Why have kids in a world this crazy? Jim Penman and Andrea Pearson

This world is absolutely insane. Politics are all over the place. Nobody can agree on anything. So why on earth would you want people to bring babies into it?

I don't think on the whole that men are quite as good at being parents as women.

It looks like a wallet, but that is a phone.

That is an actual phone. That is a phone. There's more danger in this phone by far than the real world.

Welcome to Conversations with Jim. My name is Andrea Pearson. I am the co-author of Birthrate Crisis: Reclaiming Family and Purpose in a Dopamine-Driven World. And I'm here today with my co-author, Jim Penman, and I am prepared to ask him all of the tough questions. Jim, are you ready for some tough questions?

Yes, I am.

Okay. As somebody who has run a lot of ads for the book on Facebook, I've seen a lot of comments all over the board from people who are just disgusted with the topic of this book. And so some of them bring up what I think are valid points just because so many of them have these concerns. And I want to basically grill you if you're all right with that.

Yep.

Okay. Jim's great at being grilled. So All right, so the first question I wanted to ask is based off of a lot of people's feedback that I've gotten on the ads, and that is basically, this world is absolutely insane. Politics are all over the place. Nobody can agree on anything. So why on earth would you want people to bring babies into it?

I think I love babies. I love children. I've got 10 of my own, and as you've got your own family, I think people are great. All the problems in the world can only be solved by people.

Right.

And when I bring children into the world, then that's part of their job in life, as anybody should be.

Okay, so if you have somebody coming up to you and saying, I'm really struggling with life, I have a lot of depression, and I wanted to have kids as a child, but now that I'm an adult, it doesn't sound like such a great idea. You know, there's riots all over the place, people can't agree. Now, what would you say to them?

I'd say if you're not ready to have children, you probably shouldn't. Because being a parent is a very heavy responsibility. But I would say also that a lot of the things that's wrong with people in the world is a result of living in the wrong way. Hmm. People who live lives that are, I suppose, too short-term in their thinking, too much indulged in what's good for me right now, tend to have a frame of mind that isn't so good. And one of the things about this book is we suggest there's ways of living, there's ways of behaving, there's ways of thinking that's a lot better for you. And that's That's part of the way of curing the birth rate crisis, but it's also a way of helping individual people to live happier and better lives.

Right. Yeah, I agree with that. I do think that you'll get some pushback. We will get some pushback on that. People like their lives right now, a lot of people would say. And how would you answer that?

They like their lives?

Yeah.

They like lives without children?

They like their lives. They like their addictions. They like their dopamine surges. They like the world that they've created for themselves.

Yes, I think, look, in the short term, it's true. It's like if you have a drink of alcohol, something that you enjoy, or, you know, junk food and stuff. In the short term, you do feel better. There's no doubt about it. And that's easy to look at and say, oh well, if I have this, whatever it is, this Big Mac, this sweet drink, this whatever it is, this shot of cocaine, this alcohol, whatever it is, this social media, you will feel better. Immediately. But the point of it is that kind of behaviour actually makes you feel worse overall. Mm. And the good decisions are those where you actually discipline. It's like exercise. I mean, who feels like getting up and going for a run first thing in the morning? I mean, especially on a cold morning. It gets very cold here in Melbourne. Not everybody wants to do that. But all the sources tell us that if you do have exercise, you will not only be healthier, but you will feel better. You will feel happier. So the whole of life, there's a principle of living that actually helps you to feel better and happier, to have more purpose and meaning in your life. And it's the same attitudes that helps people to want more children too.

So do you believe that childhood and raising kids is the same thing where it's potentially hard in the moment, but it leads to a better life?

There's always, there's always times when you look at your kids and you think, well, maybe my life would be easier without them. And I'm sure you felt the same way yourself at times. But yes, overall, a good life is a life with purpose. A life that's just lived to say, how can I be happy right now? How can I do what feels good right now? Without any purpose beyond that is not a very good life. And all the sources show, one of the things we quote in this book is a whole lot of sources of people who looked at what makes people happy. And people are very misguided as to what it is because the feeling is, if I had more money, if I had a better car or a bigger house or, you know, better clothes or more expensive food or better holidays, I'd be happier. But actually what the science tells us is that those kind of things don't bring much in the way of satisfaction, particularly anything that's aimed to make yourself better compared with somebody else. Mm-hmm. What they've found out, for example, is that people who live a life of purpose, people who are regular churchgoers or involved in community service or doing things for other people, tend to be a lot happier than those who just say,

Right. Short-term versus long-term thinking.

Yes, exactly. And long-term thinking is the route to happiness, not short-term, do what you feel right now.

Right. All right. What are your beliefs when it comes to— and I told you I'm asking tough questions, right? Tough questions. What are your beliefs when it comes to women and careers?

I think the greatest career any parent, any person can have is to be a parent. to be a good parent. And while I have a wonderful wife who's been well-educated and she's had a useful career, I think one of the most useful things she ever did was be a mother. And we've got 4 beautiful children. And I can't think of any greater calling than that, of being a parent. And I think when children are young, it's wonderful if one parent It doesn't have to be the mother, but if one parent can stay home and look after them, I don't think there's any substitute for a parent's care. I don't think the children are best left by themselves in childcare when they're very young. The older they are, I think the more they benefit from that kind of thing, like especially school and so forth. But for the very young, I think it's great if some— one parent can stay home. Mm-hmm. And one of the things we do in our franchise system, we emphasize is that We help people to have careers where they have enough money so they can afford to have one parent stay home if usually she wishes to.

Right. Right. And you don't have any opinion about whether it should be the wife or it should be the husband? I mean—

I don't think on the whole that men are quite as good at being parents as women. Okay. I try my best to be a good parent, but I've got to say my wife is better. She's just more warm. She's more compassionate. She's more considerate. She's just got that kind of heart. I don't think I— if I needed to stay home with my children, I would, but I don't think I could do as good a job as she could. I mean, they talk about the better half. Lee's a better person than me.

And now that I've met her—

You can agree with me.

I love Lee. She's amazing.

She's one of the absolute best people in the world. And I think, you know, women do tend to— I think they're better at it than we are. I think it's very important for a man to be involved. I've always been very closely involved with my children. I've never put the business ahead of them. Always had time for my kids. But at the same time, I don't think I'd be as good as my wife is.

Okay. I can agree with that. Going from my own life experience, my own situation, my husband Nolan has been staying with the kids and helping homeschool them for the most part. And we have agreed that I am more patient than he is. And we both find a lot of joy in it, but there's a certain side of a man's personality that doesn't mesh as well with children as women.

Yeah, having said that, my daughter Sarah married to a wonderful man called Marcus. She's a psychiatrist, he's a high school teacher, a very good one, and they both work part-time so they can both spend time with their beautiful little girl Cassie, who's the most Gorgeous kid. I'm a grandfather, I'm a bit biased, but still, she's a very delightful— it's an amazingly wonderful family, and they're both great parents.

So, okay, so this is a sort of related question, but one of the accusations we got a lot was that we were proposing that women should give up their lives, basically. With divorce being such a I guess so common now compared to how it was in the past. What sort of advice would you have for a woman who both wants to have a family, but she's also worried about a potential divorce leaving her without a career, without a way to provide for her kids?

Well, I think it's good to be able to have both to some extent, but it's always a matter of priorities, isn't it? Which is the most important thing in your life? But I would think that if you come to the end of your life and you said, well, look, I've had a lot of great holidays and I bought a lot of nice stuff and I've enjoyed myself a lot, and you look back on your life and that's it. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It doesn't seem to me as great if you can look back and say, I brought up 2, 3, whatever number of beautiful children in the world and they're carrying on with themselves to make a difference to the world. So I'd say it's good for a woman to have some sort of career, but I applaud anybody who's prepared to take that sacrifice and say, yes, I will take a few years off and look after kids. And I understand the fear of it. That's hard. But I just think some things are worthwhile.

Right. Now, my husband and I, we got married later than we wanted to, which is now an average age, which kind of blows my mind. But we did not put off having kids, and I was able to focus on writing while raising kids and even homeschooling our kids. And, you know, that worked out really well for me. And one of the things I hope that women can understand is that That the success doesn't have to come at the expense of children, and children don't have to come at the expense of success. You can do and work on things together. And my husband, he was not attracted to women who didn't have something that they were working on. He wanted a wife who found joy outside of the family, but also in the family. He wanted her to be able to stay home with the kids, but he wanted her to have hobbies and things that she worked on outside of the family because He recognized that she would be happier and more fulfilled that way. And I think a lot of men probably also feel that way. I know that you do as well, right?

I appreciate the fact that Leigh's my partner in business. I mean, we work together all the time. It's great. I mean, you're in a very fortunate situation in that you can work from home, and not many women have that kind of option. I mean, one of my great things about my job is that I often do work from home and have worked from home. My main office is at home, and I can drive my son to school. 17 years old and I can take him home. That time that we spend together is precious.

It's valuable.

So it's great to have flexibility in your career for either. If you've got a career that you can fit in with childrearing in some way, that is obviously ideal. It's not always possible though, is it?

Right. But then there's also the point where when kids go off to school, there's time, hours and hours during a day when a mom can be doing things that You know, revolve around a potential career.

Yes. Yeah. And that is, that is perfect. One of the things with our franchisees is that many of them are women. And one of the great benefits they have of something like a dog washing franchise is that they can be flexible. Right. They can work the hours the children are at school, maybe at the weekend, a bit when the husband's able to help in. If the child is sick, they can stay home because it's their business and they're flexible. So one of the things we emphasize when we talk about, about Our franchise system is flexibility, so you can earn a good living without sacrificing anything for your children. And I think it's great. Look, the idea that a woman should be— do nothing else but work at home, I think homemaker is a great career, but I think it's terrific if a woman can have other interests too, just to keep their minds active.

Right. Right. And someday Jim's will come to the States. And for those of you who are watching, you know, from the States,

I certainly hope so.

Right. Okay, another tough question. I want to know how you feel about the rise of people living together before marriage and how that affects birth rates.

Well, I'm a little bit biased. I'm an evangelical Christian, a Baptist. I don't think people should live together. I don't think people should have sexual relations outside of marriage. just what I believe in. I do think that the path of faith, of involvement in a church community, especially a strong church community, is very, very good for people's well-being. It's good for families. And I think that if people did follow these kind of principles of relationships only within marriage, I think they and the world would be better off, and so would their kids too. I don't It's the way of the world these days. Even our children, well, my children are not always living the way that I would personally prefer.

Right.

But it is the best way to live. It's honoured by— it's what God tells us to do. And there's a reason for that. God doesn't say, live this life because, you know, I'm a sadist, I want you to be unhappy. He says because he's the maker. He knows how we work best. It's a way of life That is the best way for humans to flourish. And part of that means to say that when you want to be with somebody, you should marry them and live with them and be exclusive to them only and raise your children together. That is what God's taught us to do, and I think it's the best way of life. And I think that's what science tells us too.

Right.

People who go to church or religious services regularly are happier. People who are married tend to be happier than those who are not. It's That's what the word is.

Right. And I know that the data, the studies that have been done have shown that people who are married have greater wealth and greater value than those who just live together. They're happier, like you said, and their marriage has a higher chance of succeeding if they commit and don't just live together for a while and then marry.

Yes, that's right.

Right. Okay, so we talk a lot about religion in our book. And one of the questions I've gotten a lot is, do we believe, and do you, Jim, believe that religion is required for birth rates to increase again?

Not required, but very, very helpful. The kinds of attitudes— when people— the kind of attitudes that promote childrearing are those in which you're putting the interests of somebody else before yourself. To be a parent, especially a mother, I have to say, is an enormous sacrifice, a whole series of sacrifices where you devote enormous amounts of your life, your energy, your money, your time towards other people. That is the kind of attitude that's part of a faith, a walk of faith. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And there really isn't any society I know of where people have had strong positive birth rates without some sort of religious leaning in their lives. And it's not what you believe so much, it's what you do about what you believe. It's being in the community that teaches you that you are not Your interests are not the only thing that matters. We're there to serve others. We need to recognize our weakness before God, that we don't always live the way we should and we need to try better. We need to be better parents, need to be better husbands and wives, citizens. We just need to try and be better. Religion, faith teaches us that. We have the sense of an all-powerful and all-loving God who's very interested in our welfare and he wants what's best for us. That is this style of life. It's very difficult to achieve it without faith.

I agree with that. That's one of the things that we've been asked a lot. I feel that religion, like you said, it makes people happier. Studies have shown that people who are religious are happier. It's not just people who believe in God, it's people who actively attend church, they are happier. Those who actively pray are happier, they have more peace and more content, lower levels of depression in their lives. And while we don't say in the book you need to be religious, I think that they're all tied. When people are finding more community, when they are increasing their family size, they tend to be more religious. And it's just all of these things, they kind of go together hand in hand.

Yeah, it's not so much what you believe, it's what you do about what you believe. And I look upon My Christian walk, it's like a commitment. It's like Jesus is the— he's my mentor, he's my guide, he's my— I make a commitment to live my life the way that he would want me to live. That's a kind of a decision. I often think of it like there was an army that was— you had a time of evil and turmoil, and there's so much bad in the world, and somebody comes, a man comes riding on a white horse. Jesus. the head of an army to solve these problems. And he says, will you join me? Will you follow me? That's kind of the way I see it, almost as a military thing. You send a sense of loyalty, of obligation. This is who I am. This is what I believe in. This is who I follow. People often ask me who my mentor is, and they're always looking for someone like some individual or some— I always say Jesus. Because if you look at the way I run my life, I look at the principles that we're taught. In the Gospels, the story of the Good Samaritan, the story of the parable of the talents, of Jesus washing his disciples' feet, of Jesus saying it's easier for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than a camel to go through the eye of a needle. All these sayings are fundamental to the way I look at the world. That's my loyalty, that's my commitment.

Right. Yeah. Okay, so Another tough question. So, Jim, you've been very successful. You are, I would say, a multimillionaire. Anybody who looks you up will know that. Know that I'm not— it's not like I'm sharing something that people can't figure out on their own, right? So one of the biggest things we hear is that finances are really tough right now. And so coming from somebody who is a multimillionaire saying finances is not a big deal, that's going— that comes across A little bit tone deaf, I think, for a lot of people. So how do you answer that question? How do you equate or not equate your wealth with your desire for people to have children?

Well, I wasn't always a multimillionaire. We go back to the early 1980s. I was a lawnmower contractor. Okay? I made okay money, but I was out there every day pushing a lawnmower, gardening. My wife was a student, okay. She didn't have any sort of income. We lived in a rented house. I had— we had no savings. We had no prospect of even buying a house at that particular stage. And we started having kids one after the other after the other. And we lived a very, very simple life. Going out to buy the most basic fish and chips was kind of like a huge luxury. Mm-hmm. If you had a holiday, it was in a tent. It was very simple life. You watched every cent and we still It was important that we had children. And that's all I can say is I just thought children were more important than anything else you could spend money on. And my wife at the time did. So that was not a difficult decision. Mm-hmm. I don't think we even agonized about it. I didn't even think about it. I just wanted kids 'cause I love kids. I just loved them. I was always a Sunday school teacher. When I was single, the kids across the road would come across and I would play with them and do barbecues and things. I just always loved being with kids. When we used to be a— we used to have a convention in Evangelical Conference, and I was part of a group that would entertain the kids. It was just, we did improv theatre, which was one of the most fun things I've ever done. I just love being around children. I still do. Mm-hmm. I adore my grandchildren. I miss not having children of my own, I must say. The house feels empty without them. But it's all about priorities. And like, look, I understand people's priorities are different. But to me, children are just number one, and I can live a very, very simple life. I still do, actually. We went on a trip, my wife and I, and she kept on throwing out my underpants because they had holes in them. But I do that kind of thing. I'm very, very simple in my tastes. It doesn't matter what's important.

So, okay, so what about people who want to give their kids a good life and they don't want to bring kids into the world until they have a good place for them to live in? I mean, They view the sort of childhood that you had, which is similar to the one that I had, as a detriment to children. How would you answer that?

Well, actually, the studies show that that's not— how much money you've got has very little relationship to how well your children do. Some of the worst-off kids actually come from very affluent houses. There's no correlation at all. What parents need is parents who love them and parents who've got time for them And parents who've got a sense of discipline and teaching and leading their kids into the right way. Those things are incredibly important. Being part of a church community which helps to support you is really, really important. Mm-hmm. The actual amount of money you have has very little to do with it. Now, if being affluent helps you to be stably married and all those kind of things, well, that's good. But on the whole, rich people don't have better kids than poor ones. That's my observation. I do think sometimes people make a big mistake when they say, I want my kids to have everything that I missed out on. Right. But sometimes they can make life too easy. One of the things with my kids I can tell you is that we were very careful for them not to see the affluence. Like my younger kids especially. I mean, I was, by the time these came along, I was quite well off. And the kids would say things to me like, well, you know, what rich people are like, they've got mansions and they've got expensive holidays and they've got this. I said, you don't live like that. We just live a very ordinary life. I would give away more than 90% of my income. It just isn't— we just don't live like that. And I think it's been very good. And one of the great things about our kids is they've all got a very strong sense of money. Mm. They got an allowance, but they've worked. They save. Money's just not been thrown at them. And I think they're actually far better off than a lot of rich kids.

So what sort of advice do you have? Because our book, we talk about things that individuals can do and we talk about things that governments can potentially do in our path to finding a solution. What sort of advice would you have to parents on how they should raise their kids to potentially want to have children themselves?

Go to church. Or synagogue or mosque. I don't think it enormously matters which religious group. I have my own beliefs, but in terms of actual effect on the kids, any sort of strong faith is good. You have to love your kids, but you also have to be a true guiding parent. You can't think your main job is to be your child's friend. Being a friend is different from a parent. As a parent, you have a responsibility to guide them. And it's not One of the things people make a mistake of is helicopter parenting, you know, always hovering over a kid and sort of watching them and protecting them from any possible harm. That's actually very bad for children. It's really, really bad. What you need to do is to give your kids plenty of independence. At the same time, you train them to want to act in a certain way, to be respectful, to be considerate, to be hardworking, and jobs are great for that, to live a kind of life. You're the guide. You're helping them to find their own sense of meaning. And purpose in the world. That's what a parent's job is. And I think actually providing an awful lot of material spending is really not very helpful. Even things like what school, going to a private school. Now, my younger kids go to private schools, well, if we can afford to. But on the whole, it makes surprisingly little difference. The home matters far, far more.

Right. Right. So, I just lost my train of thought. So glad they can cut things out. Let's see, you were talking about— oh right, okay. So again, going back to the topic of the world being a crazy place, dangerous, how helicopter parenting, isn't that necessary to keep kids safe? And how do you answer that to the parents out there who are worried that their kids are going to be in danger?

First of all, the world is objectively safer than it was when I was a kid. I was growing up in the '50s and early '60s and the actual chance of being injured in some way was substantially greater then. So the world has become safer and safer. And I would say yes. Now one of the things with our kids is we let them go. At a certain age I took my children— I thought my son was getting a bit too insular, so I took him down to the station and showed him how to— stood over him while he learned how to pay for a fare so he could be independent. And he actually, and my second youngest child, were actually moving out to a certain extent even towards the end of their school career. If they wanted to live with another sister or something like that, they could. So we've actually given them a great deal of freedom. The point of it is this: people are very concerned about physical security, and that's right. There is one chance in several million that your child might be kidnapped. Now you train them to be careful of strangers and so forth. You do. But what people don't recognize is there's other dangers which are far, far worse. And one of the greatest dangers which you can possibly face is in these things.

Right.

The amount of stuff—

It looks like a wallet, but that is a phone.

That is an actual phone. That is a phone.

Right.

And there's more danger in this phone by far than the real world. There are predators. There is evil stuff. There is porn. There is social media with the most appalling ideas. There are dreadful things going on online, and if you lock yourself, your children up in a home, you're actually leaving with something which is potentially poisonous. And we know that mobile phones are very damaging to mental health. Whereas being able to be out there in the world, facing challenges and difficulties and negotiating and playing, free play, this kind of thing, is actually enormously beneficial. So what I would say, that when parents are helicoptering their their children. What they're doing is they're protecting them from this much danger and they're exposing them to this much. Because really, what's the biggest danger facing kids in the world today? It's not the chance of being kidnapped. It's the chance of something going very badly wrong, to being depressed, to being anxious, drugs, alcohol, suicide. We owe it to our kids to let them free enough to develop strong, resolute characters able to cope with any difficulty. I agree. Mental illness, mental health, mental wellbeing is the biggest danger our kids face by far. It's bigger than anything else in the world today. And the best way to cope with that is to give them very strong, clear, loving guidance as to what they should do and then let them go out and make some mistakes.

Right.

And face some risks. It's a very bad thing. You protect yourself from small dangers, And you actually expose them to far greater ones. Helicopter parenting is one of the most damaging things you can do to kids.

Right. And that was actually— that we do have a section on helicopter parenting and the damage it can be to children, and not just the children but the parents themselves, the amount of stress it causes and the workload it causes. And a lot of our test readers, when we were having people read that, they were surprised by the statistics that we shared, how it's in the low hundreds a year of children being kidnapped in the States. And the kid in the States, we have millions of people living there, and the chances of a kid getting kidnapped is around 105, 115, something like that. But the chances of online grooming through their smartphones is significantly higher. And I know several, you know, several people who've had that happen with their children just through online, you know, exposure. And, and parents, they're, they're worried and they want to protect their kids from all these problems that are out there where they're actually causing problems by giving their kids access to the internet. where their kids are supposedly being, you know, playing games or watching innocent videos. But I follow a program that is about keeping children safe, and I don't remember right now what it is called, but they send out regular emails to me. And one of them talked about how if they had employees who acted as a child, as somebody under 13 on YouTube, and YouTube and a lot of the other channels, and I don't want to, you know, name them necessarily, but the child encountered porn faster than an adult would have because the algorithms are trained to get children hooked on the, on the, the, you know, the content that is being shared. Like TikTok and Twitter and all, or X, and all of these different sites, they are designed to draw children into their content, and that includes introducing the children to content that is inappropriate for children. And it happened faster for somebody who was younger than it does for an adult. And parents don't recognize that the things that they're using to keep their children safe are actually causing their children to be more in harm's way.

I must say, I've only come lately to understand how bad that problem is. If I'd known what I know now, I would not let any of my kids have access to smartphones at all. I think they're hideously dangerous things. I love my phone. It's so wonderful to do things. I love listening to talking books and And it's just a wonderful device in so many different ways. But for children, it's poison.

Right.

It's like you're handing your child a bottle full of strychnine and said, but, you know, take it, but don't drink, don't eat any.

Right.

It's one of the most dangerous things. You know, we run franchise systems actually where we've got nearly 6,000 franchisees. In all the 37 years, we've had 2 people die on the job. Because they work with machinery, they work at heights. We have had, I cannot tell you how many we've lost to suicide. Oh. That is far, far, far greater. We actually have all sorts of systems of support and pay for psychological care because it's such a problem, especially for men, we find. So where's the danger? They do physically dangerous jobs with powerful machinery, working at heights, and hardly anybody gets killed. but they die from suicide. It's absolutely appalling what happens. We have got to stop focusing so much on physical danger and go look at the more real, the mental danger, the psychological danger. Right. And our world is getting worse. Good times are not that good for kids. One of the most interesting things is this. If you ask people, if you were going to be born at any time in the last century, which decade would you be born in to have the lowest risk of suicide? 1930s, the worst economic depression in a long, long time. People who grew up in that time tended to be tougher, happier, more resilient than those who didn't. Resilient. And we're actually doing work with rats and with mice. We're looking at this kind of factor. And there's this thing called eustress. There's a certain amount of stress and challenge which is very good for people. So good times are not really great for mental health.

Right.

We need to either— I don't want people to go through a massive depression again. That's very hurtful to many people. But in some ways, if we can help our kids to live a reasonably tough life, they'll be so much better off for it.

Right. And parents have this desire, like we said earlier, to provide a better life for their children, but they don't recognize that the horrible things— or not even horrible, the stressful things, the difficult things they went through as children themselves is what made them into decent and mature adults. And by by, you know, avoiding that with their children, they're basically not allowing their children— they're denying their children of the experiences that will help them become successful adults.

People are very ignorant of science. And it's one of the principles that any neuroscientist will talk about. And I talk about it with neuroscientists all the time through my research project. There's an optimum level of stress. If you have too little, it's not good. You're too weak. If you have too much, It's not good either. You're constantly chronically stressed. But in the middle between the two, a certain amount of stress, a certain amount of challenge is actually very good for you in every level. You're more likely to be happier, more resilient, more able to cope with life, less likely to be depressed. It's— that's a name for it. It's called eustress, good stress, a certain amount. We do our kids no benefit if we try and protect them too much. The world is a tough place and it's good for you to experience some hard times. That means, you know, being adventurous. It means getting physically hurt sometimes, you know, bruised and not broken bones, but— and then having relationships with people and conflicts and having to resolve them and all these kind of things too. Children playing together. We lack free play. And there's a lot of science behind this. The children who have free play and are allowed to take risks are so much better off than those who don't. So as parents, I think one of our greatest challenges is to actually maintain that level of challenge. And, you know, I was a pretty tough parent. My— remember I was having a birthday party once and I was chasing the kids around the front yard because that's what I play, monsters. I played with your kid last night. And so that's one of the things I do. And then one of my kids actually mentioned to one of them that they couldn't have anything to do with electronic gadgets between 11 and 3. And this kid looked at them aghast and she said, I thought your dad was nice!

That's awesome. Yeah. Okay. So, all right. You've been working on this project for a long time, your research and everything. Why now? Why now are you having this book come out?

Well, I've written books in the past that didn't communicate very well. I've had these sorts of ideas. And I wanted one that an ordinary person could understand. And I had the great fortune of one of the respondents to my earlier book, To Buy a History, was a guy called Michael Pearson, who happens to be in the United States. And so I approached him and I said, can you give me some advice and some help with this and how to make this approachable? And he said, well, I've got a sister who actually happens to be in that area. So we were introduced and it's come from there. I'd have to say, these are basically my ideas, but your contribution has been— I think it's God's guidance that brought us together. I honestly do. It was a very improbable line of circumstance. I just happened to get a response from somebody in the United States, a long way around across the world, I've never actually met, who was exactly the right person to communicate it. I have a way of thinking which is very individual, but I'm not a very good communicator. No. Because I don't understand how the way people think. And I think that's the great thing that you have. Because all through this book, every line of this book is Andrea saying, that doesn't make sense. Or people are going to think that, or you're going to come across like that, or this doesn't explain it properly, or whatever. Very, very dense. It's taken us— how many months were we working on this book?

Since November 2023.

Yes. So we're talking about—

With a break in the middle, but—

We've been talking about doing this for years. And we're talking about thousands of hours of cooperation. So it's— the ideas I had in the beginning, I've improved them a lot. I learned, you know, a lot more than I did a few years ago. I've learned a lot more. Our research has actually progressed quite well in many ways. But I think the main thing is that with your help, I've produced a book that anybody can understand. I think anybody looks at it, not going to look at it and say, this is too hard, this is preaching too much science. We have to explain things like the dopamine system and the way the brain reacts to dopamine. But I think with your help, We've done this in a way that is clear.

Right.

I've never had somebody come across this book, out of our test readers, and say, I can't understand this. Now, they may not agree with it.

Right.

But they can understand the point that we're making. And that's really important because if people want to live a better life and they want to know what's going wrong with the world and how to improve it, it's important they understand the basic problem. And I believe this book actually says that very clearly.

Yeah, one of the— that was the question when I was interviewing publicists. to see who we would want to work with, that's one of the questions they asked is, why now? Why is this book coming out now? And I think it's the kind of topic where the sooner the better. You know, we want to reach the government policymakers, we want to reach influencers, we want to reach people who are interested in helping make a difference. And the longer it takes for this message to get out, the longer it takes until we get to a good place, you know.

Yes. I think also the particular topic too, the point that I make, and it's been obvious for me for many years, It's not just a case of declining birth rate. It's a declining sense of meaning. It's rising rates of mental illness. It's rising rates of depression and anxiety. It's declining work ethics. A whole lot of things going on. And I've been saying this for some while, this is a problem. We are really going the same way as ancient Rome for the same reasons. Our society is in decline. But people say, oh no, everything's fine. The economy's fine. But there's one thing that's happened in recent years that people can't ignore is that we're not having children.

Right.

We're having not nearly enough children to replace ourselves. And that is the one issue that people cannot deny. And they— people have this view that governments can change everything. If you just pass the right laws, everything will be hunky-dory.

Right.

And I don't— that's not the case. I do not believe that's the case. What matters is the character of ordinary people. And one thing that's very clear is that governments can't fix birth rates. They try, They do all kinds of things. They pressure people to have more children.

They spend billions.

They spend millions. 5% of GDP. 5% of GDP. You know, if you're a mother in Hungary, you don't pay taxes for life if you've had 3 kids. They have so many incentives and they don't make any difference at all. And the most interesting thing about this is that no matter what governments do, they have no power. In China, They had the one-child policy and then they started to realize it was a problem and they said, okay, you can have 2 children. The birth rate went down. And then they said, okay, you should have more than 2 children. And the birth rate went down. Chinese government's the most powerful in the world in terms of controlling, but they can't get people to have children. Only people can decide to have children. That's a matter of character. And what we're talking about is how you develop a kind of character that makes people want to have children and also to be happier and also have more of a sense of purpose. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, exactly. So you talked about dopamine. How does dopamine play into the birth rate?

Okay. The biggest problem in the modern world is an excess of dopamine. And the way to understand this, look at the way cocaine acts. Now, somebody has cocaine, what that does is delivers a very strong surge of dopamine into the brain, which feels very good short-term. That's the point to recognise. But then the second time you have it, not quite as good. Right. And the third time, not very good either. And eventually you need that drug just to feel normal. Now, what's actually happening is that the brain— dopamine is a chemical, it's the hormone that makes us want to achieve things, to do things. And the brain doesn't want us to be flooded with dopamine because then we lose all incentive to do anything, like the things that evolution teaches us, like you know, get food, mate, this kind of thing, okay? So what happens when you get too much dopamine is the brain shuts down. It becomes relatively insensitive to dopamine. And so you need a lot of dopamine just to feel okay. Now, that's the kind of thing that's happening in the modern world today, not with cocaine for most people, but there's a lot of other things like junk food or plentiful food in general, especially high-calorie food, social media. Porn, sex at a young age, comparing yourself with other people, competitiveness, thinking get-rich-quick schemes, gambling, all those kinds of activities. What they're doing is they're putting a surge of dopamine into your brain and your brain's reacting as if you're a cocaine addict. Now, when your brain becomes insensitive to dopamine, you— there are things that produce a little trickle of dopamine like work, like children, like family, like church, like those kinds of activities, like exercise, all those things, they produce a trickle of dopamine. If your brain is sensitive to dopamine, they're very satisfying. If they're insensitive, they're seen as boring. Mm-hmm. So if somebody says, I don't want to be at home with a child because I don't find children interesting, family life is boring, I'd like to be out there having a career, excitement, you know, travel, you know, bright lights, everything else. You need that stimulus because your brain is insensitive. And what that actually does is makes you less happy at the same time because the real pleasure in life, the real joy in life is the little trickle of dopamine. We call that ebb and flow. It's like— Mm-hmm. The different example is this. If you're at the beach and you've got these little waves on the shore, they're just going back and forth, back and forth, that's very healthy. But then you get a storm and there's the big waves come crashing across the beach and they smash into the houses beyond. That's really dangerous. That's the situation. Dopamine's a good thing, we need it.

Right.

But if we get the trickle of dopamine from the everyday positive activities, we actually enjoy and we have a much, much better life than if we subject ourselves to these surges. So the key to a good life is actually to avoid the surges and just to be satisfied with the trickle. And once we do that and our brains become sensitive to it, then we live a happier and better life. And it's part of a— people aren't going to take any treatment, and we are looking to develop treatments, but they're not going to take it so they can have more children. They're going to take it so they feel more happiness, they feel some sense of purpose and meaning in their life. Mm-hmm. So they feel less depressed, more anxious, they feel more connected to others, they have happier families, they can focus on their work and their children can actually focus on their studies. There's the benefits we're going to see. But if we can help people to live like that, then the birth rate will just rise as a matter of course.

Right. But that's like, that's very difficult. People don't want to give up their sugar. They don't want to give up their, you know, their junk food. And

it's difficult. I like junk food too.

You like Nutella?

I love Nutella. I have no choice for that Nutella jar. And I can just take it up and I can eat it. And half of it can be gone in no time. They've actually learned If there's Nutella in the house, they hide it. But they put it in places like the bread maker, which is obvious, and I'll look for it and find it there. I am a Tutella addict. I love that stuff. But I've got to restrain myself. And what I do to a certain extent is say, do not buy that stuff. Yes. And some people give it to me like a joke, and I always give it away because I don't want it. Somebody gave me 4 big packs one time. I just went to the staff, lots of Nutella. I'm not going to take it home. It's dangerous to me.

Yeah, that's how I am with— and we talk about that in the book. I like cheese-flavored things. I like Cheetos and Doritos. And Nolan and I, we know we don't buy certain foods, you know.

We don't have it lying around. Now, what I have in my kitchen is a big bowl of fruit. And there's 2 things that actually are completely without any limit to spending in my house. One is fruit and the other is books. You can have any level of fruit and books you like. Other things, well, You know, you pay for them kind of thing.

Yes.

So you do that and you just don't have the bad stuff around. And you don't do things that will tempt you. Like, you know, as married people, as people of faith, we don't get involved in situations where you might be tempted to—

Look at somebody else.

Look at somebody else in the wrong way. And you don't sit down and have a— you don't get too close to someone of the opposite sex. You're very careful about that. And there's many other things too that we do. So yes, it's difficult, but that's what a good life is. It's taking the long term and not doing the short term. Right. Look, I get up in the morning. I don't always feel like going for a run and doing exercise and having a cold shower. But I do know that if I do these things, that I'll be better off. It's good for me. It's good for my body. It's good for my mind. So the secret of a good life really is doing the things that you think are good for you overall. Right. And sometimes that means controlling your diet, controlling your behaviour, relationship to other people, and making a conscious decision to do things like help other people, being part of a community, give service, those kind of things, even though you might not feel like you're doing it always. Right. I don't always feel like going to church on a Sunday morning, but I do know that if I go to church and take the effort, then I'll feel better. Right. And I have a better life and I have a more meaningful life. But it's just the right thing to do. It's having a sense of purpose in your life rather than living day to day.

Yeah. And one of the things I've found is that's super important is who you choose as a life partner. And so— Absolutely. Nolan and I, like, you go through moments where one of you is really strong and the other's weak, but you support each other through those times. And so when I'm stressed, like when we were experiencing our miscarriages, we both kind of just fell apart emotionally. But one of us would be strong in one way while the other was weak in that way. And we supported each other through those things. And one of us would go shopping and would not buy the cheese-flavored things. And Nolan is more like you. He has a sweet tooth. And so if I'm out shopping, I don't buy the stuff that I know he would be tempted to eat and vice versa. And so having a partner who can support you in those problems, those trials, and support you in your goals, like with both of us, we both like to, you know, I don't enjoy exercising as much as Nolan does. Nolan will work out an hour a day all the time, all the time consistently.

Well, he's He's stronger than I am.

He is. He's great, but he supports me and he doesn't guilt me and make me feel shame when I don't, you know. And so I exercise more because I'm married to him than I would if I weren't married— if I were married to somebody else. But, and then I help him in similar ways, you know. So it's super important to pick a spouse who will support you in these goals.

I think one of the saddest things is when you've got somebody with the right character who make a fantastic parent, often a woman, just cannot find the right man at the right time. And that's really, really sad. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It is awful. I think, look, I've been blessed many ways. I sometimes think I feel unfairly blessed that God has just poured out enormous blessings on me. And, you know, it's great to have money and so forth. The greatest blessing in my life is my wife.

Yeah.

We've been married 25 years and I'm just crazy about her and she about me, strangely enough, even though I'm not always very lovable. We have fights at times, but it's not always smooth going, but it's such a blessing to have the right partner. And, you know, when I first met her, I actually said, do you like children? She said it was like a job interview, but I had to— it was like a job— it was a killer question.

Right.

If the answer had come across wrong, there would be no second date.

Yeah.

Because that's what is important to me. And she's blessed, and we've had our children together, and I'm very blessed with them too.

Did you ever wonder at that back then if there was a chance of her rejecting you?

Oh, a lot of women reject me. I'm not that likable.

Because you— it's like a job interview for her. Do you like children? But what about her requirements for you?

Oh, I chased her so hard she didn't have a chance to back off. She said I was like a force of nature. I was so— I was determined. I was crazy about her from the first night we met. Not from the first minute we met. All I thought was, she's pretty. But then when I talked to her, I saw this this flashing excitement.

Her personality.

Her personality. You've met her. You know what she's like. She's just— she's just— Bullying. Everybody adores her. All my children prefer her to me. But I mean, who wouldn't? I mean, really. She's just such a wonderful person. And you can see that very quickly. We were— I was just crazy about her. I still am.

Yeah. She's awesome. She's really great. Okay. I do have questions about work ethic. Talk to me about work ethic. Work ethic. Do you believe people are lazier now than they have been in the past? Yes,

they are. As a people, they are, absolutely sure. You can see it in many different ways. You can see the reduction in the number of hours worked. There's more people who are not working, you know, often because of reasons of disability. But how come people today have so much more disability than they did a few decades back? If you look at attitudes towards what people want out of life, and if you compare young people what's important to you. You go back a few decades, even say like 1970s, and meaningful work becomes a very— is a very important thing to them. Family, children, meaningful work. If you look at now, the value of family and children have gone down, but also the value of meaningful work. Right. Now more jobs these days are considered more in terms of how much money can you get, how easy is it, how those kinds of things, not the value of the work itself. But that indicates less interest in work itself. And I think one of the benefits— I have obviously a kind of character that is highly dopamine sensitive. I'm very different from my family. My 3 siblings have got 3 kids between them.

Right.

And I've got 10. And we're very, very different. But that same difference has made me very happy. I'm a very feel very blessed. It's also made me a man of faith, which my siblings aren't. But also I am quite successful. And one of the reasons for that is I've got this focus. I just focus very hard on what I want to achieve and I work towards it. And I think very long-term. What are my goals? How can I do better? Constant, constant feedback. So in actual fact, living a better life can not only— yes, in the end it will help you to want more children. Mm-hmm. But it'll also help you to be happier, but it'll also help you to work hard too. Because I am more financially successful than anybody in my family for as far back as we can tell.

Right.

And I think that's the same character. And one of the things we can help people to do is to actually be more successful, but more successful in the way that really matters. Because one of my favourite sayings is, no other success can compensate for failure in the home. Because to me, that is success. Right. And to me, you had a child who became a billionaire but had a lousy family life and no— and the children were useless or didn't have any. To me, that'd be a failure. Whereas you can have a very ordinary life financially in terms of fame, but if you're a great parent and you've got great kids, they are successful in the best way. And I would judge my children far more upon that. And some of them are doing very well. My oldest son's a programmer working for Google and he makes very good money, but He's a spectacularly good father and his wife is a spectacularly good mother, especially with their 4th. They're great kids.

Okay, so this is going to be, I hope, not offensive to you, but you're introducing yourself to people in the United States and this is going to be something that's going to be thrown at you. They'll say, but you're a boomer and you're out of touch. You don't understand how life is now. How can you say we're lazier now? Life is harder for us now than it was for you growing up. How would you respond to that?

Well, it's not so much what I say, it's what the figures say. Social science is pretty unambiguous about it. In fact, Americans are more hardworking than almost anybody else in the world, certainly in the OECD countries, including Australia. And I think that's a key reason why America's done so well economically in recent times. But what can I say? The same principles apply. You look at the statistics and people are less interested in work. They are working less hard. They are worse in terms of mental illness. They are more liable to depression, to anxiety. This isn't my opinion. This is what social scientists say. This is when you measure people, when you look at what they do, what they believe in. Mm-hmm. Now, I am not I talk a lot with my franchisees. I have a very wide social circle in that sense. I don't say I know the whole general community, but if you look at the literature, you look at the science, there's no question at all that we're going in a very, very bad direction in all these ways. I don't know that many people who are seriously depressed. As a church member, you don't see so much of that perhaps as in other communities. My daughter, who's a psychiatrist, certainly sees a lot more of the bad things in the world, but If you follow statistics, if you follow the social science, we're going in a very, very bad direction. And it's fairly clear why, what's happening and what's going wrong. And we also believe from this book that it's very clear what you need to do about it.

Right. Yeah. And we believe that these things are all related, that the birth rate is related to the work ethic. It is related to anxiety and addiction and all of that. I do have one last question. Potentially one last question. What sort of advice would you have? Because we do talk about addiction quite a bit in the book, and addiction is a big problem. I've read studies that have shown that 90% of men currently struggle with a porn addiction, and of those who are religious, it's about 70%. And so, and as somebody, you know, I've worked with people who have addictions. That's something that I've done a lot of time with in my personal private life and in You know, just talking to people through my podcast and everything, but people who are addicted, especially to pornography and gambling, those are the 2 biggest addictions currently in the state, in the United States. They do not like their addictions. They want— most of them hate that they're addicted. Their self-worth is almost zero. Their confidence is almost zero. They do not want to have this, the addictions that they're struggling with. What sort of advice would you have for them when it comes to changing their lives around? And I know, and we have to recognize that you are not like a mental health professional, but again, you deal with people who have struggled. You have a lot of connections with a lot of people who are in all sorts of walks of life who have turned their lives around. So what sort of advice would you have?

Yeah, I remember speaking to a group of addicts. We had a meeting here at the conference center and they wanted me to give a talk. And so I said, okay, I have to confess my own addiction, which is Nutella.

Right. Which is kind of flippant, right?

But it's quite real. But it's quite real because in fact, you know, putting that spoon in the jar and taking it out, that is really— I can't think cocaine is all much, much better than a spoonful of Nutella. To me, it's just wonderful. It's amazing. And the problem is you tend to keep on eating even after it stops losing its giant pleasure. So even though I'm not tempted by alcohol or pornography or drugs or those kind of things too, I understand what it's like. Look, the only advice I can give anybody is this. First of all, you remove what is tempting. You get it out of the way. You don't have Nutella in the house. You don't have the bad stuff. You move it away so you're not tempted. If you're tempted by gambling, you get rid of things that remind you of gambling. You sometimes need to get rid of even people that you know who are pulling you down.

Right.

Like people who are drug addicts are often pulled back in by the community. So there's people, there's situations, there's environments that drag you in. You've got to go there. And I would say beyond that, find purpose and meaning in your life. And one of the best places you can do that is in church or in whatever faith community that you're part of. It reminds me of a story about a guy who was very, very badly addicted. He had this terrible problem of addiction and he got to the stage where he was looking at ending his own life. And so he rang up a suicide line and he talked to this lady there who just guided him through as to what to do. She said, you do this, this, this, this. That helped him through, and then he started going to church. And not only came to church, he became a pastor. And in the process of this, he married this really wonderful girl, and they were married. And one stage he said to her, we should do an outreach to people who are drug addicts. And she said, why would you do that? And he said, well, there's something I didn't tell you, but I had that problem in my life. Hmm. What the beginning of the turnaround was, I rang up this suicide helpline and this lady there said to do so-and-so and so-and-so. And she said, yes. And then I said, you should do this. And it was her. She was the one on the end of the phone.

Wow.

The point of it is, what he did was he got through this terrible time, but then he found some greater purpose in his life, some sense of meaning. And it also reminds me, there's a story about, and this happened quite a long time ago, where this man was dying from alcohol poisoning. He was an addict, he could not control his alcoholism, and he was in hospital. And the doctor said to him, look, you're finished, your life is over, you cannot control this, it's going to kill you, but— Sorry. In the next room, there's this young man, and it's the first time he's been hospitalized. And I want you to go in, I want you to talk to him, and I want you to tell him what the consequences are if he keeps on living in this way. That he can go the same way as you. At least you can do one good thing, is help this young man to— To stop. So he went in and he started talking to him and he started telling him how much damage alcohol had done in his life and how bad it was and how terrible it was. And as he was saying this, for the first time, he realized that he didn't need the alcohol himself so much. And he went on to be one of the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous. Wow. Because he got a sense of purpose in his life. And that's what we all need.

Right.

If we live day to day, people say they wanna be happy. You know, being happy, if you ask an alcoholic what their purpose of life is, they typically say, I wanna be happy, but they do it in the wrong way. And what we've gotta do is to go beyond that. We've got to think about what's the meaning in our life? What are we living for?

Right.

And if you know what you live for, it becomes a lot easier, or at least less difficult, to do the things you need to do. Be part of a community, get help from others. Alcoholics Anonymous is great that way, but churches are great too, synagogues, mosques, I don't care.

Right.

Any community which will help you to find purpose in your life. And I do certainly personally believe that if we have an understanding of God as a loving Father who wants the best for us and we make connection there and we build a relationship with him through our community, we've got a much better chance of living a better life. And this is the way To overcome it. It's not easy. And I sympathise for those who struggle. I really do. I've got to say, I probably find it easier than most people. But that's what it means. Mm. Find purpose. Find meaning. What are you living for? And if you go out of your way and you start living to help other people, including your family, and that becomes your purpose and that's the guiding light between everything you do, it's easier. It's never easy, but it's easier.

Right. Yeah, one of the things that I've discovered is that having 5 brothers myself, I tend to side with men over women because I sympathize with their positions. You know how it is harder for a man right now than it is for a woman. You know, women are favored in a lot of situations where men were in the past, and I feel like the pendulum has swung a little too far towards women. And away from men. And a lot of the men that I've watched, they struggle with finding that sense of purpose. How should they? How do you recommend somebody find purpose who is struggling to find it?

It's a matter of finding what matters to you the most, but religious communities are the best way. I would say That's a good place to start. There's many different churches around. There's many different ways of making contact with people. I would say that's a tremendous way to start. If you're Jewish, then I'd say go to the synagogue. Right. And generally speaking, the toughest one possible, like the Orthodox. We talk about Orthodox Jews in this book who have the highest rate of birth rates, one of the highest rates in the world, despite living in cities, which are normally sinks for that kind of thing. So community of faith is good, but failing that, any community that's involved in helping other people. Like, you'd be part of a community that's social welfare or volunteer or anything like that. It's an interesting thing is that people don't think— they think that they'll be happier if they do what feels good in the minute. But actually, in fact, they've found that the best way to feel better about yourself is to do something for somebody else.

Right.

So I'd say find service somewhere amongst people who care about service and live your life as something beyond yourself. And the more you get involved with that, it could be like we have a— I don't know if you have volunteer fire brigades in the States, but we have a thing called the CFA, Country Fire Authority, where people volunteer to guard from fire. That's a great sense of community. Yeah. Sometimes sporting clubs can be great, or you could be a coach for a children's team. Find service, find a place to serve, find a place to give to others. And you will achieve, you will receive far more blessings than anything you give out. And they've done this many times. They've actually done studies where they said, go out and say something nice to somebody or do something nice for somebody. And people constantly, they say, oh, that's so difficult. Mm-hmm. That won't, I won't like doing that. That'll be so harmful. And then they do feedback and they find out they feel better. Right. So sometimes you need to be pressured to do the right thing. You need encouragement to do the right thing, but when you do, it's better off.

Right. Thank you to those who have watched and listened to this conversation with Jim, and thank you, Jim, for joining me. I've really enjoyed our conversation. If you are interested in purchasing Birthrate Crisis, you can find it online. We've got it through birthratecrisisbook.com, and it's on Amazon. It's on all the retailers anywhere you might be interested. We've got the ebook, we've got paperback, we've got hardcover. We've got the audiobook. It's all available, and we look forward to getting feedback from you on what you think about it. Both Jim and I are open to receiving feedback. Yes. Jim loves constructive criticism. He loves— he likes when people push back against his ideas. He likes that conversation that creates. So I invite you to reach out to us, and we will— yeah, we'll talk to you all later. And thank you so much again for watching.