A weekly newsletter for parents in the age of AI

Your Kids Won't Be Raised by Robots. You're Still in Charge.

Hedge Against AI is a free weekly newsletter about raising a family in a world that keeps telling you everything will be automated, including your kids' future.

Essays on fatherhood, family values, real-world competence, and what it actually takes to raise children who won't be spiritually disposable. No panic. No boosterism. Just parents figuring it out.

Free weekly newsletter. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.

Family Before Algorithm

Three things we believe about raising kids in a world that wants to automate everything.

Judgment Over Automation

Your kids will grow up with tools that produce competent-looking work for free. The scarce thing won't be output. It will be taste, discernment, and knowing what actually matters. That starts at home.

Contact Over Abstraction

Raise children who have touched the real world. Cook with them. Let them fail. Broad, inconvenient experience is the thing AI cannot substitute, and the thing that builds real people.

Resilience Without Paranoia

This is not bunker fantasy. A hedge is just a family that isn't totally exposed to one story about the future. More rooted, more capable, less dependent on systems you don't control.

Not a Tech Newsletter. A Family Newsletter That Knows Tech.

Most writing about AI falls into camps: the boosters who think every problem is a throughput problem, the doomers who talk as if history began in 2022, and the cope merchants telling you the future belongs to “adaptive knowledge collaborators.”

None of them are talking about what actually matters to us: raising a family. What do you tell your kids about the world they're inheriting? How do you teach values when the culture keeps insisting everything is about to be automated? This newsletter starts from that question.

Fatherhood, family, and raising kids who aren't spiritually disposable
Real stories from parents navigating technology with their children
Place-based essays from Saigon, Shanghai, and wherever family life is happening
Honest takes on AI hype, from parents who actually build with this stuff

From the founders

“Once you have children, a lot of internet rhetoric starts sounding deranged. That observation is more or less the origin story of this newsletter.”
James Elkins
James Elkins

Co-Founder

Toa Lohe
Toa Lohe

Co-Founder

What You'll Get Each Week

One thoughtful email for parents who want to raise real kids in an increasingly automated world.

Fatherhood & Family Life

One scene each week about raising kids, the daily work of parenting, and the kind of competence that comes from contact with real life, not from a software demo.

Real Families, Real Stories

Reported pieces from parents, teachers, counselors, and the people actually raising the next generation. How they think about technology, values, and what matters.

Editorial Takes

Shorter pieces on the gap between what AI promises for families and what it actually delivers. Hype-free, grounded in what parents see every day.

Raising Kids in a Changing World

Clear thinking on how automation, AI, and digital culture are reshaping childhood, and what parents can do about it without losing their minds.

Join Parents Who Give a Damn

A free weekly newsletter for families navigating a world that wants to automate everything, including childhood. Real essays, real stories, no hype.

Free weekly newsletter. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.