Quote Originally Posted by Grits View Post
There is a difference between doing something out of necessity and doing it by choice -and doing it with 1 or 2 children vs doing it with six. A lot of things are more manageable with a couple of kids, including taking a taxi!

She is choosing what is, in America, an extreme lifestyle. It doesn't seem that they use any public transportation. (The kids are used to never being in a car. They have never been to the shore because they are limited to 20 miles by bike). She is choosing to have no way to get all of her family anywhere at one time without some kind of special arrangements that it seems they have never made. I wonder how much of this came out of a desire to please her dad, who she didn't develop a relationship with until an adult, and also how her depression figures into it.
Would agree that choosing a particular lifestyle (and they are not poor since her hubby is a neurologist), vs. doing out of necessity is a huge difference and its possible effect on children's expectations. Much of what I described in my childhood of no car and using public transit, was no choice, and for SURVIVAL by my parents. Being poor really truly does temper a child's expectations and if a parent handles child's grumpiness without making it a huge deal, a kid just accepts it and knows parent(s) doesn't have money to have a nice car or a 2nd car.

We did occasionally take taxi...where the whole family piled into the car to go over to the other side of city for a semi-annual banquet or special event. That was about 2-3 times per year.

As for "limiting" a family's options, I guess it depends on what parents wish for their child(ren) and types of experiences they should have (vs. what children really want after trying out various activities for a certain time.)

I get the powerful feeling that the article about this family is abit slanted because we really don't know how often the whole family with the father, uses the car. The car used for the family may be more often than what we are led to believe. We are just hearing it from the mother's perspective.

Anyway, I am glad that cycling for mother has helped deal with depression, which can be real when one has several children (and with post partum stage). It benefits the family to have a happy, healthy parent. I see her with children cycling together like this ..may be only for a short time in life since her older children will eventually (pretty soon) want to break off and do their own thing/carve their own identity/space.

A whole family cycling together is truly only for a short time in life. Make it the very best time together and that is what she is trying to do.