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We ended up buying Diono Radian carseats [1], which are marketed as "the 3-across car seat" We can fit our three kids in the back of our Honda Civic perfectly

We ended up buying Diono Radian carseats [1], which are marketed as "the 3-across car seat" We can fit our three kids in the back of our Honda Civic perfectly well. But we've had exactly the same conversation. In order to have a fourth kid, we'd need to swap out our vehicles. House is fine, insurance is fine, income is fine, but we'd need to upgrade vehicles, and that seems to be just enough friction to make the idea unappealing. [1] https://www.diono.com/us/product/radian-3r-2020/ https://www.diono.com/us/product/radian-3r-2020/

Someone1234 6y ago
The Radian is definitely king of three across. But they're premium priced ($200 each, or $600 for three), and sacrifice comfort particularly for longer trips. In general people who have never had kids don't seem to grasp that the average (non-Radian) car-seat is BIGGER than an adult side-to-side. The Radian series has a niche because they produced a car-seat the same size as an adult (with no loss of safety), but had to sacrifice comfort to do so.
- war1025 6y ago
  > sacrifice comfort particularly for longer trips. I guess maybe they are less comfortable than traditional car seats, but since car seats are basically build like lazy-boy recliners, that seems unsurprising. Our kids have never complained about the comfort or lack-thereof. They seem to have pretty equivalent comfort when compared to the back seat itself as far as I can tell.
  - LeifCarrotson 6y ago
    What makes you say they're less comfortable? Compared to my kid's carseat, it looks like they removed the side bolsters (which are like 6" tall in mine) but kept everything else basically the same - a few mm of foam and some neoprene over plastic.
  - cbhl 6y ago
    That definitely seems like an improvement over car seats from the 90s. As an adult I still remember hating full-day road trips in the hard-plastic-with-a-fabric-liner car seat my parents owned; my butt was always sore after sitting in it for too long.
    - nostrademons 6y ago
      Car seats are way better than they were when I was a kid in the 80s. I recall that my car seat as a kid was a hard vinyl upright contraption that made me carsick whenever I rode in it for a long time. My mom actually sewed fabric covers for it so it wouldn't burn me on hot summer days. My kid's infant car seat was a click 'n go bassinet with a soft fabric liner. His convertible car seat stays in the car, but it still reclines better than any adult seat, with more plush padding than the car itself. He actually prefers the car over the bed for naps. Only problem is that he's still rear-facing and his legs are getting a bit too long for the seat, but he solves that by putting his feet up. Kid stuff is one area where I've been pleasantly surprised by how technology advanced when I wasn't looking. Car seats, strollers, baby gates, and toys are all way more advanced (and cheaper, inflation-adjusted) than they were in the 80s.
      - FullyFunctional 6y ago
        You kids are funny - I remember sleeping in the back of our station wagon with my sister while we were flying down the autobahn. (Yes, it seems crazy today). My main gripe about the car seat is all the damn waste. We have four of them and you can't sell them or even give them away. I'm not sure about the recycling situation yet, but even in the best case not much can be recycled.
        zo1 6y ago
        Keep them and give them to family, otherwise donate to charity? Heck, check your local community chats/groups/forums, you can probably sell it for a small amount. Someone will find a way to resell it and make a profit.
  - fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
    Yeah, the Diono is also just the most well-designed car seat, in all sorts of ways: e.g. they have the best-designed latch clips I’ve seen.
- tastygreenapple 6y ago
  $600 for car seats that make a compact sedan as practical as a 3-row SUV for parents seems like a solid investment.
- geoduck14 6y ago
  As a new parent, I was surprised how much space a kid took up. I didn't know about Radian car seats - we did Graco. We also upgraded to an SUV (Honda Pilot), and then a minivan (Pacifica) to hold all of our kids. The cars were expensive. As young adults, with small incomes, having to buy large vehicles was a punch to the gut.
imaginenore 6y ago
Except National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) rated Dino carseats with 2 stars for ease of use. Which means you're more likely to injure a child when using the seat.
dmurray 6y ago
Let's say it costs you $200k to raise a kid to adulthood [0]. A Honda Civic costs $25k new [1], an 8-seater Honda Odyssey costs $31k new [2]. A car lasts 10+ years so conservatively that's $12k extra in transportation costs for your fourth child. Maybe you can argue it's $20k with fuel. That...doesn't seem unreasonable? As a society, we like people to start families and continue the human race, but we know overpopulation is a thing and we don't want everyone to have huge families. 10% extra marginal cost is small, and offset by other economies of scale. [0] I don't have a better estimate for this than Bill Waterson putting it at $100k. In 1987. https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1987/07/24 https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1987/07/24 [1] https://www.edmunds.com/honda/civic/ https://www.edmunds.com/honda/civic/ [2] https://www.edmunds.com/honda/odyssey/ https://www.edmunds.com/honda/odyssey/
- SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
  We still have a birth rate that is too high. It will be a long long time before we need to work on raising the birth rate and the problem isn't that complex.
  - memling 6y ago
    > We still have a birth rate that is too high. It will be a long long time before we need to work on raising the birth rate and the problem isn't that complex. Do you have any citations for this? Not snarking—genuinely curious, not arguing, but I was under the impression that most population growth in developed countries like the U.S. was due to immigration rather than above-replacement fertility rates.
    - noizejoy 6y ago
      If you think globally, the population still appears to be on the rise. https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth {Edited for typo}
    - curryst 6y ago
      It probably depends on the metric you're trying to optimize. I was curious about that as well, but I was thinking in terms of the maximum number of humans the earth can support. We certainly haven't hit that yet, we have large swaths of land allocated to relatively inefficient means of producing food (i.e. cattle). Also, don't we need some level of population growth for Social Security to function correctly? We could replace Social Security, but it would be difficult and expensive.
thatfrenchguy 6y ago
I mean in the US you’ll also need to save 6 figures for the kid’s college as well…

Someone1234 6y ago

The Radian is definitely king of three across. But they're premium priced ($200 each, or $600 for three), and sacrifice comfort particularly for longer trips. In general people who have never had kids don't seem to grasp that the average (non-Radian) car-seat is BIGGER than an adult side-to-side. The Radian series has a niche because they produced a car-seat the same size as an adult (with no loss of safety), but had to sacrifice comfort to do so.

war1025 6y ago
> sacrifice comfort particularly for longer trips. I guess maybe they are less comfortable than traditional car seats, but since car seats are basically build like lazy-boy recliners, that seems unsurprising. Our kids have never complained about the comfort or lack-thereof. They seem to have pretty equivalent comfort when compared to the back seat itself as far as I can tell.
- LeifCarrotson 6y ago
  What makes you say they're less comfortable? Compared to my kid's carseat, it looks like they removed the side bolsters (which are like 6" tall in mine) but kept everything else basically the same - a few mm of foam and some neoprene over plastic.
- cbhl 6y ago
  That definitely seems like an improvement over car seats from the 90s. As an adult I still remember hating full-day road trips in the hard-plastic-with-a-fabric-liner car seat my parents owned; my butt was always sore after sitting in it for too long.
  - nostrademons 6y ago
    Car seats are way better than they were when I was a kid in the 80s. I recall that my car seat as a kid was a hard vinyl upright contraption that made me carsick whenever I rode in it for a long time. My mom actually sewed fabric covers for it so it wouldn't burn me on hot summer days. My kid's infant car seat was a click 'n go bassinet with a soft fabric liner. His convertible car seat stays in the car, but it still reclines better than any adult seat, with more plush padding than the car itself. He actually prefers the car over the bed for naps. Only problem is that he's still rear-facing and his legs are getting a bit too long for the seat, but he solves that by putting his feet up. Kid stuff is one area where I've been pleasantly surprised by how technology advanced when I wasn't looking. Car seats, strollers, baby gates, and toys are all way more advanced (and cheaper, inflation-adjusted) than they were in the 80s.
    - FullyFunctional 6y ago
      You kids are funny - I remember sleeping in the back of our station wagon with my sister while we were flying down the autobahn. (Yes, it seems crazy today). My main gripe about the car seat is all the damn waste. We have four of them and you can't sell them or even give them away. I'm not sure about the recycling situation yet, but even in the best case not much can be recycled.
      - zo1 6y ago
        Keep them and give them to family, otherwise donate to charity? Heck, check your local community chats/groups/forums, you can probably sell it for a small amount. Someone will find a way to resell it and make a profit.
- fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
  Yeah, the Diono is also just the most well-designed car seat, in all sorts of ways: e.g. they have the best-designed latch clips I’ve seen.
tastygreenapple 6y ago
$600 for car seats that make a compact sedan as practical as a 3-row SUV for parents seems like a solid investment.
geoduck14 6y ago
As a new parent, I was surprised how much space a kid took up. I didn't know about Radian car seats - we did Graco. We also upgraded to an SUV (Honda Pilot), and then a minivan (Pacifica) to hold all of our kids. The cars were expensive. As young adults, with small incomes, having to buy large vehicles was a punch to the gut.

imaginenore 6y ago

Except National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) rated Dino carseats with 2 stars for ease of use. Which means you're more likely to injure a child when using the seat.

dmurray 6y ago

Let's say it costs you $200k to raise a kid to adulthood [0]. A Honda Civic costs $25k new [1], an 8-seater Honda Odyssey costs $31k new [2]. A car lasts 10+ years so conservatively that's $12k extra in transportation costs for your fourth child. Maybe you can argue it's $20k with fuel. That...doesn't seem unreasonable? As a society, we like people to start families and continue the human race, but we know overpopulation is a thing and we don't want everyone to have huge families. 10% extra marginal cost is small, and offset by other economies of scale. [0] I don't have a better estimate for this than Bill Waterson putting it at $100k. In 1987. https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1987/07/24 https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1987/07/24 [1] https://www.edmunds.com/honda/civic/ https://www.edmunds.com/honda/civic/ [2] https://www.edmunds.com/honda/odyssey/ https://www.edmunds.com/honda/odyssey/

SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
We still have a birth rate that is too high. It will be a long long time before we need to work on raising the birth rate and the problem isn't that complex.
- memling 6y ago
  > We still have a birth rate that is too high. It will be a long long time before we need to work on raising the birth rate and the problem isn't that complex. Do you have any citations for this? Not snarking—genuinely curious, not arguing, but I was under the impression that most population growth in developed countries like the U.S. was due to immigration rather than above-replacement fertility rates.
  - noizejoy 6y ago
    If you think globally, the population still appears to be on the rise. https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth {Edited for typo}
  - curryst 6y ago
    It probably depends on the metric you're trying to optimize. I was curious about that as well, but I was thinking in terms of the maximum number of humans the earth can support. We certainly haven't hit that yet, we have large swaths of land allocated to relatively inefficient means of producing food (i.e. cattle). Also, don't we need some level of population growth for Social Security to function correctly? We could replace Social Security, but it would be difficult and expensive.

thatfrenchguy 6y ago

I mean in the US you’ll also need to save 6 figures for the kid’s college as well…