I wasn't going to have more than 2 kids, partly for reasons around travel logistics, and car seats play a surprisingly large role in that. Car seats needs to be

I wasn't going to have more than 2 kids, partly for reasons around travel logistics, and car seats play a surprisingly large role in that. Car seats needs to be rear facing until children are big enough, but most cars expect everyone to be leaning back and so rear facing car seats can be tricky for tall drivers. Part of our planning involved spacing children so we'd only have 1 rear facing car seat at a time. I'm tall enough that I can't have a rear facing car seat behind me in most cars (even SUVs). If I hadn't had twins the second go round my calculus would have stuck. Instead we had to get a minivan. Now I'm not saying this is a strong effect nationally, the effect wasn't particularly strong for me since other costs were a bigger deterrent than a new car payment, but there is an effect and I'm sure I'm not the only one who did that math.