I worked 6a-6p (3.5 days a week) with a toddler as a single mom, and daycare options were super limited. There was a whole two places available, could only use licenced in-home daycare folks.
I loved the schedule though. I did feel like someone elsecwas raising my kid on work days though.
So then ask, why does a car-centric society exist in the first place. It stems from the decision of many to live in giant houses, where everyone needs their own back yard. From zoning laws and the need to live somewhere far from work. It’s deeply ingrained in the US, which is why remote work is the fastest solution, but many corporations refuse for control.
It’s what we got, so it must reflect what people wanted, right? Wrong. The reason that the U.S. is full of car-centric suburbia is that local leaders wanted to keep Black people out.
Not even kidding or exaggerating. My house is a little newer, but houses either direction down my street had racially-restricted covenants in the deeds. Many of them still say that you can’t sell to Black people, though those clauses were struck down by the courts, and are unenforceable.
But once de jure housing segregation became impossible, they adopted poverty as a proxy: Drive up the cost of houses by making the minimum lot size big, with big lawns. Set the maximum occupancy low, usually single-family, so poor people couldn’t double up. Make cars the only way to get around, because that costs more, and the automakers were all on-board. Then, subsidize white families through the original GI Bill, and FHA-backed, low-interest mortgages (a.k.a. red-lining).
This may sound like conspiracy thinking, but it’s not. This was explicitly the plan. The leaders said so, in public, even wrote it down. The simple reason that we have big lawns and big cars engrained in American culture: racism.
One might think, yes, but cars were still what Americans wanted, but shockingly, no, we didn’t. There were anti-car protests as late as the 1950’s! It was a concerted propaganda campaign by the automakers to break down the opposition. They worked hard to re-frame streets as space for cars, and people as the interlopers. (They invented the conceit of jaywalking, for instance, and put out safety films about looking both ways before crossing the street.) Again, we have the memos that they wrote to each other as proof that this was an explicit, deliberate goal. To sell more cars
So, the idea that we have cars because Americans love cars proves that old joke about the KGB agent chatting with the CIA agent about propaganda: Ours is so effective, we no longer even recognize it as propaganda. (That, and we’re so alienated from our emotions that many people think that they enjoy driving, despite all of the obvious signs that it makes them miserable.)
Oh, you can drop your toddler off at daycare at 5 AM? Are your tweens fine readying themselves for school without any adults at home?
A car-centric society is the problem. The need to commute by car, both for the kids and the adults, is the problem.
I worked 6a-6p (3.5 days a week) with a toddler as a single mom, and daycare options were super limited. There was a whole two places available, could only use licenced in-home daycare folks.
I loved the schedule though. I did feel like someone elsecwas raising my kid on work days though.
commuting was easy peasy too
So then ask, why does a car-centric society exist in the first place. It stems from the decision of many to live in giant houses, where everyone needs their own back yard. From zoning laws and the need to live somewhere far from work. It’s deeply ingrained in the US, which is why remote work is the fastest solution, but many corporations refuse for control.
It’s what we got, so it must reflect what people wanted, right? Wrong. The reason that the U.S. is full of car-centric suburbia is that local leaders wanted to keep Black people out.
Not even kidding or exaggerating. My house is a little newer, but houses either direction down my street had racially-restricted covenants in the deeds. Many of them still say that you can’t sell to Black people, though those clauses were struck down by the courts, and are unenforceable.
But once de jure housing segregation became impossible, they adopted poverty as a proxy: Drive up the cost of houses by making the minimum lot size big, with big lawns. Set the maximum occupancy low, usually single-family, so poor people couldn’t double up. Make cars the only way to get around, because that costs more, and the automakers were all on-board. Then, subsidize white families through the original GI Bill, and FHA-backed, low-interest mortgages (a.k.a. red-lining).
This may sound like conspiracy thinking, but it’s not. This was explicitly the plan. The leaders said so, in public, even wrote it down. The simple reason that we have big lawns and big cars engrained in American culture: racism.
One might think, yes, but cars were still what Americans wanted, but shockingly, no, we didn’t. There were anti-car protests as late as the 1950’s! It was a concerted propaganda campaign by the automakers to break down the opposition. They worked hard to re-frame streets as space for cars, and people as the interlopers. (They invented the conceit of jaywalking, for instance, and put out safety films about looking both ways before crossing the street.) Again, we have the memos that they wrote to each other as proof that this was an explicit, deliberate goal. To sell more cars
So, the idea that we have cars because Americans love cars proves that old joke about the KGB agent chatting with the CIA agent about propaganda: Ours is so effective, we no longer even recognize it as propaganda. (That, and we’re so alienated from our emotions that many people think that they enjoy driving, despite all of the obvious signs that it makes them miserable.)
It stems from auto companies systematically destroying public transit across the country.
Edit: nvm, apparently I misunderstood the meaning of “tween”
Are your tweens (as in 20-something year olds) living with you and attending middle school? 😄 I would hope they can ready themselves just fine.
Guess you meant children or young teens
Tween means pre-teen…
Oh. TIL