I hope you can realise that the issue pointed out here is that the surburban development pattern essentially forces you to take your car to do something as basic as grocery shopping or going to the park.
If your neighborhood was walkable and you had access to shops within walking/cycling distance, you would not need your car for this. It might even be more enjoyable for your family than sitting in a car, stuck in traffic.
Heck, your children could—gasp!—go get ice cream at the corner shop by themselves!
Carless grocery shopping for a family sounds awful. If the kids are too young to ride a bike, you lose cargo space on your bike to haul a kid, or need the other parent to be available to take care of the children while one shops. You can't actually buy as much per trip, so you have to go more often, which means more time per week getting groceries. Bulk buying is basically impossible, so things get more expensive. Maybe you can get bulk delivered, but that means more delivery vehicles and is generally always more expensive, unless you live in an area with venture capital money to burn.
It’s hard to unpack this comment because it’s so completely car centered.
The simplest thing to do here is to point out that the overwhelming majority of the world does not shop for groceries the way Americans do. And they have families. Heck, many of them have bigger families than Americans.
As someone who grew up in Edmonton but live in a big city with lots of local stores now, I will never go back to car centric life if I can help it. I don’t have a car but neither does anyone else. There’s no less than 6 grocery stores within a 500m radius of me with the closest being about 100m away.
Yeah having a pantry full of food is convenient in a way, but local stores in every neighborhood seems more convenient to me and picking up a few things on your way home, a few times a week is less of a chore than one big trip.
Its really not that bad. Part of the reason it sounds rough is because, the way American neighborhoods and cities are set up, grocery shopping is an ordeal, which why most of us restrict it do a once a week thing, and try to buy in bulk. When your grocery store is within walking distance of where you live, it isn't a big deal to pick up some food a couple times a week, buying just what you need for a couple of days. This was my experience living in Japan for a few years, and I'd love to go back to that over my current American setup where I do need a car to buy my groceries every week.
I happen to live a block away from a supermarket. I still don't see how I could do without a car - it just doesn't carry all the items I buy. No shop does.
If your neighborhood was walkable and you had access to shops within walking/cycling distance, you would not need your car for this. It might even be more enjoyable for your family than sitting in a car, stuck in traffic.
Heck, your children could—gasp!—go get ice cream at the corner shop by themselves!