|
|
|
Perils of Carless Parenting: How We Still Play in the Gift Economy |
|
|
by Alan Thein Durning
Alan Durning explores the outcome among his friends and neighbors when his family decides to be car free for an entire year. Without a car for currency in the gift economy, then what? The solution: creative carless favors!
When my family decided in March not to replace our Volvo for at least a year, we were mostly thinking about the practical implications. We were thinking about pollution, of course, but also about dollars and safety and bus routes and walking distances.
Even while we’re saving bundles of cold hard cash on gas, insurance and upkeep, hidden costs have emerged in a social barter system that, like much of our culture, is car-centric.
Driving gifts
The thing about parenting is that it’s best done in groups, so you can share with others. This sharing operates largely on the gift economy. That is, parents do favors for each other. The most routine favor they give -- the currency of parenting -- is the ride: I give your kid a ride to practice; you give mine a ride home. You bring your kid over to play; I drive her home again.
The swapping of rides is a convenience and a practicality, of course. But it’s also a form of community building. When the bonds of mutual reciprocity are thick and stretch in many directions, you have a strong community -- one that’s high in social capital. And you’ve got the feeling, as a parent, that many hands are there to support you. People chip in to help you when bad luck strikes, and you do the same for others.
Uh oh
But subtract the car from this equation, and you’re suddenly out of currency for the most basic exchanges. When we first went carless, for example, Amy and I found that our pre-existing credits -- favors we’d done over time -- all came rushing to our aid. Our community aimed to rescue us from carlessness. One family offered: “Do you want to take our second car for a week or two?” One family contemplated giving us an old car they’d inherited.
Then, after we declined these offers by explaining that we have FlexCar when we need it and that we’re figuring out ways to live without driving much, reactions differed.
Some families have stepped up, hero-like, and insisted on doing all the driving themselves: “You shouldn’t have to pay for a car just to take the kids to rehearsal. I’ll drive both ways. I don’t mind.” But we don’t want to accept favors that we can’t reciprocate. We don’t want to accumulate social debts and feel beholden to others. And we suspect that such heroism would lead to resentment and withdrawal before long.
Transportation pariahs
Other families -- more of them -- have pulled back, uncertain how to interact with us because we don’t hold the currency. They become a little shy toward us, a little awkward. And feeling this way, they often take the path of least resistance, which is to swap rides with someone else instead. Sadly, that leaves us, and our kids, out of the community.
To guard against heroic over-giving and shy withdrawal, we have been trying to become more assertive about alternative exchanges, bartering child care and other favors for rides when a ride is necessary. And this assertiveness typically works -- when we can muster the courage to take such social risks. Despite the ambiguity (how many hours of child care are worth one ride to a sleepover?), other parents are receptive to other forms of exchange, and these more complicated exchanges build community just as quickly as ride swapping.
Lacking a car, Amy and I have been forced to do more asking and more creative reciprocating. This necessity has become a virtue: more community, more time with neighbors. In fact, renegotiating the social side of the car economy, and adapting to life with no cultural car capital, we’ve found enjoyable and enriching ways to experience and engage with our communities. We have discovered that without our car, we spend more quality time with our own kids and with groups of their friends because of creative carless favors. We enjoy more activities that are around the corner rather than across town, which means supporting community businesses and services and keeping our neighborhood vibrant, bustling and safe. We now see other parents as more than just mini-van drivers -- we actually interact with them more. We like this new barter system!
We’re not saying everyone should scrap their car. But reducing car travel and insisting on complete, compact communities instead of poorly planned sprawl can actually save people time in traffic and can lengthen their lives -- by staving off crashes (the leading cause of death up to the age of 44 in the Northwest), encouraging regular walking (reducing obesity), and clearing the air of toxic pollutants. Our carless experiment has revealed new ways to enjoy our neighbors and strengthen our neighborhoods. Rather than losing on the exchange, we are building communities that nurture our kids as they grow up. At the same time, we’re investing in our kids’ futures.
Alan Durning is the founder and executive director of Sightline Institute (formerly Northwest Environment Watch), a nonprofit think tank whose mission is to bring about sustainability: a healthy, lasting prosperity grounded in place.
|
|
|
