Posted by Recently I was speaking with a local teacher who is just beginning to understand the connection between suburban cul-de-sac, car dependent living and the erosion of the traditional sense of community and togetherness. What she said painted the clearest picture of just how out-of-control the American family is, and how car culture has facilitated and even motivated this societal departure. Her words rang true:
“I wish your message reached the parents I see every day. They are so tired, so burned out, driving their kids to lessons, travel sports… they’re exhausted and their kids are exhausted. They eat at drive-thrus almost every night. The kids tell me they start their homework at nine-o’clock. Instead of resting on the weekends, these families drive hours to lacrosse or soccer tournaments. Families are so tired, so stressed, and it keeps getting worse.”
These were startling words coming from someone who has worked with children and families for decades. It made me think about my childhood, a time in which travel sports were JUST for the elite student athletes. Truthfully, I loved baseball, and would have been tremendously excited to play on a bigger stage against a more competitive pool of players.
But I didn’t. We didn’t have much money, so instead of the long car rides for travel sports, I played whiffle ball with friends in adjacent backyards. During the summer, we would round up the neighborhood crew and play football behind the old Catholic Church. At night, we would shoot hoops in my buddy Matt’s driveway. We plowed our own bike trails in the woods, and even built our own bridge over a small stream from lumber that the local hardware store had thrown out.
If we needed to travel any distance, our bikes got us there with no issue.
The feel-good movie The Sandlot, which depicted a group of rag-tag kids who informally played baseball on a seldom-maintained community baseball diamond, was basically my childhood. We all dreamed and pretended we could have played on a bigger stage, but we were perfectly content playing with our neighborhood friends in our backyard.
I’ve now written six paragraphs of “back in my day” narrative. As someone who hates it when old people claim to have done it right while scolding young people for screwing it up, please let me explain. My emphasis in talking about the above is to point out how much of suburban American family life is based in the insanity of driving kids to countless remote destinations after work and on weekends. The continued proliferation of the automobile and the infrastructure to support it has led to the growing event horizon of travel sports and activities.
When I was young, I biked to my little league fields while my mom was working. It was a relatively short trip, and my little BMX bike was more than up to the task. But today, school and club sports have become less local and more regional. The popularity of the minivan and the continued subsidization of “wider, faster” roads and highways likely motivated this transformation. Over the course of a few decades, every parent was suddenly empowered and even persuaded through the “keeping up with the Jones’” mentality to become a micro-bus driver. The perceived worth of a parent was directly correlated with the number of children you could move.
But the classic “soccer mom” stigma that was so fiercely associated with this vehicular “upgrade” was likely a deterrent for many families. Thus enter the SUV, with the capacity of a minivan married with the size, power, and look of a pickup truck. Now the narrative of the American chauffeu… I mean parent, could include the ability to transport 6 kids to soccer AND be able to climb mountains, shred muddy trails and haul cargo and lumber. The proliferation of the SUV fulfilled families’ two most important psychological needs… the need to keep up with their neighbors, and the egotistical need to feel like doing so didn’t diminish their ability to be tough, cool and powerful. No longer did parents need to feel like they were “selling out” to complete suburbanism, as they might now say “I COULD drop my kids and their friends off at soccer practice and then turn on the 4×4 and go mudding or hit some trails. I’m not gonna, but I COULD, which makes this OK.” Admit it, we all create these self-narratives that justify our purchases and even shroud our insecurities.
Another narrative that comes with driving an SUV is the peace of mind that your family is safe in a larger, more powerful vehicle. This of course ignores the fact that by making one’s family safer with a bigger, heavier vehicle, you pose a much greater threat to the people and families on our roads and sidewalks. As a result, other families compensate by buying bigger SUV’s in the “noble” name of “keeping my family safe.” The result is the constant inflation of vehicle size and weight as families try to arm themselves against other large vehicles in a construct that mimics Dr. Seuss’ “The Butter Battle Book.” In this book, Seuss playfully speaks to the arms race, but in today’s America, it more accurately depicts the American need for bigger, faster, more powerful lifestyles and amenities.
The emergence of the SUV, paired with mobile tech that helps keep long car rides palatable, has facilitated the childhood that is the most “driven” in history. The kitchen table has been replaced by Chick-Fil-A in the backseat of a fully-loaded Chevy Tahoe. The Herculean expectation of parents to work 10 hours, then come home and shuttle their children to the next county, and maybe to the adjacent state on weekends is the direct result of the SUV. The normalization of spending an outrageous percentage of one’s paycheck to purchase and gas up these machines is comical and unsustainable.
Just as importantly, this entire construct further feeds the suburban narrative of exclusivity. The high-stress parental lifestyle mentioned above pales in comparison to the countless families that are unable to provide their children with this travel-activity-heavy lifestyle. Furthermore, the opportunities that children who grow up in the travel sports world experience are far more plentiful than those who are physically or financially unable to participate.
Simply put, the SUV and the roads that have facilitated its presence have greatly contributed to the erosion of the American lifestyle, while simultaneously accelerating our carbon footprint and magnifying exclusivity.