{"id":35100,"date":"2025-05-20T11:35:58","date_gmt":"2025-05-20T15:35:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/?post_type=article&p=35100"},"modified":"2025-08-15T14:18:34","modified_gmt":"2025-08-15T18:18:34","slug":"families-are-not-about-moving-fast-and-breaking-things","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/publications\/families-are-not-about-moving-fast-and-breaking-things","title":{"rendered":"Families are not about moving fast and breaking things"},"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

\u201cAll of history is a war between the family and the state,\u201d Katherine Boyle told her audience at the American Enterprise Institute. She came to pitch social conservatives on an alliance with the forces of Silicon Valley to battle the forces of the state. It\u2019s certainly not an obvious alliance \u2014 the family is a naturally conservative institution. You can\u2019t move fast, break children, and start over with a new iteration (though Elon Musk is trying).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At its best, the dynamism of the coders and builders blends playful curiosity and optimism. Startup founders are people who think they see a glimmer of a possible, better future<\/a>, and are willing to scramble to bring it into being. In my own approach to family life and community tending, I\u2019ve tried to bring some of that cheerful \u201cminimum shippable product\u201d spirit to allow me to try to do the next right thing, not waiting for a five-year plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Boyle\u2019s pitch lacked the semi-rational exuberance that families and founders can share. If there\u2019s a war on, and the only weapons are the ones she proposed, then the family is going to get rolled.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

She proposes three battlefields: the structure of work, the design of schooling, and the cultural cachet given to families. But her suggested tactics are: Etsy side hustles for stay-at-home parents, AI homeschooling tutors for their kids, and renaming \u201ccarpool lanes\u201d to \u201cfamily lanes\u201d to lend romance and prestige to parents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The AI suggestion is the most jarring. The goal of many homeschooling parents is not to design their own cram school and to pack their kids\u2019 heads full of facts, but approach education as the formation of character and preparation to live and die well. That requires a relational life \u2014 one spent in conversation with the human beings who have lived and died long before us, and left us their artistic and philosophical work, as well as with our peers in the present. Turning to AI as primary interlocutor is a kind of intellectual onanism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s tech that has played a major role in obstructing marriage and setting the sexes against each other<\/a>. Boys see the Tate brothers brutalize women online and lecture their prot\u00e9g\u00e9s that love is for suckers. Girls get fed aspirational anorexia on auto-scroll, plus the suggestion they could opt out of sexism by abandoning their sex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neither the state nor tech is a perfect partner for the family. The state can be an ally in requiring age verification for pornographic sites, and tech can be an ally in surfacing formerly obscure (or carbonized) texts. The state more often serves to set limits, tech more often opens doors. Knowing which<\/em> to do requires education in discernment and a community of co-discerners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What we need is less time in the HOV lane, by whatever name, and more time in humane, face-to-face pursuits. In my neck of the woods, that\u2019s amateur play readings, religious processions, and phoneless Postman Pledge field days<\/a>. Whether we\u2019re gearing up to fight state overreach or the intrusive algorithm, we need time drilling in our little platoons.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cAll of history is a war between the family and the state,\u201d Katherine Boyle told her audience at the American Enterprise Institute. She came to pitch social conservatives on an alliance with the forces of Silicon Valley to battle the forces of the state. It\u2019s certainly not an obvious alliance \u2014 the family is a naturally conservative institution. You can\u2019t move fast, break children, and start over with a new iteration (though Elon Musk is trying). At its best, the dynamism of the coders and builders blends playful curiosity and optimism. Startup founders are people who think they see a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":35420,"template":"","article_type":[13],"noteworthy_people":[],"topics":[2266],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/35100"}],"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":24,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/35100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35684,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/35100\/revisions\/35684"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"article_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article_type?post=35100"},{"taxonomy":"noteworthy_people","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/noteworthy_people?post=35100"},{"taxonomy":"topics","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topics?post=35100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}