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Comment by Joeri | Hacker News Reader

I have two kids, not three, but we have never had a car, always taken the kids everywhere on public transport. I’m not going to say every trip was a joyful experience, but imho you are making a way bigger deal out of this than the reality. Although to be fair it depends a lot on the quality of the public options in your metro region.

Downside of kids that always travel by public transport: on the rare occasions that they do travel by car, they puke nearly every time. For us public transport is a lot less stressful than traveling by car.

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I applaud your efforts my friend, part of our problem is we've never lived anywhere with good public transit. I will also just throw out the world changes quite dramatically from 2 kids to 3 kids, once those little buggers outnumber you things get a lot more exciting in parenting.

I don’t fault folks who have three kids, but with fertility rates plummeting, it’s not something that should be optimized for. Families are getting smaller over time.

The question is if families are getting smaller because parents don’t want more kids or because of regulation[0]. Maybe requiring people to have smaller cars or use public transport would further cut the birth rate.

I’m only half-serious. I know there is good reason for public transport or having smaller cars in urban environments.

0: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3665046

Generally the deciding factor has been birth control. The more birth control is available and accepted as a choice, the more women choose to postpone their first child, which automatically leads to having fewer children.

> Maybe requiring people to have smaller cars or use public transport would further cut the birth rate.

This should be easy enough to test by comparing against cohorts in Europe and Asia.

Fertility rates plummeting is not necessarily a good thing in the long run, so maybe having kids should be incentivized.

Yay for you, but the public transit in my area is useless for getting to the stores or destinations. It's better for commuting into the dense urban area for work hours, but not gonna fly for taking my kids shoe-shopping.

That said, glad you have the option for public transit. I'd be happy if my city decided to beef up public transit, but the NIMBYs keep shooting down the public transit overhaul bills.

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