I don't really think soccer moms are a thing outside of the US

Of course, part of the situation was we were in a mostly-residential city, so most kids lived less than a twenty minutes' walk away. But those who didn't mostly came by car.

That's in the city, though. I don't know what things are like in the countryside. From what my friends tell me, they had to take a lot of public bus to go to school and places. I think soccer moms were more of a thing there, because you had a hard time getting anywhere without a car. Less hard than the US, but still.

This sounds terrible. I would much prefer driving 10 minutes to my suburban sports complex.

Now this setting sounds familiar... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma

I’m not sure where Americans get the idea Europeans don’t commute by car.

And at least in the Netherlands, sample size of my office (around 300 people) maybe a dozen people max commute by car because they live ~2 hours away or in tiny villages where the trains are only hourly rather than every 10 minutes. I'd assume that metric varies a lot depending on the country you're looking at, and if we're talking about how kids go to school/practice/wherever, I'm willing to bet even in car-heavy European countries that the vast majority of kids take public transport or their bikes.

I have friends with kids in the (rural) North of the Netherlands, and their kid's school is ~15km away from their house. The kids bike that every day, to quote my friend, "they've got legs and wheels, why would I chauffeur them around?"

And you'd take that 1.5hr each way (three hours of commute to go to swim practice, every day??) over having a parent (or a family friend carpooling) spend maybe 10-15 minutes driving you each way?