The Midults: I want my planet-loving daughter to learn to drive. She refuses
Dear A&E,
My 20 year-old daughter has not learnt to drive and is adamant that she does not need to. She says that cars are bad for the environment (true) and that she can always use public transport or Uber (Always? Really?). I feel strongly that she should get her licence, even if she does not think she’ll ever need to get behind the wheel. And I just old-fashioned? She thinks I’m unreasonable.
– Sensible
Dear Sensible,
Is it possible to be both old-fashioned and also forward-thinking? We think that it is. We believe that it is often possible to reconcile two apparently opposing truths and hold them in a way that somehow makes sense of the chaos. Some would call it ‘big crone energy’. Others would call it sensible. Many would call it unreasonable because, well, that’s convenient isn’t it?
For the obvious reasons, we should all be driving less. We should be moving more to help our minds and bodies. We should contribute as little as possible to pollution and climate change. Not to mention the increasingly crippling expense of driving lessons and then running a vehicle. And so, in an ideal world (which is often the world we admirably aim for when we are 20) we would roundly shun cars.
But we are not, I think, talking about your daughter buying a car and driving it to the pub, to work, to the supermarket, are we? We are talking about her ability to climb into a car and capably and safely put her foot down if necessary. There’s a radical difference, isn’t there, between every day and… if necessary.
The thing is, Sensible, your brain can probably throw itself forwards, to places that hers can’t yet. That is right and proper: she is young and therefore she knows everything. You are older and have worked out that the more you learn the less you know which has made you…cautious. She sees cars as anachronisms. She may be right. You see someone falling ill in a remote country cottage; a single mother wrestling with buggies, buses, vaccinations, heavy shopping, house moves; a far flung land where the only way to see the wonders/flee the dangers is a manual jeep; a job application where a driving licence would, for some reason, prove to be the decider; a scary situation where a woman needs to be able to get in a car and get the f*** out of there. You see these things. She sees other things.
Perhaps the point to make is the ‘if necessary’ one. There is no downside to knowing how to drive. There is, as far as we can see, no meaningful morality attached to the skill or the qualification. She need never get behind the wheel of a car. Until she does need to. Which may never happen. Until it does. In an ideal world, she would not need to drive. We do not live in an ideal world.
She is adamant, isn’t she. We learn, a little later in life, that it is often those times when we are most certain that we would do well to examine our point of view. So, all you can do, Sensible (apart from bribery – which actually might work) is give her yours. No point nagging and threatening and tsk-ing and it is likely to make her more entrenched and you more irritating. Just share your perspective – we would call it wisdom but just imagine how infuriating she would find that – and leave it at that. It might provide the seed of an idea and she may move slowly towards learning to drive over the next however many years.
What she does not yet realise, Sensible, is the sheer joy many of us feel when we can get in a car (owned, hired or borrowed), turn on our terrible music, sing with our appalling voices, roll down the window and get to where we want to go, even if that is just ‘for a drive’. The freedom that provides – particularly as women. The empowerment. That kind of kinetic solitude that, at certain times of our lives, reads as peace, sweet relief, solace. Yes, cars are stinky and pricey and polluting and even dangerous. But being able to drive is not something one will ever regret. Like a just-in-case pee. Or a prayer. Being able to drive harms no one apart from the emissions created by the lessons; in which case, plant some off-setting trees. Share all this, Sensible. And then (if you choose not to bribe her) wait and see.
