to think that criticism of the school run is a form of sexism?

[Handay]

There seems to have long been a popular narrative that people taking their children to school by car are clogging up the roads with unnecessary journeys and delaying working commuters.

Most of these journeys are done by women.

It is a legal requirement for children to go to school, just as most people are contractually obliged to go to work. For many women, their obligation will fall across both aspects in that they will drop their children at school and then continue to work.

Why then are one set of people using a car in order to travel to somewhere they are obliged to be, criticised? There are, especially in cities, probably lots of car journeys that are "unnecessary" in the sense that the people making them could travel by alternative means. Why are women and children's journeys categorised as somehow less important than those of other road users and why are they repeatedly told that they should not be on the roads?

Just one recent example of this here on Jeremy Vine this week:

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00035rk

I can't see how it is a sexist thing, isn't it more sexist of you to assume that it is mothers doing the drop off when both parents are working?

Possibly another solution is to offer a communal drop off area where the children can be then bussed to school as bigger group so therefore avoiding so many individual vehicles in the school vicinity.

Many people do either live too far to walk or drop their children off on the way to work so need to take their car, we live 5 minutes walk from school (can do it in 3 when we are running late but sometimes it has been bucketing down and I have driven my DD to school, otherwise DS and I have to walk both ways in the pouring rain and get saturated.

At our school there’s a Dad who lives on the same road as the school (not a big road). He thinks he is more important than everyone else as he is a director of a large business and commutes a long way (I’m not assuming, I have the misfortune of knowing this tool). He zooms up and parks across someone’s driveway as this is the closest you can get to school without parking on the zig zags (obviously it’s still illegal though). There is a car on the driveway. I have seen him challenged when doing this before and he’s snapped, ‘I’m only dropping off, I’ll just be a minute’. He then proceeded to walk his children into school and wait for the bell before getting back in the car.
See Dads on the school run can be tossers too, but I agree that the vitriol is normally aimed at women

Of course it's not sexist.
It is a criticism of the number of parents who could walk, that choose to drive. That doesn't mean that everyone who drives could walk, but there are a lot of people who do. It is those people that are criticised
They could be men or women

This

@MeteorPark92 how about leaving sex out of it and we all just agree that people who don't this are wankers.

Saying they deserve sexism is one of the most ridiculous things I've read in a while. Do you really think if more men were doing the school run their parking would be better? Because that's what your post implies. I somehow doubt it

Jam I'm impressed he avoided the zig zags though

I can't see how it is a sexist thing, isn't it more sexist of you to assume that it is mothers doing the drop off when both parents are working?

I am certain that when people say children should walk to school they don't generally imagine the majority would be walked to school by their Dad. Or imagine that a Dad has time in his day to do this.

I think there needs to be an acceptance of driving to drop children at school and the set up near the school should enable this to happen efficiently. Yes its a shame kids can't walk or bike to school but the realities of modern life are a commute to work requiring driving and not enough time to bike kids to school return home and then commute. Everyone wants their cake and eat it - no stay at home parents as they should be out earning but no driving kids to school en route to work and yes this imapcts women more, there is a tendency for them to be more local and do the school runs still and inconveniencing them or creating parental guilt around using the car is craziness - should be able to drop and go at school safely, no excessive parking or loitering requiring big parking areas etc

MissEliza I think he genuinely thinks that this makes it ok 😂

I agree OP.

There's sneering about, putting makeup on, 'dressing up' etc, for the school run, as well.

Women have to justify their existence and behaviour.

I obviously havent been at every school in the UK, but the ones i have been at the overwhelming majority of droppers-off have been of the female persuasion. There are more men than you might expect, but let's not kid ourselves it's anything like 50/50.

Everyone wants their cake and eat it - no stay at home parents as they should be out earning but no driving kids to school en route to work

Oh this, definitely this!!

I agree OP. I was driving at 30 mph on a derestricted road. Male driver approaching me sped past the passing place, then tried to drive into my stationery car in an effort to force me off the road.

When I put the window down and asked him what the dickens he was doing, he berated me because I was a school mum and apparently we “always drive too fast”. Utter deluded sexist twat.

*stationary

"As a woman; women like that both encourage and deserve sexism!!!"

Why do they deserve sexism? The sexism effects every other Woman, not just that Woman.

Why can sexism be deserved, but not Racism?

Am not sure it's sexist, fairly mixed drop off at our school. The difference these days is that the vast majority of parents are going straight to work from drop off so walking from home and back home to collect a car to get to work isn't feasable.

In my case I'm dropping other dc at preschool afterwards, if I walked they would miss the first 20ish minutes of a 3 hour session, not fair on them and disruptive for the setting if they have latecomers every day who have walked from siblings school's.

This is my area of work. TFL run an accreditation scheme for all schools in London, a part of which requires the schools to have a travel plan, which is a document produced by the school community and aims to reduce the number of car journeys to school. The average journey to school is less than one kilometre, around a 10-minute walk.

The idea is to reduce congestion, improve road safety and improve health and well being. This will also influence the children in their habits later on in life.

Many schools just cannot cope with the number of parents driving to school. I am inundated with all sorts of issues and concerns raised by the school, parents and local community. The only way to solve these issues is to reduce car use. We can not magic more space on the roads.

It's not sexist. We have to reduce the amount of cars on the road. We don't want air pollution and unsafe driver behaviour anywhere, but particularly not right outside the school, affecting children.

I live in the U.S. Here it’s called “drop off.” But we also have school buses to take children and teenagers to school and back home, and that includes late buses if a child is staying after for sports or a club. So technically a parent may never even need to drive a child to school or home again.

I’m sorry if I’m being ignorant, but do you have school bus runs in the UK? Maybe in some of the bigger towns only? Just curious.

caked up have you ever done a survey asking the driver's why they drive to school?

OutOntheTilez the rules around transport to school are byzantine. And the way school admissions work in England mean you might not be able to send your children to the nearest school. I had to drive past our local school for months to take my child to a further away school.

OP, you make a good point, and I agree.

RandomlyChosenName every time a school travel plan is implemented in a school, car use goes down significantly. I'm not saying 100% of parents can walk to school but I am saying that many can, and with some persuasion, do.

People usually drive because they have to - eg they have a very small amount of time to get on to work or whatever after drop-off. I live quite near the school, and always walk when I can (probably 90% of the time), but sometimes I have to be elsewhere straight afterwards and walking would make me late. Poor parking, however, is unforgiveable. I see parents every day on the zig zags outside our school.

Can't see it changing until somebody invents time travel.

If it helps, please be reassured that I criticise all the annoying wankers - many (most?) of them men - that clog up the main road outside my flat, all idling in traffic jams in cars with one person in them, when we live in one of the best-served cities in the world for public transport.

There is a recent report about pollution quadrupling the chance of children developing depression here. Depression in children and young people is rife. There's loads of other health problems in young people being exposed to pollution, which restricts their lifespans and gives them a worse quality of life.

I held down a job as the sole breadwinner and still got my kid to school every day by walking there - and the walk wasn't a short one. Was it convenient or easy for me? No. Was it possible, and the best thing for my DS in the long run? Yes.

td;dr I'm not going to stop complaining about both men and women making unnecessary car journeys which directly hurt my kid and other kids.

Walking to school doesn't make you late for work, not leaving the house on time makes you late for work.