Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty
I’m 36 years old, I don’t have children, and I’m not sad. My husband and I don’t suffer from infertility as far as we know; we simply decided to delay parenthood. I could explain that we’re in debt and aren’t sure we can afford child care, but our millennial woes aren’t the whole story. For years, I didn’t want children at all. I did not fear pregnancy or birth so much as a trap. In the conservative Evangelical world of my childhood, motherhood was not optional. Raising children was a woman’s highest calling, just behind marriage — to a man, of course — and I wanted more. When I left the church, I built a life of my own and I guard it like a dragon. My husband is in that life by invitation, and our marriage works because we’re both independent people.
Marriage doesn’t have to be a trap; neither does motherhood. I know that now, and I’ve been thinking about having a child at last. Scolds may tell me I’ve waited too late, but I have no regrets. I’m fulfilled by my marriage and my relationships with family and friends. I have a community, if not biological children. I also have two cats — and that brings me to Donald Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance. He is fixated on women like me.
America is run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too,” Vance said in 2021 during his run for Senate, singling out Vice-President Kamala Harris (who has stepchildren), Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg (who was in the process of adopting), and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (who is a dog owner, I believe). “How does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?” Vance asked. He has also suggested that parents should be able to cast votes on behalf of their children. “Let’s face the consequences and the reality,” he said. “If you don’t have as much of an investment in the future of this country, maybe you shouldn’t get nearly the same voice.”
Vance’s comments are nearly three years old, but they have fresh relevance now that Harris leads the Democratic ticket. Stepparents are common enough in the U.S., but some on the right are unable to cope with the vice-president’s lack of biological children. Blake Masters, who lost a campaign for Senate and is now running for the House from Arizona, endorsed Vance’s rhetoric on Thursday. “If you aren’t running or can’t run a household of your own, how can you relate to a constituency of families, or govern wisely with respect to future generations?” he tweeted. “Skin in the game matters.” Others have said Harris isn’t qualified to run because she hasn’t given birth.
Misogyny is a guiding force for the right, where it manifests in vitriolic anti-feminism. I believe this is a problem for conservatives. Though the average voter probably doesn’t think of themselves as feminist, that doesn’t make them anti-feminists in the ideological sense. The sentiments expressed by Vance and others aren’t just wrong — they’re alienating. Millions of Americans are either in blended families or know a blended family. Others have stories like mine. Fifty-seven percent of people under 50 who say they’re unlikely to become parents simply do not want to have children, the Pew Research Center reports. Another 44 percent say they would rather explore their careers or interests, and just over a third say they can’t afford to raise a child. The right has no real idea how to address that final problem; a few conservatives admit government intervention may be necessary, but they can’t agree on what this might look like. During his brief time as a senator, Vance has introduced no meaningful plans to reduce child-care costs, but he did say that “universal day care is class war on normal people.”
I don’t think Vance knows what “normal people” are like. Neither do his friends. It’s clearly not unusual for people to delay or forgo childbearing out of desire, and scolding them isn’t going to work. Nevertheless, some on the far right can’t help themselves. At NatCon this year, Israeli political theorist and movement architect Yoram Hazony told attendees it’s “dishonorable” not to make babies. Much earlier, a 2017 piece by Matthew Schmitz in First Things magazine announced rather hysterically that “pets are replacing children,” adding, “As playgrounds become dog parks and pets are put into strollers, the symbolism is hard to miss. Dogs are stalking horses of the culture of death.” That’s funny, but there is darkness here too. Scolding isn’t enough for this crowd. Schmitz and his compatriots want to force women to be pregnant and give birth against their will. Motherhood would be mandatory, a penalty, even, for having sex or being raped; the freedom I seek would elude me. Adoption is not always the solution either. If women have no say in reproduction, they are only ever vessels — for male partners, for adoptive families. They have no humanity to consider.
“Normal people” see this bleak prospect for what it is, and they have rejected it repeatedly in the voting booth. That probably won’t change. Vance’s comments are weird, cruel, and, yes, creepy. They don’t reflect the way most people think or live, even if they do have biological children. By attacking childlessness, the right cheapens parenthood, too. The act of having children is no longer about joy but conquest. I can’t imagine anything sadder, though I am but a childless cat lady. Vance’s worldview is poisonous to parents and children, too: Babies should be loved and wanted for their own sake, not because they’re future nationalists or tradwives. The right offers a small and selfish vision that is authoritarian to its core. Their America belongs only to the righteous few, but my America belongs to everyone. I may never give birth, but I too have a stake in this country. We’re all responsible for creating a future worth living in. It will belong to somebody’s children, if not to ours.
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