[cloutchaser]

You can only just fit 2 child seats into a smaller car. For anyone with 3 children, anything without 2 rows of back seats is basically an unusable car for the whole family.

And the reason everyone is going on about "car size inflation" and how it was fine in smaller cars 20 years ago is the same reason - you didn't have to use child seats. Now because of safety you literally can't have a family larger than 2 children with a smaller car.

[CalRobert]

For what it's worth, I've had three kids in a Prius ages 2-6 (the oldest was tall enough to use a booster in the middle) and there are narrower full car seats. One fancy option is https://www.multimac.com/range, which even includes 4-across options.

[matsemann]

Moving the goal post. Your previous comment was about how I don't have a family (for some reason) and you discussed explicitly "a family of 4". Now you're changing the number.