jd vance

Politicians trot out their families while we remain childless

Sue Fagalde Lick painful reasons for being childless, people who don't understand childless, Reasons not to have children , , , , , , , , , , ,

On Monday, some of us watched the second inauguration of President Donald Trump. A lot of my friends chose to do other things, but it’s history, so I watched.

Trump has a huge family, five grown children and their spouses and ten grandchildren, who all kind of look like him. Clearly, he has no problems with fertility. He preaches the gospel of family, although one has to wonder how involved he actually was when they were growing up. In addition to his wives, he had the means to hire paid help and send the kids to private school.

Good for him. Really. But what about single mothers who can’t afford day care, private school or even a decent car? The couples who spend years trying unsuccessfully to conceive? The unmarried veteran living in a crummy apartment because he/she can’t afford a house?

Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, showed off his own beautiful family. He’s the guy who said childless cat ladies have less of a stake in the future than women with kids.

It might be hard for those guys to understand why so many young people are not having children these days, why twenty percent of American women reach menopause without becoming mothers.

Yes, some choose a childfree life. That is and should be their right. Every child growing up should know they don’t have to be parents. They can choose other paths. And if they want to be parents but can’t for some reason, their lives are not over. It’s okay to embrace a Plan B, as Jody Day says, despite Russia’s new law against preaching the possibilities of lives without children.

Many of us grew up expecting to be parents, but it didn’t happen. We don’t hate kids. We’re not selfish or immature. But for some reason, we are childless. We grieve the loss of the families we don’t have.

Maybe we are physically unable to conceive or to carry a baby to term. Maybe we or our partners suffer from illnesses we don’t want to pass on to a new generation. Maybe we love someone who is unable or unwilling, and we choose love over children. Maybe we’re gay and have not been able to adopt or get pregnant with medical assistance. Maybe we’re trying to finish our education, pay off our student loans, establish our careers, and, by some miracle, be able to afford to buy a house. Maybe the state of the world is so frightening to us that we don’t want to bring new lives into it, especially when we might not be around when it hits the fan.

Some of us are terrified that the fertility assistance we count on to create a family will become unobtainable under the new administration.

Our leaders need to know these things. They know the birthrate is falling, but they also need to understand why and to help where they can with the financial burden, childcare, healthcare, insurance, and a big dollop of open-mindedness.

They may be no more clueless than your Uncle Joe or the ex-friend who doesn’t understand why you hate baby showers, but they have the power to change our lives in both good and bad ways, so they need to know.  

I don’t know which side of the political spectrum you fall on. However you voted, it’s a done deal now. Perhaps we should write to our legislators and even the president to make them more aware of our needs. Perhaps we should look for candidates who don’t have typical families, so we can show that you don’t have to have a traditional spouse and 2.5 children to be a leader. Or maybe we just need to be more courageous in talking about our situations instead of trying to hide or pretend we’re not childless. It is all right to say to anyone anywhere, “I don’t have children, and here is why.”

What do you think? Let’s talk. Keep it civil. I will not approve mean-spirited political posts about Trump or any other politicians. Readers in other countries, feel free to chime in. Do your leaders understand about childlessness?

BTW, is the .5 child the dog?

If you’re thoroughly sick of politics, visit my “Can I Do It Alone?” Substack, where we have been discussing the challenges of cooking for one person. When in doubt, let’s eat.

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Enough with the ‘Childless Cat Lady’ craziness!

Sue Fagalde Lick childless women, women without children, women without grandchildren , , , , , , , , , , , ,

My Google alerts about childlessness are all about one thing these days: what Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance said three years ago, how the country is going to hell because it’s being run by miserable childless cat ladies. That isn’t even true. It’s mostly being run by white men with wives and kids they show off at election time.

In 2021, Vance also talked about how the childless should pay more taxes. But in the U.S, those of us without children already do pay more. Parents subtract a personal deduction for each child, along with deductions for childcare and other expenses. So enough of all that.

Vance’s wife Usha has been trying to soften the blow from her husband’s comments. He was joking, she says. Vance himself says he was simply saying “American families are good and the government should be more pro-family.” He blames the media for blowing up a sarcastic remark he made before he even ran for Senate.

We all say stupid stuff we want to forget about. On the Megyn Kelly show, Vance said, “It’s not a criticism of people who don’t have children. I explicitly said in my remarks … this is not about criticizing people who for various reasons don’t have kids. This is about criticizing the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child.”

So, okay. Democrats are as family-oriented as anyone else, except that they push for women’s right to choose and are more open to non-traditional partnerships. In politics, people exaggerate for effect. It’s happening on both sides.

Maybe things will calm down now that Democrat Kamala Harris has chosen Tim Walz, a married man with two children, for her running mate.

But Vance’s comments bring up the age-old cliche of the “career gal,” the woman too busy with her work to have children. That term makes me wince. How about you? We see it in movies, read about it in books. This woman is always hard-hearted, cold, mean even. She has no time for love, family, or sentiment. She is not a hugger.

She is also not real. Many of us love our work and want to give it as much of our time as possible. But that does not mean we don’t also treasure family. It doesn’t mean we don’t long for the children and grandchildren we may never have. It doesn’t mean stepchildren can’t be as precious as kids to whom we give birth.

Families come in all shapes. Some are like the big families I see coming into church with a mother, father, and five or more children. Some are a man, woman, and kids from a former partnership. Some are a combination of foster and adopted kids. Some are just a man and a woman, two women or two men, or just a woman or man and cat or dog. Let’s support all sorts of families, including yours and mine.

Do we want to live in a country where we can’t run for president or any other office unless we have a “Leave It to Beaver” family with a loving spouse and children? I don’t.

And please, let’s stop talking about Vance and “childless cat ladies.” The cat owners I know are very fine people, and they vote.

What do you think about all this? Please, no ugly fights over Trump/Vance vs. Harris/Walz. But let’s talk about it. And then let’s get back to more important issues that have nothing to do with politics.

Photo by Sam Lion on Pexels.com

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How do we respond to complaints about “childless cat ladies” running for office?

Sue Fagalde Lick childless world leaders, legacy , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Politics is something I usually avoid here. One would think having or not having children has nothing to do with all that mess happening on the news these days. But things have been said that cannot be ignored.

Once again, as has happened in so many other countries, people are questioning whether U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris should run for president when she has no children of her own. Like many of us, she has stepchildren, but has not given birth.  

Harris is not the first to receive this kind of criticism. A few years back, I wrote about childless women leaders in other countries who faced criticism because they didn’t have children. Among them were British Prime Minister Theresa May, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian, former Australia Prime Minister Julia Gillard, and the first woman premier in Tasmania, Lara Giddings. How could these childless “career women” possibly understand the needs of families, people argued.

There will always be voters who ignore all the amazing things these women have accomplished and focus on their lack of children. Their intelligence, skill, and heart don’t matter if they can’t lead a beautiful family onto the stage for photo ops.

In a 2021 interview now going viral, Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance called Harris one of the “miserable childless cat ladies.” She and others like her have no direct stake in the US since they are not mothers, he said.

He has even implied that those without children should not be allowed to vote.

Say what?????

What about all those people who would love to have children but can’t for physical or circumstantial reasons? What about people who choose to devote their lives to other things? Are they less valuable human beings? Of course not.

I don’t know which side of the political spectrum you favor, but this is not a blue or red issue. It’s all the colors. As older politicians give way to younger ones, more and more will not fit the traditional family mold. The birth rate is going down. The traditional picture of two heterosexual parents, two kids, a dog, and a house with a white picket fence is fading away.

I just finished watching the TV series “The Good Wife.” In it, our heroine Alicia and her politician husband Peter pose with their kids for the cameras as if they were a happy family when in fact they aren’t even together. Everyone believes Peter would lose the election if people know his marriage was a sham. In fiction as in real life, the implication is you can’t win unless you have that traditional family. If I were running for office, I would be standing up there alone. Would that disqualify me? Would it make me a “miserable cat lady”?

Impossible. I’m allergic to cats. And I’m not miserable.

The United States has never had a woman president. Harris will have to fight plenty of discrimination for being female and non-white. Her childless status adds another layer.  Honestly, if she had children, she would probably be accused of neglecting them for her work. That’s not an issue with male candidates because it’s assumed their wives are taking care of the kids.

Despite our lack of children, you and I do have a stake in the future. We contribute in so many ways beyond giving birth to baby humans. We work, create, teach, organize, and provide care. We love and live, and yes, we do contribute. We do leave a legacy. We are fully human and capable. In a world where the birth rate is going down, where marriage and parenting are no longer assumed, we can no longer require parenthood as a qualification for office.

Let’s talk about this. We don’t need to rant about Trump or Biden here. Keep the focus on childlessness. Can a candidate without children run successfully for office? Why do some people think they can’t? How can we convince them we’re as qualified as anyone? Is it different for men than it is for women? What do you see as our contributions to the future?

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