teens

This is not a drill. Parents are now sending their kids to school in an Uber.

 

Picking up your kids a logistical nightmare? Traffic the bane of your life? Don’t have enough time to ferry the children to and from school?

You’re not alone. And one solution some parents are turning to is online ride-sharing service, Uber.

Yep, you read that correctly. A growing number of parents are using Uber to do the school drop off for them – saying they prefer the convenience of easy pickup, the simple payment, and the GPS-tracking in vehicles, enabling them know where their little ones are at any point in time.

Listen to This Glorious Mess, where we talk about the Uber-drop-off phenomenum, and also what happens when a bride and groom DO NOT want your kids at their wedding, here:

One such parent, Debbie Landa, says she and her husband turned to Uber to take their son to ballet classes five days a week, allowing the entire family to have more freedom and flexibility, “We get to have dinner at a decent hour with our older son for once,” she told The Washington Post.

But it isn’t all roses – there is controversy over the fact that Uber doesn’t use fingerprinting when screening drivers, not to mention that Uber actually has a ban on transporting people around who are younger than 18.

The idea of outsourcing the school pick-up has befuddled us. We don’t know what to think of it all. So we asked our parenting experts and hosts of  Mamamia’s family podcast This Glorious Mess, Holly Wainwright and Andrew Daddo,  to explain to us what the hell is going on here, and how we should be digesting it all.

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“I think the idea of the Uber is funny, I’m just imagining this little kid with a backpack outside a school, like – ‘Oh my car’s here,’ and then Mister Uber comes out and goes ‘Little Johnny!’… but I do think, one of the things that I rail against here, is that we do spend too much time driving kids around,” says Holly.”In an ideal world, you live somewhere with good public transport and kids have to work it out for themselves.”

Andrew and Holly - This Glorious Mess's non-experts.

And while Daddo agrees that constraints on parent's time can be very frustrating - he brings up that there is one benefit to driving your kids around that could never happen if you used Uber - and that is the chit chat.

"There's the thing of spending time with children in the car, where you get to talk, fingers crossed, you know?"

Well, fingers crossed, yes, it's a possibility. But those helpful Uber drivers are always up for a chat, right?

Would you out-source the school run to Uber?