How carseats killed the carpool

I was in a hot, sweaty parking lot outside of a home improvement store, somewhere in suburbia. Four boys under 6 were wildly running through the parking lot. My friend was desperately trying to corral them while I was cursing under my breath in the car.

My friend and I had decided to spend the hot North Carolina summer day together, letting our children run around a place where college-aged girls would lovingly coo at them and clean up after them, all in the blessed air conditioning.

But the kids’ museum was about an hour away.

Like a lot of American families, my friend and I are suburban moms. When we were young we lived in hip urban neighborhoods.

“I will NEVER leave the city,” I pledged then.

One marriage, two kids, a housing market we couldn’t afford, and taxes that made it hard to breathe, we left the city. Yet my husband and I still, naively, pledged that we wouldn’t be that stereotypical suburban commuter household. We believed in being conscious of our environmental footprint.

We had started with a (bio)diesel VW station wagon and when child two came we found ourselves with one bucket seat, one convertible seat, and our knees in the dashboard.

When browsing for our new car, we made sure the vehicle had optional third row seats. “So we can carpool,” I gleefully exclaimed. “I want to make sure we don’t have to take two cars places — that would be so ridiculous!”

So we upgraded to the dreaded SUV. Which all led to me, in a parking lot outside of Lowe’s, about to throw a 20-pound car seat across the highway. My friend and I were trying to carpool. She had a huge “mom-van” that was made for this.

“Are you sure we can all fit?” my friend had asked in advance.

I scoffed. “OF COURSE! That is what the minivan is made for! Families!”

“Yes, but I don’t know how to work the car seats,” she added.

“Oh, that’s not a problem! I can latch those things in two minutes, easy,” I confidently stated.

So we met up and I pulled my two hefty car seats in to her van. I threw the easier car seat in to the third row while she watched the children.

I paused in confusion.

“Um, do you have a latch system in the third row?” I shouted out the back of the van.

“I dunno, never looked or tried!” my friend honestly answered.

Twenty minutes later I was no closer to having either car seat secured. I had unfolded so many seats, popped so many levers, and pretty much could have launched the van into space, but I could not find a way to securely place my car seats into her third row.

Latches? Nope. Affixing the seats I had with lap belts? Nope.

Together we looked up manuals and step-by-steps on the Internet, using our smart phones. We called friends, we called husbands. I called my mom just to tell her I appreciated her.

We were stumped. We felt stupid.

We were two had successfully held professional jobs for years. I had traveled the world, she had organized multi-million dollar events for a children’s hospital. Yet in the great summer battle of Mothers vs. the Car Seats, the Cars Seats had bested us. Nothing looked safe, nothing felt right.

After 40 agonizing minutes, cascading sweat, running interference between the kids and the contractor trucks driving in, we gave up.

I loudly exhaled, wiped my brow, and put those car seats back in to my own car. That took me less than five minutes, let the record show.

Then we were off to the kids’ museum. In two separate cars. We followed each other 50 miles from the exact same start point to the exact same end point, each of us with unused third row seats in our vehicles.

Car seats have killed the carpool.

I remember my parents throwing us in the back of a station wagon that had rear facing seats and nothing but a lap buckle. I remember sharing an actual seatbelt with my brother. Obviously, not smart or safe. Obviously, I’m grateful for the carseat. But today I have friends who live down the road from me, whose kids go to the same school as mine, and we never carpool because car seats are an issue.

Car seats make carpooling and vehicle efficiency a tough equation to solve for suburban moms like me who are, believe it or not, trying. Car seats are behemoths, commanding more space than an adult-sized human being. My kids’ seats are as demanding, needy, and unreasonable as they are.

We buy our big cars to try to make life easier, to carpool and minimize the impact on the highways. Yet at the end of a sweaty parking lot battle, it proves to be lost war.

So this fall, as we start back to school, I will once again wave at my neighbors in carpool line while my third row seats sit empty.