I think what's going on here is more in your head than anything else. You sound wracked with guilt. No one knows your situation and no one can give you any directly applicable advice, just ideas, but I think you know that.

The best anyone can say is: if this then that. If you have an express bus route then you can buy a folder. If you can get a job closer to home then you can bike. You know these things already and you don't need anyone to tell you. You said you needed "ethical" help and your implied question was basically "should I not see my daughter nearly as much and should my wife have far less time to herself so I can lose the car?" That's a pretty asinine question to ask a bunch of strangers, so why ask it?

That bigger question was kind of couched in, "what else can I do then?" Well, I'm sure all the options pointed out have crossed your mind. I don't think you need someone to tell you you can take the bus if a bus exists where you're going. I think you're just kind of projecting your guilt. Hoping against hope that maybe something magical might be able to save you.

And now you ask which is more responsible, living in the country or living in the city? That's not a question with an answer, you could argue either one till the end of time. No one can tell you. No one knows your wife and kid, no one knows what your job is, what your expertise is, what other prospects you might have, what your financial situation is, how that might effect the job and housing, etc. No one knows what family dynamic exists, no one knows you. These aren't really ethical questions you're asking, for the most part. You're not asking "is it wrong to", "is it right to", well, you sort of are, but the questions are so personal they can't be answered. Maybe this really is about what's right and wrong. Maybe you see questions re: sustainability, low-impact living, etc., as pretty binary, and you're afraid you're doing it wrong. In that case my opinion is you're looking at it the wrong way. There's always a context in which we live and laregly you can only decide what's wrong or what's right depending on your context. I suspect you're having a bit of a war with yourself, over who knows what, and you're projecting this as an ethical question re: living low-impact because you're having a hard time dealing with it and you'd much rather not have it be up to you. It'd be much easier if it were a question a bunch of strangers could weigh in on.

I don't think it is. I may be completely wrong, completely off-base about all of this, and I don't mean to offend at all, but I'll bet you're avoiding what it is you're actually trying to deal with. Maybe you hate your commute, or your job, or maybe you're kind of stuck where you are for a while and you can barely stand it and you don't know what to do. Maybe you're kind of miserable right now to the point where you dream about ditching the car, or job, or whatever just to get some peace of mind, but you know it's wrong to put that on your family so you're kind of fishing for some way to to do it, to feel better, and not feel guilty about it. No one can do that for you and I think you know that.

Again, I might be completely off-base and just making as ass of myself, but still, you're not asking ethical questions. The answers you could get are far too dependent on the context you're in to simply fall into the larger publics' philosophy of what's right and what's wrong.