I am nor sure what you consider “walking distance” but I am going to assume there is a greater population density where you live.
I do not think there is anything that is not a private residence within 200 m of me. It is well over a kilometre to the nearest school. It is more than 2 to the closest business. I am having trouble relating to a world that has all these services available a short stroll from my front door.
Oh, and with regards to the poster from the UK with the free daycare, I pay $800 per month for one child ( and have 4 ).
So yes, these places are very much sounding like utopia to me.
There are 25 day cares within 700m from my home, 3 supermarkets and 3 primary schools, 3 parks and the police station.
Cars are greatly disadvantaged because of the lack of parking.
I have lived in several different towns and know a few more in the area. The town that was 1300 people had plenty of daycare within walking distance (500 m). The town with 150 people had about 1 km to the daycare but we didn't use it, had no kids at the time. The other towns I know: 10k ppl, plenty of daycare within 1 km wherever you live. 500 ppl, two day care at least, all in 500 m. Starting to guess population now but around 500 ppl and I saw at least two daycare when passing through. Surface similar to the other 500 ppl.
Where we live now is planned and built around 1980 and we have five daycare within 1 km. Three of them are less than 200 m away. Many of the younger kids gets walked there by their slightly older siblings that just continue to school after leaving them at daycare. This city have 100 k ppl, we live in the most populated areas of town with mixed single house and bigger appartment buildings with around 10 k ppl.
They all had space for our kid without having to wait or book a place before birth. The state is required to have space for all kids so they keep track of how many births and plan accordingly.
All this in northern Sweden.
I also know a few towns in Germany with similar situations except less bicycle-friendly roads and a lot more population. Didn't have the kid in daycare there though.
We want kids to be able to have other kids to play with and professionals to look after them.
I love my kids dearly, but I'm not cut out to stay at home raising them full-time from age 0.25 through 5.
I would argue that the fact that any of us have to work at all is just poor societal planning.
I mean, societies have been a thing for thousands of years already. At this point, I should be able to argue on the Internet that we should behave as if all problems have been solved by now because—-I mean, why haven’t they been?
The fact that so many parents live so far from available daycares that they need to drive to them is not ideal. It is a problem worth solving and there is no fundamental impossibility in solving it: part of the reason daycares are far is because cars exist, but it is unhealthy for a society to let the option to have a car degenerate into a requirement to have a car.
In any case, I never said the problem was solved or that anyone should act as if it was solved. I'm just pointing it out, because we're not going to solve any issue we refuse to even acknowledge.
Now, suppose I did manage to get my kids to daycare that I could conceivably ride a bike too, and suppose I manage to fit three on a bike, including an infant that’s not even one year old. What then, how do I actually get to my afterwards job? Yep, I still need to drive.
Ultimately, I could probably design my life around the goal of not owning a car. I could move to a place that’s close enough to my job to walk (and hope that all my future jobs are similarly close), and also find a daycare that’s close enough. I would probably have to compromise on housing size, quality and/or cost, distance to my friends and family, my hobbies that require indoor and outdoor space, but why would I, when I can hit a pretty good trade off with everything else, just by getting a car?
I'm going to say one thing, though: I would appreciate it if car owners were a bit more conscious of the externalities of their way of life. When I walk or bike around my neighbourhood, every car I encounter is a nuisance to me. They are noisy, they are scary, they are everywhere. So it's not just about your comfort, it's also about mine. If I understand that your car makes your life easier, and you understand that your car makes my life worse, maybe we can arrive to a productive compromise rather than think that the other is out to get us.
Thing is, the car-centric lifestyle, when taken to its extreme, is so space-intensive that it becomes the ruination of other lifestyles. The more people drive, the less amenities need to be near them, the more space is taken up by roads and parking, the less walkable the area becomes, the more people drive, and so on, until no one can walk anywhere. We have to be cognizant of that and make sure it doesn't get to that point. Part of that is making sure that e.g. as many people as possible have daycares at a walking distance from them.
Now, if you don't have any daycares at a walking distance, do what you must, I'm not the one who is going to judge (what would that achieve?) But in the grand scheme of things, it highlights a problem. Let's keep it in mind, you know. Let's try to solve it at some point, maybe.
But why? You seem to assume it to be universally accepted that everyone wants to live in walkable places, but the evidence in front of you is simply contradicting this. People routinely move to non-walkable places by the millions, with the expectation that they will be driving everywhere, and they don't mind it at all. I think you are so deeply emotionally embedded in your anti-car lifestyle (especially given how you describe them as "scary, noisy nuisances") that it might be hard for you to conceive that people might prefer this to the alternative you describe.
> Part of that is making sure that e.g. as many people as possible have daycares at a walking distance from them.
No, because it is very much unclear that people actually want that more than other things. If you ask people whether they want to have a nice daycare in a walking distance, most will answer "yes", this much is true. However, this is not necessarily compatible with many other things people want, like, for example, big houses, low costs, low noise, low traffic (including public transit and foot traffic), or generally living in a place with fewer people and less churn, so that you can actually get to know your neighbors.
Given all these preferences and constrains, what most people are aiming for is a satisfactory trade-off. Your proposal about making sure that as many people as possible have daycares at a walking distance from them is basically trying to force on them your preferences, and ignoring the trade-off that they choose.
Going back to your description of this vicious (to you) cycle of car-centric lifestyle, I can also describe virtous cycle, where a walkable place pulls more people into it, resulting in more businesses and amenities setting shop there, which pulls even more people, and adds more transit options which are now economical due to existing density etc. Now imagine that someone helpfully tries to "make sure" that as many people as possible have a car parking spot close to where they want to be, and institute parking minimums on businesses. After all, if you ask people whether they want to have cheap and plentiful parking anywhere they need to go, most people will answer yes, just like when asked about daycares within walking distance.
Of course, as you almost certainly realize, you can either have daycares in a walking distance, or free and plentiful parking everywhere, but not both at the same time. Thus, if you understand the mechanics of this, you'll oppose the parking minimums (which, by the way, I oppose too). However, for the same reason, many people will oppose your plans of densification and daycares at walking distance, because they simply don't like it as much as they like other stuff, and they understand that there's a trade-off involved.
> But in the grand scheme of things, it highlights a problem. Let's keep it in mind, you know. Let's try to solve it at some point, maybe.
Yes, let's keep in mind that there are trade-offs, and figure out a way to eliminate it, so that people can satisfy more of their preferences. Often technology helps; for example, cars eliminated huge part of a trade-off between being able to live in calmer, less dense places, and access to amenities. Future technology might help here in other ways.