This is an actual conversation I had to have with my wife, having a third kid definitely requires a larger vehicle as the vast majority of cars today simply don't work for a family of five. Child car seats are too wide and the backseats of most cars are too narrow, and the price jump to a vehicle that would be able to handle three child car seats at once is enormous. Throw in some dogs, a couple pieces of luggage that any nuclear family would have to tote around, plus a stroller and it becomes prohibitively tight.
It took me MONTHS of shopping and playing child-seat-jenga in various car dealership lots before I finally found a sedan that was actually able to hold everything (thank you, Volkswagen, for making an actual family sedan that could fit a family!).
I replaced my 3-series BMW with a Honda Odyssey, and I've spent two years singing its praises. Part of the problem is that we have created a culture that uses cars as a form of self expression, and many early parents aren't ready to "be" a minivan. But the minivan is what you actually want as a parent: room for six people of any size, or four people and at least twice as much cargo as an SUV, with safe, remote control doors that can be operated by kids. It's a living room on wheels, including the TV.
Honda is trying to bridge the identify gap a little with paddle shifting, ventilated seats, and almost 300hp, but really we should try to step back from seeing the car as an expression of who we are, and try to optimize for the functionality that we use every day. As much fun as it was to drive the BMW, finding a way to fit my growing family into it was a stressful mess and I'm happy to have found, perhaps unintentionally, a much better situation.
Some of this insight came to me from Steve Kaufer of TripAdvisor, who at the time I was there was running a $4B company and driving an old minivan, because that's what his family fit in. He never cared for a fancy new car because fancy meant small and he wasn't out to impress anyone on the road anyway.
But I also can't pretend that Honda's naturally aspirated 6-cylinder and perfectly matched 10-speed (domestic!) paddle shifter didn't help seal the deal in my garage.
We ended up buying Diono Radian carseats [1], which are marketed as "the 3-across car seat"
We can fit our three kids in the back of our Honda Civic perfectly well.
But we've had exactly the same conversation. In order to have a fourth kid, we'd need to swap out our vehicles. House is fine, insurance is fine, income is fine, but we'd need to upgrade vehicles, and that seems to be just enough friction to make the idea unappealing.
> the vast majority of cars today simply don't work for a family of five
I recently visited Pakistan for the first time, and was amazed to see a family of five riding around on a small Honda motorbike. The father was driving, a small child sat in front of the father, the was mother hanging on behind the father, and the oldest daughter sitting on the far back with both legs hanging off to the left while holding an infant. None of them were wearing helmets. It was both terrifying & impressive.
There's an individual on YouTube who does a great job reviewing carseat fits into various vehicles. The example below he fits 3 car seats in the back of a Ford Focus, which most people wouldn't consider to be a large car.
It can be done. There's also a great product called the MultiMac sold in the UK and I think the EU. Fits 4 in the back seat, worth checking out if available in your locale. It won't ship to the US for regulatory reasons.
https://youtu.be/zybM8cltCxU?t=179
Let's not forget the expiration dates on Car Safety Seats. C'mon, really? Seats with Styrofoam may deteriorate eventually but I haven't heard of a casualties due to expired car seats.
When my partner and I had our third, the Mazda 5 was our compromise vehicle— still has sliding doors and the overall aesthetics of a minivan, but drives like a car, gets decent gas mileage, and has a footprint comparable to a CUV for the purposes of parking and so-on.
We may well go to a full size van at some point, but once the kids are no longer babies, they actually travel somewhat lighter— no stroller, playpen, diaper bag, etc being shlepped everywhere.
> the vast majority of cars today simply don't work for a family of five
Yes, but only if you count by unique line items. If you count by market share, the large family market is well served.
“S.U.V.s made up 47.4 percent of U.S. sales in 2019 with sedans at 22.1 percent,” said Tom Libby, automotive analyst at IHS Markit. “By 2025, we see the light-truck segment that includes S.U.V.s, vans and pickups to make up 78 percent of sales compared to 72 percent now.”[1]
Even if you find a seat configuration that fits, the next hassle that drove me nuts was getting access to seatbelts easily. Taking the kids anywhere is that much more annoying when you can't rely on the oldest at least sorting out their own buckles. (Only just occurred to me that a seatbelt extender would probably help bring the receiving part of the latch up from the depths between the seats -- too late now, bought a different car.)
Almost worth staggering births so that after three years the eldest is able to handle buckling themselves and then siblings. Worth finding every advantage like this when you're outnumbered by children.
I guess that's why Minivans are popular here in the US. I have a Mazda 5, which is like a mini-minivan and it's probably big enough for 3 car seats. I really like this car, too bad Mazda gave up on them here in the US.
Your comment leads me to wonder if car safety laws also contribute to this. Back in the day cars were large and you could fit four kids in the back of a station wagon. In sedans, there was a platform behind the seats in the rear that kids could stretch out on (no seatbelt of course).
Seems like a good opp. Make a bench seat attachment that fits into most cars, with interchangeable carseats for different aged kids. Could have a 3-wide and a 4-wide model for different sized cars.
I've been thinking about whether, when we have our fourth, to get a minivan, or just jump straight to a 15 passenger van. I know I'll need one eventually.
I once read a convincing argument that, in some cases, American's resistance to helmets caused helmet laws to have a net negative effect on health. The author claimed that the laws caused enough of a reduction in ridership that the lost exercise outweighed the reduction in injury. I've attempted to find the paper again, but I can't seem to track it down.
In the comments on my post about the paper when it originally came out (https://www.jefftk.com/p/three-car-seats) people pointed out that the methodology cannot determine whether there is a common cause, and a common cause is actually quite plausible. Posit that over time people are becoming more protective of children, for whatever reason. This (a) makes parenting substantially more work/money (closer supervision, more childcare hours), leading to people having fewer kids on the margin, and (b) makes people supportive of legislation to protect children (car seat laws). So while it looks that car seat laws are causing fewer children, they could actually both be caused by changing societal attitudes toward child protection.
The reality for a lot of families is that having children is frighteningly expensive.
The twin costs of childcare and a reduction in parental work hours (often mom's) and as a result future career and income advancement potential can be substantial drag on a family's income. Each additional child just prolongs this drag.
Multigenerational households where grandparents provide childcare are one solution around this problem that I've seen.
A lot of people move away from home to find work, especially if educated, and don't have access to grandparents. Also, as people are waiting longer to have kids, the grandparents are older and not as capable -- or may even be in need of care themselves.
In addition to childcare, there's also health care and education to pay for. Middle class families get virtually no help on either front.
A coworker and his wife just had a child. They got on wait-lists before the child was even born because of the huge demand. They also told me that they were lucky to find a place (work subsidized) that was less than $1k.
In general there's a strong negative correlation between development of a society and birth rate. Also income. It's extremely powerful, and applies literally all over the world. I suspect that in America over the last few decades, development continued. Child-safety laws came along for the ride. [1, 2]
Income is a less compelling argument in America as wages have remained totally constant on an inflation adjusted basis for ages.
I can see this as being correlated, but I don't see this as being causative. And that's from someone who thinks some of the child/society safety laws are a bit absurd.
I think maybe it could go something like this: child safety laws are more prevalent/stringent in advanced society, living in an advanced society carries a higher cost of living, as the cost of living goes up (without matching income raises, like the US for the past 30+yrs) the people who feel they can't afford children rises. I think there are other underlying causes and the overall effect is a combination.
This reads like a textbook example of "correlation is not causation". You think there'd be ...some? people talking about how they decided not to have a child because she/he wouldn't fit in the car if it's going to have a measurable effect on birth rates but at least personally I have never, ever heard this one.
When you start adding all sorts of "cost of compliance" stuff to having kids the people who can usually afford to comply (upper middle class, so most people here) start taking that into account.
Meanwhile the rich and the poor just keep doing what they've been doing.
I think this is sort of burying the lede though that if the cost of a bigger car is keeping people from having kids, that implies that the real reasons for the declining birth rate are economic.
Marriage rates are historic lows. Birth rates are historic lows. Women having careers is certainly the current belief why these are so low. Though as the article says they dont quite explain the situation.
Car seats are ridiculous. Not a thing I considered before having a kid. It kind of makes sense, now that more kids could happen, the probability of filling the back seats with car seats is certainly expensive and annoying. Thus when that third kid comes along, the minivan must happen.
A convincing argument being made by the article but I feel it's similar in that it's just 1 piece of the puzzle.
The other factor no doubt occurring is how imbalanced the system has become. It has become increasingly risky to even have a relationship with a woman let alone going to the extent of having a kid. The nanny government has come in to 'help' in many ways far beyond just car seats.
> They discovered that tightening those laws had no detectable effects on the rates of births of first and second children, but was accompanied by a drop, on average, of 0.73 percentage points in the number of women giving birth to a third while the first two were young enough to need safety seats. That may not sound much, but it is a significant fraction of the 9.36% of women in the sample who did become third-time mothers.
> The authors also made two other pertinent observations. The reduction they saw was confined to households that did actually have access to a car. And it was larger in households where a man was living with the mother. The latter point is relevant, they think, because this man would take up space in a vehicle that could otherwise be occupied by a child.
Yikes. The front passenger seat is not an acceptable place to put a car seat anyway.
Two blokes wonder why the same highly educated women who want a safer world for their children don’t want to push four babies out of their vagina.
Edited to add: “Dr Nickerson and Dr Solomon found, in fact, that the third-child deterrent appears stronger among wealthier families” - they put this down to them not wanting to buy a larger vehicle to accommodate 3+ kids because it’s too gauche!
I think we’re supposed to conclude that car seats are actually costing lives, which is the wrong conclusion to draw because it ignores all the injury and disability caused by car accidents.
I think there is a plausible mechanism for causation here. It adds to the expensiveness of children -- many smaller vehicles are not even compatible with the big car seats required, or with having more than two car seats in use. There is kind of a calculation: if we would have even one kid we need a "family" car; getting to 3 or more kids basically requires a minivan.
Lacking an Economist subscription, is it due to a game theory explanation for how above a certain survival or wealth probability threshold, human societies switch from r-selection to K-selection, or is it just that the overprotected ones genetically select out because they grow up to be unattractive?
This is all rings very true, but there's a lemma which might not play well on HN: how much does requiring people to use public transit reduce the birth rate?
Getting 3+ children around town to school, errands, etc in a minivan isn't a trivial job. Dragging around 3 under-six children by bus, or train? That's nearly Herculean.
I would expect the fertility hit to large families from the _lack_ of cars to be far, far greater than the hit from requiring larger cars. This also aligns with the (traditional) higher US fertility rate, where the US has been traditionally (large) car focused, whereas small cars and mass transit dominated in Europe.
[+] [-] irateswami|5 years ago|reply
It took me MONTHS of shopping and playing child-seat-jenga in various car dealership lots before I finally found a sedan that was actually able to hold everything (thank you, Volkswagen, for making an actual family sedan that could fit a family!).
[+] [-] ynniv|5 years ago|reply
Honda is trying to bridge the identify gap a little with paddle shifting, ventilated seats, and almost 300hp, but really we should try to step back from seeing the car as an expression of who we are, and try to optimize for the functionality that we use every day. As much fun as it was to drive the BMW, finding a way to fit my growing family into it was a stressful mess and I'm happy to have found, perhaps unintentionally, a much better situation.
Some of this insight came to me from Steve Kaufer of TripAdvisor, who at the time I was there was running a $4B company and driving an old minivan, because that's what his family fit in. He never cared for a fancy new car because fancy meant small and he wasn't out to impress anyone on the road anyway.
But I also can't pretend that Honda's naturally aspirated 6-cylinder and perfectly matched 10-speed (domestic!) paddle shifter didn't help seal the deal in my garage.
[+] [-] war1025|5 years ago|reply
We can fit our three kids in the back of our Honda Civic perfectly well.
But we've had exactly the same conversation. In order to have a fourth kid, we'd need to swap out our vehicles. House is fine, insurance is fine, income is fine, but we'd need to upgrade vehicles, and that seems to be just enough friction to make the idea unappealing.
[1] https://www.diono.com/us/product/radian-3r-2020/
[+] [-] PopeDotNinja|5 years ago|reply
I recently visited Pakistan for the first time, and was amazed to see a family of five riding around on a small Honda motorbike. The father was driving, a small child sat in front of the father, the was mother hanging on behind the father, and the oldest daughter sitting on the far back with both legs hanging off to the left while holding an infant. None of them were wearing helmets. It was both terrifying & impressive.
[+] [-] jxramos|5 years ago|reply
Alex on Autos https://youtu.be/RTh06yWql_s?t=223
It can be done. There's also a great product called the MultiMac sold in the UK and I think the EU. Fits 4 in the back seat, worth checking out if available in your locale. It won't ship to the US for regulatory reasons. https://youtu.be/zybM8cltCxU?t=179
[+] [-] 1-6|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kube-system|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lsllc|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikepurvis|5 years ago|reply
We may well go to a full size van at some point, but once the kids are no longer babies, they actually travel somewhat lighter— no stroller, playpen, diaper bag, etc being shlepped everywhere.
[+] [-] testfoobar|5 years ago|reply
Minivans have locked this market segment up for years. Honda Odyssey & Toyota Sienna are the market leaders.
[+] [-] jgalt212|5 years ago|reply
Yes, but only if you count by unique line items. If you count by market share, the large family market is well served.
“S.U.V.s made up 47.4 percent of U.S. sales in 2019 with sedans at 22.1 percent,” said Tom Libby, automotive analyst at IHS Markit. “By 2025, we see the light-truck segment that includes S.U.V.s, vans and pickups to make up 78 percent of sales compared to 72 percent now.”[1]
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/business/suv-sales-best-s...
[+] [-] prawn|5 years ago|reply
Almost worth staggering births so that after three years the eldest is able to handle buckling themselves and then siblings. Worth finding every advantage like this when you're outnumbered by children.
[+] [-] vondur|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] christophilus|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jo6gwb|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marcandre|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sfa_aok|5 years ago|reply
- Different countries have different standards, so car seats vary accordingly
- Models change over the years
So finding out if you can get three car seats into a car is a massive headache.
[+] [-] lxmorj|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agensaequivocum|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mhh__|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grillvogel|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cameldrv|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lagerstedt|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ortusdux|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] josephcsible|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kfarr|5 years ago|reply
Nearly half of Seattle’s helmet citations go to homeless people https://crosscut.com/news/2020/12/nearly-half-seattles-helme...
[+] [-] mb7733|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] watwut|5 years ago|reply
It does not reduces sport "I am going to get workout now" trips - the most dangerous ones. (But still pretty safe!)
[+] [-] jefftk|5 years ago|reply
In the comments on my post about the paper when it originally came out (https://www.jefftk.com/p/three-car-seats) people pointed out that the methodology cannot determine whether there is a common cause, and a common cause is actually quite plausible. Posit that over time people are becoming more protective of children, for whatever reason. This (a) makes parenting substantially more work/money (closer supervision, more childcare hours), leading to people having fewer kids on the margin, and (b) makes people supportive of legislation to protect children (car seat laws). So while it looks that car seat laws are causing fewer children, they could actually both be caused by changing societal attitudes toward child protection.
[+] [-] testfoobar|5 years ago|reply
The twin costs of childcare and a reduction in parental work hours (often mom's) and as a result future career and income advancement potential can be substantial drag on a family's income. Each additional child just prolongs this drag.
Multigenerational households where grandparents provide childcare are one solution around this problem that I've seen.
[+] [-] analog31|5 years ago|reply
In addition to childcare, there's also health care and education to pay for. Middle class families get virtually no help on either front.
[+] [-] giantg2|5 years ago|reply
Except many grandparents are still working, especially to cover healthcare costs.
[+] [-] oramit|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arcticbull|5 years ago|reply
Income is a less compelling argument in America as wages have remained totally constant on an inflation adjusted basis for ages.
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Total-fertility-rate-TFR...
[2] https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2016/december/link...
[+] [-] tsjq|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] giantg2|5 years ago|reply
I think maybe it could go something like this: child safety laws are more prevalent/stringent in advanced society, living in an advanced society carries a higher cost of living, as the cost of living goes up (without matching income raises, like the US for the past 30+yrs) the people who feel they can't afford children rises. I think there are other underlying causes and the overall effect is a combination.
[+] [-] svachalek|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway0a5e|5 years ago|reply
When you start adding all sorts of "cost of compliance" stuff to having kids the people who can usually afford to comply (upper middle class, so most people here) start taking that into account.
Meanwhile the rich and the poor just keep doing what they've been doing.
[+] [-] sam_lowry_|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fallingfrog|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sleepysysadmin|5 years ago|reply
Car seats are ridiculous. Not a thing I considered before having a kid. It kind of makes sense, now that more kids could happen, the probability of filling the back seats with car seats is certainly expensive and annoying. Thus when that third kid comes along, the minivan must happen.
A convincing argument being made by the article but I feel it's similar in that it's just 1 piece of the puzzle.
The other factor no doubt occurring is how imbalanced the system has become. It has become increasingly risky to even have a relationship with a woman let alone going to the extent of having a kid. The nanny government has come in to 'help' in many ways far beyond just car seats.
[+] [-] kube-system|5 years ago|reply
> The authors also made two other pertinent observations. The reduction they saw was confined to households that did actually have access to a car. And it was larger in households where a man was living with the mother. The latter point is relevant, they think, because this man would take up space in a vehicle that could otherwise be occupied by a child.
Yikes. The front passenger seat is not an acceptable place to put a car seat anyway.
[+] [-] IBCNU|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hyko|5 years ago|reply
Edited to add: “Dr Nickerson and Dr Solomon found, in fact, that the third-child deterrent appears stronger among wealthier families” - they put this down to them not wanting to buy a larger vehicle to accommodate 3+ kids because it’s too gauche!
I think we’re supposed to conclude that car seats are actually costing lives, which is the wrong conclusion to draw because it ignores all the injury and disability caused by car accidents.
[+] [-] dzdt|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] motohagiography|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] satellite2|5 years ago|reply
https://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
Thanks to the Economist for our daily dose of sketchy papers
[+] [-] loughnane|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bpodgursky|5 years ago|reply
Getting 3+ children around town to school, errands, etc in a minivan isn't a trivial job. Dragging around 3 under-six children by bus, or train? That's nearly Herculean.
I would expect the fertility hit to large families from the _lack_ of cars to be far, far greater than the hit from requiring larger cars. This also aligns with the (traditional) higher US fertility rate, where the US has been traditionally (large) car focused, whereas small cars and mass transit dominated in Europe.