Over the last week, Donald Trump’s running mate and potential Vice President J.D. Vance has come under heavy criticism for remarks he made in 2021. Speaking on Tucker Carlson Tonight, Vance claimed that “We are effectively run in this country…by a bunch of childless cat ladies” before adding “If you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC - the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children”.
Understandably, the resurfacing of these comments has led to uproar in the media and fierce debate online. I say “understandably” because his comments were crude and lacked the nuance required to properly discuss such contentious and, in my view, important issues. Why they are contentious is obvious, but why are they important?
For a start, the Western world is going through a population crisis. We are not having enough children. And, crucially: it’s not that mothers are having fewer children, it’s that fewer women are becoming mothers. If current trends continue, the childless population will keep growing.
What is more, the rapid polarisation of Anglosphere politics in the last decade has brought into sharp relief the significant differences in the voting preferences of various ethnic, marital and sex-based groups.
In the course of the usual back and forth about this online, I replied to a tweet by my friend and former TRIGGERnometry guest, Sydney Watson, in which she wondered why people focus on childless women so much, but nobody seems to care about childless men.
I attempted to explain that the focus on childless women specifically, while appearing unfair, has an understandable origin. The main thrust of my argument was that we ought not pretend that becoming a parent has no impact on your worldview and, therefore, by definition, not becoming a parent also affects how you think about the world. Especially if you are a childless woman past child-bearing age for whom that childlessness is permanent and irreversible.
I don’t want to rehash that conversation here. Rather, it was a sarcastic reply to this exchange that caught my attention and sparked the thought process that has led to your reading this:
“As if parents are enlightened when it comes to politics,” it said. This really got me thinking.
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"Enlightened" is a poor caricature of the parental worldview. Parenthood does not raise your IQ. But what it does do is put you into full connection with the entire lineage of humanity. It makes you understand that you are merely the intermediary step between the people who came before you and the people who are coming after you.
It makes you realise that you are not even remotely the centre of the universe.
It forces you to try so much harder to be the very best possible version of yourself every single day because you cannot bear to see the price you will pay for failing.
And the fact that, despite doing your very best every single day, you fail regularly anyway humbles you. Any illusion you may have had about your own perfection vanishes rapidly.
It also makes you more empathetic in a very particular kind of way. When you see the face of your newborn child for the first time, it imprints in your consciousness the fact that everyone you have ever met and everyone you will ever meet, whether they're the worst scumbag in the world or the purest angel, was once an innocent little bundle too.
It makes you more risk conscious. I don't necessarily mean risk-averse; you may be one of those parents who really wants to let their kids make their own mistakes. But you are more aware of risk and more aware of vulnerability. Of your child's and of your own, yes. But also of all things.
Does this make you a better person? After all, this is the implication, right? If you claim there is a difference between people with children and people without, that means you're saying people with children are morally better.
I don't know if it makes you morally better. But does it make you better at some things? It would be absurd to claim it doesn't.
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