Oh yes! I raised four, and right now, appear to be doing it again with my granddaughter. My youngest totally failed to launch, despite my best efforts. He and his girlfriend are a mess. So, yeah. I have a kid, after having 4.

Owning a car is a big deal with kids, and you are spot on with why.

I will counter with a lot of that stuff consolidating into carry bags and backpacks. Once I worked that out, getting people into and out of cars was not such a big deal.

And in the end, a lot of that stuff goes with them. Set the norms for people to carry their stuff, manage it, and a lot of good effects come from that.

Kids prep for the day, grab their bag and jump into a car. Happens all the time now.

Now, your list:

Diapers, wipes, clothes treats, other goodies go in the road bag. And that bag goes where the kids go.

I won't put a DVD in a car. When they get older, they can have a phone. Otherwise, long rides are car game, interactive time. I did that and am very glad I did. We had a lot of fun on those, and the conversations! Awesome.

One of our favorites was, "What is worth what?" and or "Nothing is free." Those chats were often wide ranging and sometimes profound.

So, it's not quite the benefit you are putting here, not that I'm disagreeing. I am not.

What I am saying is people can and will find options. With self-driving cars available to call, many will call them.

If the cost makes sense, that is. It may not. In that case, owning cars will still be the norm.

This time around, the only pain in the ass is the carseat and stroller. Those are nice to have in the car, but they also get moved more than one would think too. Who rides with who?

As they pass 3, you don't need the stroller anymore, leaving the seat.

Road or day bags work well, and my little one has her own backpack. She's got stuff she wants in there, and we make sure some necessary items are in there too. She will actually check her bag at 3 and very frequently gets it right when it's not properly stocked.

Lastly, if the cars are self-driving, the ownership is less of an attraction. If they remain human driven, people will continue to own cars, with the slump right now being more largely related to the wait for EV and such making used cars a lot more attractive right now.

I agree that most of the problems can be solved. People in Manhattan have kids and manage without cars after all. I'm just saying is so much more convenient to not have to worry about it. :)

One place where I think we'll have to agree to disagree is on the attraction of ownership of a self driving car. I like having my own car that is my space. It's got my dirt and germs and the seats are the way I like and I understand all its quirks. I don't see how self driving changes that.

My car already has adaptive cruise and lane keeping. It only makes me enjoy the car more. The more it "self drives" the more I enjoy it.

In fact, when it is self driving, that just means even more stuff in the car that I will want to be customized to me, because I'll be spending more time using the amenities in the car instead of driving it. I'll want my own blankets for sleeping, my own books for reading, my own movies for watching, my own keyboard for typing that isn't covered in other people's grime, and so on.

Sure, once we get to a point where self driving is ubiquitous I suspect owning a car will only be for the ultra wealthy as it just won't make sense otherwise, but none the less I will still want to own one.

It's like with planes now. I'd love to own a plane that someone else flies where I want it to go with my stuff inside. But it's just not cost effective.

I think the best argument you can make against ownership is that it will be far more cost effective to rent instead of own. But the desire to own will always be there.

We agree on space. I honestly think we will have cars we drive for a very considerable time yet.

While that is true, yeah own a car.

Leasing is kind of like that now, as is apartment living.

I dislike both because I can't generally do what I want.

In a home, I will build, modify, etc... same for a car, only just modify. I love better quality used cars for this reason.

I do not want to worry about resale value, just use value.

Good exchange here.

Maybe there is some innovation that would help. Firstly pools of cars with car seats. Perhaps car seats that can do all of 2-8 years and are easy to adapt. Can come preloaded with wet wipes etc. Maybe the car is cleaned by robots after each lease. Sports and music stuff probably needs to be stored in the house but I guess most of the time that is more desirable anyway

Maybe, but for example the value of the diapers and wipes isn't during transit, it's while I'm at my destination and have an emergency to respond to. Same with the change of clothes and the towels. The car would have to be waiting for me the whole time, or there would have to be a service that could bring me those things in a couple minutes.

I feel obliged to comment because I berated a similar comment on a thread about public transportation.

The poor already live in a life with children and a lack of vehicles. So, ~30% of parents do have children and are getting along.

So you would want a car for 15 years out of your 50+ years of adulthood? That would be enormous drop in the number of cars owned since now we're averaging more than one car per adult.

You make an excellent point. I hadn't done the math like that in my head. Although point of order, in my particular case it would be 17+ years because of the delta between my oldest and youngest, and others would have a larger delta.

But other than that, yes I see your point. As long as fleets are ubiquitous, I can see car ownership falling.