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

Slightly linked but on a similar note lots of people on our community fb page whinge on and on about commuter parking and how people drive to the station unneccessarily. I'm not sure what qualifies people to assume whether other peoples mode of transport is wholly neccessary....and how they can speak for such a vast number of people. I can't imagine anyone pays £8/day for the hell of it. We live in a small, fairly rural town. Buses are about once a day and services seem to be cut all the time and lots of people live too far to walk or have children to drop at nursery or school enroute to the station.

I wonder about all these comments about how nobody says anything about men driving to work. In every City, I have ever lived in, and when working at large employers, there have been efforts to get workers to use public transport and car share. It is absolutely standard to try and reduce the number of car drivers commuting to work every day. That is one of the reasons bus lanes were introduced - to make public transport more attractive.
It is true that nobody talks about walking to work, and that is because it is very rarely possible. Of course it varies, but in England and Wales the average commuter travels 9 miles to work. Few would be able to walk 18 miles a day to get to and from work.

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Yesterday 23:45 cakedup

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

Females Francis?, fan of Friday Night Dinner by any chance?

I've experienced all manner of school run idiots over the years from the dads, mums, grandparents etc

If you choose to live near a school then logically you'd expect to experience more people parking or attempting to, near you, about 8.30 and 3pm every day, realistically speaking.

Agree with OP it's another stick to beat women with.

Completely agree. Women have lives and jobs to get to. It’s a way of asking for the roads to be kept clear for men in Mercedes on their way to do more important things.

I don’t have a school run to do as we live a minute’s walk away but I’m always suspicious of the school run/congestion argument. Yes your children would be fitter walking and there’d be less pollution but that’s an argument for banning cars not criticising people (women) for doing the transport they need to do in a car in order to leave the roads free for other more important users.

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.

This. It's all very well to say people who can walk should, but lots of people can't (disability/work/multiple children/only getting schools miles away/etc).

If you have hundreds of people trying to be in the same space at once that's always going to cause problems. The school nearest us was only built 5 years ago. It's not exactly rocket science that building it with no provision for the school run would cause congestion. But everyone blames the people dropping their kids and no one thinks about the policies that were out of the parents hands (i.e. kids getting placed in schools miles away, tiny timing windows for drop offs, no physical places for cars go, etc).

Much easier to bitch at people who have no choice than put up the money to solve the problem.

I hadn’t thought of it like this before OP and always kind of harshly judged the idiot parkers (my in-laws live next door to a school and often their road is an absolute nightmare) but actually thinking about it I think yes, you are right! It is just another way to pressurise, criticise and judge mothers who are still trying to juggle everything (work and raising children.) I will try and not be so angry next time I see this. As a PP said, why wouldn’t you want a nice stroll in the morning if you could! But reality doesn’t always allow this.

Except where there is alternative free parking 3-5 minutes walk away, IME few parents use it.

where there is alternative free parking 3-5 minutes walk away, IME few parents use it

This.

The only people who have a reason to drive right up to the school are those with disabilities. All other parents can consider alternative arrangements. Where I live, one of the local secondary schools is going to expand. Everyone is going on about traffic. Why on earth would you need to drop a secondary aged child to the door - if you live outside walking distance, park somewhere within walking distance? Totally different for infant schools where they can't leave by themselves. But 11-16 year olds?

who are the people expressing these views about school run drivers loudly and publicly and what do THEY mean when they say it

They (journalists, the likes of Friends of the Earth etc, local councils, schools themselves who are fed up with having to put out notices pleading with parents to be considerate) mean that parents clog the roads with polluting cars when there are alternatives in most cases.

OP you have made a nuanced point.

Some posters struggle with this. Of course it is sneery and sexist to blame women for 'clogging' up the roads. It is also difficult to park, better to walk and some school run drivers behave badly.

Essentially though, it is sexist.

There is a long-established 'women drivers' (are incompetent, unreliable, inexperienced idiots) trope in sections of society and the media. The sorts of people for whom just the phrase 'women drivers' conveys meaning, are likely to understand 'school run' or indeed 'school run mum', the same way. It is part of their uber-sexist worldview.

Walking to school does make you late for work if school doors open at 8:40, your manager expects you at you at work at 9am and it would be a 40 min walk.

I hardly use my car and walk miles but only because I was able to slightly reduce my working hours for a later start.

However there are twatty school run driver who should be read the riot act.

Exactly. No matter how early you set off, you can't leave your children till 8.40.im amazed that someone needs that spelling out.

Interesting perspective and I confess I hadn’t thought of it as a sexist issue. It does seems to me (near us) that more men do the drop-offs than pick-ups - presumably because men prefer to rock into work late and then stay late - but I’ve no evidence that that’s the case.

Personally I have to say I don’t really have a problem with people driving to the school - presumably they have their reasons - but what gets me about the school run drivers near us is the idling (ie with the engine on). It’s unnecessary and so so selfish, particularly in a residential area and around so many children. It’s always the ones with the huge gas-guzzling SUVs as well.

how do we go from entitled and stupid drivers of the school run to sexism?!?

Blimey, I've heard it all now. Some women REALLY want to be the victims in this world

Most of these journeys are done by women. No they are not. Maybe in your local school, but not in my local ones. What a ridiculous idea.

Lady I live near a school and I expected to find people parking in front of my house every day. That's not what happened because people choose to park on the double yellow lines and zig zags put in place to make it safer for children to cross.
I have been almost hit by cars twice in the ten years I've been doing the school run. I kid you not. Both times by people whizzing off after depositing their child on the double yellow line area. Both times there were plenty of empty spaces a minute's walk away.

I agree OP. Where I live the local primary school allows children to arrive between 8.48-8.50am! Two minutes drop off; before that the gates are locked around a busy DIY store car park and after the children have to go in via the school office. It's a market town with poor public transport links and expensive housing making two income households a necessity. What are working parents supposed to do? Give up work so they can walk to school?

Those people singling out 'school run mums' are no doubt also the ones agreeing with the recent reports in the Daily Mail that working mums are the cause of childhood obesity! Somehow it's never the fathers they blame....

My own experience is that people with a legitimate need to get to work will leave earlier and make use of breakfast club at the school.
It is the idiots, who I know do not have a job to go to who will leave it to the last minute and insist on driving to the gate rather than parking a block away.

And I must say, the 'silly women taking up space on OUR roads' part of the 'women drivers' trope hadn't previously occurred to me (because I wasn't brought up in a deeply sexist family, so hadn't 'seen' the 'public space as male space' concept until it was pointed out) but you're quite right about that.

I don't think it is sexism, it is essential for some people to drive for school if going on for work.
BUT those who can walk need to make more effort.
Thankfully I can walk to the schools. The manic behaviour at pick ups from parents men/women in cars is disgraceful, they block the gates, mount curbs, some park in the middle of the street, the majority in local school are local children, many more could walk.

Who actually does school drop-offs is quite irrelevant to the way the issue is discussed publicly.

We all agree that school run "parking" is horrendous across the country. (and probably abroad just as bad)

It is still completely ridiculous to turn it into a sexist issue!

I've never heard of women or mothers being blamed, it's the "parents" who irate other parents and local residents. Let's not make stuff up.

Continuing to think about this this morning, I live in Edinburgh where something like 25% of DCs go to private school. By definition, this means most of these children don't walk to school because private schools don't have catchments and I imagine it must be similar in other big cities (if not the same numbers, Edinburgh is a bit of an anomaly). There is no equivalent narrative about wealthy people driving their children across the city...

Agree with OP. Absolutely.
And don't get me started on the ghastly school gate narrative.