Look at what technologists do, not what they say
A new alliance between tech and the family?
This article is a reply to Katherine Boyle’s
“The Great Tech–Family Alliance.”
Katherine Boyle’s 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’s a hopeful message. But like tech’s early forays into politics — which began as a vague mood board of civic aspirations before coalescing into real policy efforts and wins — the pro-family cultural shift still has a long way to go.
This is not to say there isn’t real movement happening, and, as a parent, I’m 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.
Dinner conversations still tend to circle around whether children are worth having at all, or they treat global fertility rates at arm’s length. Many in tech embrace a borderless lifestyle that implies constant mobility, hosting events in cities like New York and Austin, which doesn’t blend well with family obligations. Children are rarely present at social gatherings. I’ve had the strange experience of bringing my child to events where I’m praised for this act as some sort of pro-family ideological flex — which, while flattering, misses the much less glamorous truth: with no evening child care available, I didn’t have a choice.
There’s something telling about this disparity. Tech is clearly eager to recast itself as pro-family, but it hasn’t yet internalized what is required to support families day to day.
Boyle, as a parent herself, is right to highlight pragmatic changes as the scaffolding that’s 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.
Oddly, however, it is tech’s unmatched capabilities that might be what’s 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’ve worked so hard to build.
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 — 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’s own. Tech worships individual talent, and it’s a unique thrill to live and work among peers who don’t shy away from greatness. But it also means that tech has to work harder than other industries to demonstrate that starting a family doesn’t require giving up these ambitions.
That case can’t 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.
If tech wants to embody pro-family values, it needs more skin in the game. It’s not enough to tweet about population decline or pass around graphs on it in the group chat. Tech will learn much faster what’s 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’s 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.
Tech has a track record of moving quickly once it figures out what it truly wants. If the pro-family turn is real — and I hope it is — 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.
