I have two kids, not three, but we have never had a car, always taken the kids everywhere on public transport. I’m not going to say every trip was a joyful experience, but imho you are making a way bigger deal out of this than the reality. Although to be fair it depends a lot on the quality of the public options in your metro region.

Downside of kids that always travel by public transport: on the rare occasions that they do travel by car, they puke nearly every time. For us public transport is a lot less stressful than traveling by car.

I applaud your efforts my friend, part of our problem is we've never lived anywhere with good public transit. I will also just throw out the world changes quite dramatically from 2 kids to 3 kids, once those little buggers outnumber you things get a lot more exciting in parenting.

I don’t fault folks who have three kids, but with fertility rates plummeting, it’s not something that should be optimized for. Families are getting smaller over time.

The question is if families are getting smaller because parents don’t want more kids or because of regulation[0]. Maybe requiring people to have smaller cars or use public transport would further cut the birth rate.

I’m only half-serious. I know there is good reason for public transport or having smaller cars in urban environments.

0: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3665046

Generally the deciding factor has been birth control. The more birth control is available and accepted as a choice, the more women choose to postpone their first child, which automatically leads to having fewer children.

> Maybe requiring people to have smaller cars or use public transport would further cut the birth rate.

This should be easy enough to test by comparing against cohorts in Europe and Asia.

Fertility rates plummeting is not necessarily a good thing in the long run, so maybe having kids should be incentivized.

Yay for you, but the public transit in my area is useless for getting to the stores or destinations. It's better for commuting into the dense urban area for work hours, but not gonna fly for taking my kids shoe-shopping.

That said, glad you have the option for public transit. I'd be happy if my city decided to beef up public transit, but the NIMBYs keep shooting down the public transit overhaul bills.

Minivans aren't the problem. That's a sensible design for moving a lot of people around.

It's those lifted trucks that have a hood taller than some shorter adults, to say nothing of children. New pickups in general are just ridiculous compared to the same models from 30 years ago, which were just fine for, say, actual ranch work.

A minivan is practical especially with 2 or more kids. In my area vast majority of people have SUVs and pickups and it’s normally one person in it. People have to have that GMC Denali or other equivalent giant vehicle to show off I guess. It’s those big SUVs and pickups that make no sense, people lean towards the “why not?” Instead of “why?”.

So how was it working before all these SUV? We had a “Fiat Panda” as kids and we were five people and never had problems carrying stuff.

Why did you need a minivan when a camry or equivalent can easily and now comfortably seat 5?

In response to that I will take quote "Only Dead on the Inside" by Author James Breakwell

"A minivan has room for luggage. It has room for air. And it has room liquids. That's right: It has space for THREE states of matter. Kids shoot liquid out of every orifice, and it constantly needs to be replenished. The minivan knows that it knows everything. Each minivan has at least twelve state-of-the-art liquid stabilization chambers, known to commoners as cup holders. That's way more than any other vehicle. It's basically a cup holder collection with an engine attached. If you want to you can haul a dozen slushies at once. Can't find slushies at the end of the world, not my problem. I don't have problems. I drive a minivan."

More seriously, when we go to visit family you can't fit luggage for a family of 5 and that family in a Camry, also when you have to grocery shop with 3 small children you have to be able to fit both the groceries and the children in the car at the end.

I agree that 3 children is way different than 2 depending on age. Just think child seats (i.e. trying to fit 3 in the back seat of a regular sedan will be a challenge, while it's completely possible for 2. Been there, lived that without any issues.

For luggage (even with 3 I would think) a hatch back does wonders. My larger limousine cannot fit the same amount of luggage or larger packaged purchases, simply because it doesn't fit through the trunk door at all, gets stuck because it's too long or too high and gets caught by stuff that sticks down into the trunk space (why they designed things that way, do not ask me). All of those things fit into the smaller hatchback we have without any trouble at all.

I can count the number of times I have had to put something in the rear seats for groceries on one hand and that was w/ the "large" car where I combined toilet paper, kitchen paper and a 'large' Costco run and the trunk space itself could've fit everything if it hadn't been for the above mentioned problems that would have been solved w/ the hatchback. 3 children on the backseat would've been no issue in the hatchback in that situation. Now going through a Costco on a busy Saturday morning w/ 3 small children would've been another story ;)

Have you ever tried installing 3 car seats into a compact car?

There are some expensive car seats designed to cram all three kids into a back seat, but buying a larger car instead is cheaper. They also tend to be designed for triplets, if all three kids are different sizes it becomes a lot more complicated.

Most cars only have attachments for two car seats in the rear, so even if you did have space the middle seat would have to use the generally discouraged seat belt install instead.

Right, that's my point in responding to the parent comment about fitting 5 people in a Camry; it's not so simple when 3 of them require car seats.

We have a 7-seater for extended family. My nephews come over a lot, so that allows us to transport all four children, two to three adults, and a small amount of shopping bags or picnic supplies.

The fuel efficiency isn't great, but that's why our primary vehicle is a sedan that seats four (plug-in hybrid). Generally we use the sedan, except for large shopping trips or when needing the larger seating capacity.

I concur, and try fitting three car seats next to each other in the back of anything but a very large truck or SUV. Never mind the fact that often one parent usually needs to sit next to really young babies for the first year or so.