Originally Posted by stevep
What I hoped for was people who are parents' perspective on sacrificing time with family to benefit the earth, vs. sacrificing the earth to benefit family time. Not unreasonable or asinine to ask.
Rule of thumb: Work where you live / Live where you work. To do anything else is to enact a toll on yourself, your family, and the environment. If you were willing to live within a reasonable commuting distance from work then you might just find that car-lite
enhances family time.
Two anecdotes:
Nearly every morning, along a wooded MUP trail, I pass a father pulling a trailer taking his son to daycare. As I pass them I overhear them chattering about the birds and such around them. Compare the quality of that interaction with the typical chauffeuring of junior in the back of some luxury SUV. Dad has traffic reports on in the front while Junior watches cartoons on the DVD player in the back.
A while back, in these very forums, A father related what a joy grocery shopping by bike was with the family. He pulled the trailer while his kids "hovered around the mother ship" acting out some Star Wars escapade. It made what is normally a dull chore for most families into a fun outing.