You clearly have no family
I'm in Norway. Vehicles are expensive, children (regardless of age) are used to going outside and going to the stores. It is a common situation in larger cities. Heck, elementary children are often enough at the store unsupervised. I'm not sure why you think a 20-30 minute car ride plus at least an hour at the store is worse than a 20 minute round trip to the store with a 10-15 minute store break is bad, even if it is a few times a week. And even that can be avoided by just spending a little time on your way home from work.
Living without a car is easily possible, lots of parts of europe do it. They do it by living in small aparments, consuming less with more staples