I am neither childless, nor a cat owner, nor a lady. But I was still offended by JD Vance’s now-infamous comments, which have haunted his vice presidential candidacy like a ghost in Appalachia.
If you’ve missed the news cycle, Vance told Tucker Carlson in 2021 that the country is being 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.”
Blowback ensued (including from Jennifer Aniston, no less), so Vance tried to “clarify” his comments in an interview last week with SiriusXM host Megyn Kelly. “Obviously, it was a sarcastic comment,” he said, misusing the word ‘sarcastic.’ “I’ve got nothing against cats.”
Yes, he really did say that. But Vance then continued, a bit more to the point:
The simple point that I made is that having children, becoming a father, becoming a mother, I really do think it changes your perspective in a pretty profound way, that this is not about criticizing people who, for various reasons, didn’t have kids. This is about criticizing the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child… The entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And 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’s fundamental point (setting aside his feeble attempt to depict the Democratic party as “anti-child,” which no politician in the history of America has ever been) is a more serious one, and certainly one with resonance in Jewish as well as Christian belief. Procreation is the first commandment in the Torah, and it’s rare to find a Jewish community that doesn’t value children and family life.
Yet Vance went much further than that. Not only did he say that, in his personal religious/moral opinion, having children is a good thing; not only did he insist that everyone should have children; he said that without children, one cannot have a “direct stake” in one’s society. In other words, according to Vance, one cannot care properly for the future unless one has a biological or familial “stake” in it.
To get this out of the way, here are some people who contributed to the betterment of their societies while not having children of their own: Jesus of Nazareth, Dolly Parton, Rosa Parks, Isaac Newton, Queen Elizabeth I, Michelangelo, Plato, Beethoven, Jane Austen, Dr. Seuss, Georgia O’Keeffe, and most (though not all) of the popes of Vance’s newly-adopted Catholic faith. Clearly, it is possible to have a direct stake in the future even if one lacks biological or adopted offspring.
In fact, one might do a better job of caring for society as a whole if one is less focused on caring for one’s family in particular.
I’ve seen this in my own experience. I became a father at the relatively late age of 46, something I’m reminded of every time my back aches. And yet, in my twenties, thirties, and forties I was at least as passionate about social and political issues as I am now — possibly even more so. During those decades, I worked as a professional LGBTQ activist, founded three (!) Jewish nonprofit organizations, and, as a columnist for this newspaper as well as others, wrote voluminously on subjects including climate change, civil rights, Israel/Palestine, and the intersection of politics and religion. Fifteen years before Vance, I went to Yale Law School, determined to devote my life to public service. I was passionate .
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Since my daughter has been born, I’ve seen how parenthood has personalized and sometimes distorted these deeply-held beliefs. Now, when I think about, say, the climate crisis or wealth inequality, I think about it both in general and particular terms. I emotionally overemphasize the problems my daughter will face over, say, the problems immigrants face. I try not to let these emotions dictate my actions or beliefs, but I do experience them.
And, as I wrote when my daughter was still a baby, I have also experienced how the powerful bonds we feel for our children can be so easily exploited by political opportunists like Vance. At the time, I analogized the experience of being a new parent to physical intoxication; I felt flooded with hormones and out-of-control feelings. I felt like I viscerally understood the appeal of rhetoric like Vance’s: protect the children, protect the family. As a new parent, I wrote, “I can feel, in my body, how easy it would be to take advantage of those feelings.”
So, yes, becoming a parent “changes your perspective in a pretty profound way.” But not necessarily for the better, if we’re trying to build a just society for all people, rather than the ones we care the most about.
In fact, if Vance had a more expansive view of the good, rather than one centered on his own family’s well-being, he wouldn’t extrapolate The Good That Is True For Everyone According to Natural Law And Religion from his own particular experience.
Which is, I think, what’s really going on when religious people like Vance make such universal moral pronouncements. Coming, according to his own telling, from a toxic family in a broken society, Vance has found a system of values and beliefs that works for him. Good for him – really. But then, with the zeal of the converted, he immediately leaps to the conclusion that these same values must be good for everyone else in the world.
And, in a Trad-Catholic context, that means that Natural Law — conceived of, in large part, by celibate men — is simply universally true. Not only is being a parent better for JD Vance (and, one hopes, his wife Usha), but it must be better for everyone. Everyone without children must be “miserable at their own lives.”
This is ridiculous — which is one reason Vance has been such a godsend for Democrats.
Obviously, people lead happy (and unhappy) lives in every possible permutation. They find meaning in their work, their creative lives, their extended families, in their hobbies and joys, their religion, their time spent caring for others, and any number of other places. For Vance to miss that obvious point is, to use the political word of the week, weird .
I began this column by agreeing that Vance’s hyper-natalism resonates within Jewish tradition. Certainly, the Bible is obsessed with lineage, family, and parentage – much to the dismay of legendary Biblical women who struggled with infertility, like Sarah, Rachel and Hannah.
But the notion that parenthood is a necessary prerequisite for a fulfilling life or taking on the role of a leader? That has little precedent in Jewish tradition. Instantly, my mind turns to the visions of the mystics, the music of David, the strength of Yael and Deborah, the brilliance of the Talmudic sages (including Ben Azzai, who never married), to Bezalel and Ruth and Saadia Gaon. Whether these figures had children or not, what we honor them for are the diverse forms of genius that they bequeathed to civilization.
To somehow not see this fundamental truth of the human condition may suggest a worrisome tendency toward authoritarian theocracy. Or maybe it’s just plain weird.
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