing the cost of education, raising the status of parents. And like Boyle, I believe that tech has the ability and resources to bring this future to fruition, if it wants to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oddly, however, it is tech\u2019s unmatched capabilities that might be what\u2019s holding it back. Tech is arguably the best place in the world for unchecked personal ambition to flourish, particularly for young, childless people. But this type of environment can delay or disincentivize family formation. My peers in tech who are reluctant to have children often express fear that it will interrupt the arc of the careers they\u2019ve worked so hard to build.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That, I think, is the primary tension: not between the family and the state, as Boyle argues, but between individual and collective ambitions. Both the state and the family ask us to make sacrifices for something bigger than ourselves \u2014 and this, perhaps, is why they have historically fought each other for mindshare. What tech offers is the opposite: a chance to realize a vision that is entirely one\u2019s own. Tech worships individual talent, and it\u2019s a unique thrill to live and work among peers who don\u2019t shy away from greatness. But it also means that tech has to work harder than other industries to demonstrate that starting a family doesn\u2019t require giving up these ambitions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That case can\u2019t be made through vibes alone, as any parent can attest who has spent a sleepless night with a sick child before a big meeting, Zooming with one hand while playing peek-a-boo with the other, or who has missed a deadline because child care fell through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If tech wants to embody pro-family values, it needs more skin in the game. It\u2019s not enough to tweet about population decline or pass around graphs on it in the group chat. Tech will learn much faster what\u2019s required by having kids, raising them, and supporting each other through the ups and downs. Pro-family culture means figuring out how to meet the family\u2019s needs for parental leave, affordable child care, quality education, and social environments that are welcoming to children and family lifestyles. Until then, the rhetoric will feel less like a movement and more like a mood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tech has a track record of moving quickly once it figures out what it truly wants. If the pro-family turn is real \u2014 and I hope it is \u2014 then what we need next is to move the discourse from talk to action. Only then will we be able to say with a straight face that tech is building not just companies but families too.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Katherine Boyle\u2019s speech is a sign of a new song making its way through the tech world: one that trills the importance of investing into our social infrastructure, strengthening our nation, and, yes, building families. It\u2019s a hopeful message. But like tech\u2019s early forays into politics \u2014 which began as a vague mood board of civic aspirations before coalescing into real policy efforts and wins \u2014 the pro-family cultural shift still has a long way to go. This is not to say there isn\u2019t real movement happening, and, as a parent, I\u2019m grateful for it. But I still feel the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":35422,"template":"","article_type":[13],"noteworthy_people":[],"topics":[2266],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/35094"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/35094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35680,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/35094\/revisions\/35680"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"article_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article_type?post=35094"},{"taxonomy":"noteworthy_people","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/noteworthy_people?post=35094"},{"taxonomy":"topics","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topics?post=35094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}