The new secretary of transportation, Sean Duffy, recently made waves by directing his agency to give preference in grant-making to communities with higher fertility and marriage rates. For America to become less “Family Unfriendly,” its transportation policies certainly do need to be reformed. What should be first on the list?
Cheaper minivans.
Moms in minivans are a running joke. My husband and I bought a used one back when we were hoping for our third kid. (We now have four… kids, that is, not minivans). Around the same time, a viral music video called “Never Thought I’d Do It” was making the rounds and illustrating the appeal for parents of the admittedly unappealing-looking car type. “I sold out to all the leg room,” sings one of the moms early in the song.
Our previous car—a Toyota Corolla—could not easily fit three car seats, and it wasn’t up to us how many we needed to carry. These days, car seat regulations are onerous. Where I live, the absolute earliest you can ditch a booster is age eight. (My second son is turning eight this summer, but he’s a skinny kid. Based on the weight requirements he’s not getting out of a booster any time soon). As academic research has shown, there is a very plausible argument that car seats have depressed national fertility rates. Parents unable to fit more car seats into their too-small vehicles have opted not to have that third baby. By the same logic, minivan prices must also play a part in the current “birth dearth.” At our local car dealership the going rate for a new minivan is well over $40,000! By contrast, a new commuter car is $25,000.
The consequences of car costs on families who want more kids should be obvious. A friend of mine who is pregnant with her eleventh child recently purchased a not-so-gently-used minivan to add to the family fleet. With that many kids, she wouldn’t be driving around in a sedan under any circumstances, but they’re a hockey family and the cumbersome gear requires a bunch of space. Unfortunately, the minivan was a dud. She and her husband paid $16,000 for it, have spent another $16,000 in repair costs, and are still trying to navigate their way through the legal system to get some of their money back. How much easier would it have been for them if they could have felt financially secure in walking into a dealership and buying a new, working minivan under warranty?
Another friend, a mom to six, couldn’t afford to buy an eight-seat minivan when her last child was born. Their current van only seats seven. As a result, when the whole family (including dad) drives somewhere, they drive two cars: a minivan and dad’s smaller car. How much more financially secure would they be if their initial minivan hadn’t cost so much? Perhaps significantly. How much easier would their lives be if they could afford a bigger car? Much easier. Such smaller questions about one family lead to a larger, political one: What could we do for families if one of their biggest expenses—transportation—was more manageable?
For many years, U.S. transportation policy has been focused on lofty goals like subsidizing electric vehicles and building high-speed rail. As a result, we have many more electric vehicles (although no high-speed rail). I rode the Eurostar when I was a graduate student. It was a pleasant way for an adventurous twenty-something to get between Paris and London. But I don’t need to go to London or Paris right now. I need to go to the grocery store. And then to one kid’s music lesson, another’s Cub Scouts pack meeting, and to our homeschool co-op.
The focus on electric vehicles, per auto chiefs, is pushing companies to make smaller cars to turn a profit. That’s because the enormous batteries needed to power large electric vehicles are not cost-effective. The head of Ford said to the Guardian: “These huge, enormous EVs are never going to make money. The battery is $50,000, even with low-nickel, LFP chemistry. They will never be affordable.”
America’s transportation policy does not prioritize middle-class families with three or more kids in rural or suburban areas. To the extent it cares about any families, it seems mostly focused on upper-middle class or wealthy families with one or two kids who live in urban areas and could benefit from small electric vehicles and an American version of Eurostar.
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This is in part, I suspect, because the environmental movement has profoundly shaped our current transportation policy, and environmentalism has a significant anti-natal component. Many environmentalists would prefer fewer people in order to use less of the Earth’s natural resources. As one famous activist, Jane Goodall, said in a comment to the Independent: “if there were just a few of us, then the nasty things we do wouldn’t really matter and Mother Nature would take care of it – but there are so many of us.”
By contrast, there is no activist group fighting for better transportation policies for moms with larger broods. But the value such moms contribute to our society— raising up the next generation of kids who will fund our Social Security budget, become our future politicians and business leaders, and discover tech solutions to environmental scarcity problems—should be undeniable.
As a mom from Connecticut with much on my plate, I have no idea how to improve minivan manufacturing or auto-maker incentives to ensure American consumers can buy a cheaper and better product. But I am confident there are many smart and inventive people in this country who do. Secretary Duffy, if he wants to help large families out, should answer a question that his predecessors seem not to have even considered: How do we get mom a more affordable family car?
