I am friends with a lot of other parents already. I do go out of my way to make friends. I already organize bike trips to the museum and stuff like that. I'm a very social person.

What I'm saying is that there are a lot of forces keeping people solitary and anti-social. This is just one of them. I know for a fact that some of these families waiting in their SUVs live a short walk from the school. Yet still they choose to isolate themselves. Sometimes the kids in these cars are literally yelling out the window to my son because they're friends. I don't want him going close to the cars because they've LITERALLY been pumping out pollution for 10-15 minutes (those early spots are very coveted). I have to tell my son to hold his breath when we bike on the empty sidewalk past these idling cars. It all just feels very anti-social and dystopian.

Sure, school drop off is just one small aspect of life. But because of drop-off culture, there are certain people who I may NEVER have a chance to interact with. Imagine if those parents instead walked with their kid. Maybe I would make a new friend. Maybe we'd have a nice conversation.

Last year there was another woman and her son waiting with me. They walked to school every day. We became friends just through school drop off in the morning. It brought some happiness into my life and made me feel a sense of community. She could have chosen to get in her car and wait in the long line of SUVs like everyone else, but luckily she didn't.

By essentially saying "stop caring about school drop off and look for other opportunities" it feels like you're missing my point: building community means showing up in lots of different ways, and consistently. The school drop-off example is just one example of many. A woman who lived on my street since the 80s said that back then nearly everybody walked to school. By switching to a car-based morning drop-off feels to me like we've lost something, even if it's just a small thing