If you take a step back, it does make sense. The difference between zero kids and one is a major qualititative lifestyle change. It's the transition from parent to non-parent. It means not easily going out at night, schooling, etc. Everything changes.
The transition from one to two kids is a qualitative change for the kid because it means going from no siblings to siblings. That transitively makes it somewhat of a qualitative change for parents. It means the kids always have a playmate and someone their age on vacations. But for parents, it's mostly a change in degree. More work, more cost, more time parenting, but the overall lifestyle is basically unchanged.
The transition from two to three is really just quantitative. 33% more space in the house for sleeping, 33% more food costs, 33% more car space for transportation, etc. So the decision about when to stop is mostly just "how much of this experience do you want?" The transportation overhead here in the US where you do a lot of driving is a pretty big piece of that.
But also partly from a social/environmental point. Two kids means we replace ourselves when we die.
... Or fightmates, as my mother herself warned me. :-)
not from the perspective of the women who bear the health risk.
From a pure financial standpoint, I'd look more to the cost of education, healthcare, and housing. All of which have been growing much more rapidly than the cost of cars or gasoline.
Having had two kids in the age where they needed large car seats, trucks are no help at all and even fairly decent sized SUVs don't handle more than two well. Car seats for young children are a significant issue, and I suspect almost anyone whose had two or more children under the current safety regime would both recognize that fact and likely consider it before intentionally having a third.
> From a pure financial standpoint, I'd look more to the cost of education, healthcare, and housing.
Young children don't necessarily have a big impact on housing costs (they can share some easily), often because of the structure of health insurance costs don't have much impact on healthcare costs after the first, and education costs are largely deferred if you aren't going private/homeschool. Day care costs / career impacts are probably more significant than any of those given the frequency of two-working-parent families, but car transportation logistics are quite palpable.
(“Source”, have two kids under 5.)
Nonsense. They don't fit your seats maybe, but that's not the same as it not being possible. 15 seconds of Googling finds tons of lists with car seats that'll fit 3 across, including tests for a Honda Civic. Some on the list include convertible ones that'll work up to 120lbs.
Bigger SUVs might be more convenient, especially when loading and unloading, but the idea that you can't fit three car seats into a larger vehicle is simply not grounded in reality.
> Young children don't necessarily have a big impact on housing costs (they can share some easily), often because of the structure of health insurance costs don't have much impact on healthcare costs after the first, and education costs are largely deferred if you aren't going private/homeschool. Day care costs / career impacts are probably more significant than any of those given the frequency of two-working-parent families, but car transportation logistics are quite palpable.
My understanding, at least from people I know with 3 or more children, is that daycare and career costs dominate, depending on your location. All my colleagues had to decide between paying out the nose for city daycare, punching an even longer gap in someone's career (obviously reducing earnings), or simply not having a third.
Well, except for that one colleague who had five. According to him logistics got very expensive very quickly. Even "cheap" flights for a family of seven hits the $1K mark very quickly.
Having 2 or 3 kids in a city is probably the worst plan. Costs are high, but not not quite high enough to make the career obviously a mistake.
There is probably an unspeakable truth behind the people you've known who pay nearly 100% of their salary to childcare. Not every parent really likes their children. Getting away from them might be a bonus, even if it can't be admitted.
See https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/research/the-rise-of-th...
That massive green chunk is for crossovers, which typically have space for two adults and two car seats. Fitting a third means graduating to a full-size SUV (or minivan), which means a significantly more expensive vehicle (assuming similar trim levels, etc).
Trucks are a mostly useless metric here. Many of those are work trucks, and most won't fit car seats for three kids. While Americans buy lots of SUVs, many Americans do not have one, and for those, transporting three kids is indeed a challenge.
> From a pure financial standpoint, I'd look more to the cost of education, healthcare, and housing.
Housing definitely comes into play, but I don't think the other two end up being major factors in the decision because they are so far out. In the US, you literally cannot leave the hospital with your baby if you don't have adequate transportation and an approved car seat. So Americans are made acutely aware that they need to have a transportation solution for their family right now before choosing to have a baby.
Healthcare is a non-issue for many because their employer-provided insurance covers as many kids as they have. Education is somewhat far down the road and fairly fungible so it's less likely to be a showstopper.
Combine that with requirements to keep kids in various car seats and booster seats until they hit arbitrary age and weight limits, which stretch out longer and longer all the time, and it's still a problem.
Several on that list will fit children up to 57-62" in height and up to 120lbs.
This (https://www.thecarcrashdetective.com/diono-radian-r120-revie...) seat will fit 3 across in my Subaru Forester, a Honda CRV, or a Fiat 500L, and support a kid up to 57" tall and 120lbs in weight.
It might be more convenient to have a three row SUV with three kids, but the idea that you can't fit 3 seats in these cars is nonsense.
"The reduction they saw was confined to households that did actually have access to a car"
"They discovered that tightening these laws had no detectable effects on the rate of first and second children".
Also, if i understand it correctly, you have about 50 quasi experiments, one for each state.
"the third-child deterrent appears stronger among wealthier families"
So this has both the most and least effect on families that have little reason to care about needing a bigger car (because they can easily afford it, or they can't afford any car at all, respectively). When you go fishing for a correlation, form a post-hoc hypothesis for its mechanism, and then other data fits that hypothesis poorly, it's a strong sign you've found yourself a red herring. Which is the usual result of failing to properly understand the distinction between correlation and causation.
Getting a larger Porsche or BMW or Mercedes is going to be harder than getting a larger used Hyundai or Kia. At the extreme, you're just out of luck; there is no Ferrari with more than 4 seats.
We have 3 kids. When talking to friends with only 2 kids, this comes up all the time and is a non-trivial concern in having a third child.
You need a bigger car, a bigger house and bigger everything, and many things are not geared towards families of 5 - family passes at museums/zoos are often 2 adults + 2 children etc.
When we had our third we upgraded our car (from 5 seats to 8 seats) and our house. If we had a fourth we'd need to upgrade the house in a few years again. It's definitely a concern and is definitely talked about by people who are affected by it.
Now I'm not saying this is a strong effect nationally, the effect wasn't particularly strong for me since other costs were a bigger deterrent than a new car payment, but there is an effect and I'm sure I'm not the only one who did that math.
I did and find it completely normal? "What everything we would have to buy" is completely normal consideration. So is "if we dont fit in a car we need to stop doing all these things" is another completely normal consideration.
I bet this is not a hinderance in the rest of the world because many of those other places have either:
1. a lack of child seat laws
2. effective public transportation.
It's not like Europe is full of A-segment cars with 3 car seats in the back.
Yes, if you get a Honda Civic you're going to struggle. But sales of sedans are absolutely swamped by SUVs and trucks. The best selling car in America by a long shot is the F-series pickup truck, with about 900,000 units sold. You can easily fit three child seats in it[0]
Oh, the number two and number three best selling vehicles are the RAM 1500 truck and the Chevy Silverado, at 633k and 575k. The Silverado is a bit smaller, but it too will fit three seats[1] across. You have to get to number eight in the list before you find a sedan at all, the Toyota Camry. You have to get to nine and ten on the list before you start finding sedans that would get uncomfortably tight fitting three seats, specifically the Honda Civic and Toyota Corolla, and even those will fit three if you're careful in your shopping. The top selling car that I'm pretty comfortable you simply could not fit three car seats in is the Nissan Sentra at number 19, with only 184k sales last year.
Now, 184K sales isn't nothing. There are clearly cars sold in America that will not fit three car seats. But the sales of those cars are dwarfed by large trucks and SUVs. In 2019 Ford sold more f-series trucks than the top three sedans combined. And that's before we consider the sales of three row SUVs which can easily fit 4-5 child safe seats in them.
So, if Americans are willing to buy massive vehicles capable of seating three seats safely by the literal millions, how in the world is that consistent with "the cost of upgrading to a car capable of seating three seats is a major barrier to having more children"?
0 - Here's a list of all the child seats that'll fit three across in a F-150: https://www.thecarcrashdetective.com/3-across-installations-...
1 - https://www.thecarcrashdetective.com/3-across-installations-...
But yes, even many mid-size cars and SUVs are difficult to fit three seats in.
https://www.consumerreports.org/car-seats/how-to-fit-child-c...
> we assess a vehicle’s ability to securely and easily accommodate three child restraints in the second row. Our test results have shown that unless you’re driving a full-sized crew-cab pickup truck or an Audi Q7, the installation is going to be difficult, if it's even possible.
(It is kind of funny that your source shows a picture of a single cab 97-03 F150 in regards to fitting child seats three across... :D )
I find it kind of perplexing how many people pretend that you simply cannot put 3 child seats in a small SUV, it’s incredibly trivial to Google and find ones that will fit. This isn’t rocket science, I found a site that’ll list which seats will fit 3 across in which cars in the first hit on Google.
https://babydrive.com.au/reviews/hatches/2017-honda-civic-vt...
> Installing child seats came with a few difficulties too. I could fit two child seats in the Civic in the outer back seats, there was not enough room for a middle child seat too.
I’m not sure about ISOFIX anchors, but here in the US the LATCH anchor system actually has a relatively low weight limit, typically 40-65 lbs (including weight of seat) depending on how it’s installed. Beyond that weight limit, you’re supposed to skip the anchors and just use the regular seatbelt.
This would be an issue if you have 3 children that need rear facing seats. But given that we typically transition kids into forward facing seats between 1-4 years old, realistically you’d need twins or triplets before this is a necessity. A parent with 3 kids could attach a seat in the middle via seatbelts for the oldest child, and use the anchors on the outside seats for the younger child.
Not as convenient as a 3 row SUV, I’ll agree. But far from impossible.
https://www.thecarcrashdetective.com/3-across-installations-...
I absolutely agree that a larger vehicle is more convenient for people with 3 or more kids. But that isn’t the argument people have been making in this thread. The assertions it that you can’t fit 3 car seats in these cars, an assertion which is provably false.
Not even lack of, just less need to have three children in them at once.