Fellow European here, we don't have kids but we were thinking at maybe getting a second dog, which made me look for a possible car replacement (we now have a 15+ year-old small hatchback). After some searching and calculating I found out that the "usefulness" of cars for my purported task (to transport two dogs in the back) can be summarized like this (in decreasing order): vans -> station wagons/estates -> SUVs/CUVs.
Unfortunately vans are on their out, I can't really understand the reason why (the VW Sharan will cease production this year, Ford C-Max ceased production back in 2019 etc), station wagons are also not feeling good, almost every car company is betting the house on SUVs/CUVs, which is a trend I don't like at all, because you get to pay more money for less utility.