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“During [JD] Vance’s bid for the Senate in Ohio [in 2021], he said in a Fox News interview that ‘we are effectively run in this country via the Democrats,’ and referred to them as ‘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.’ He said that included [Vice President Kamala] Harris, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat.” AP News
“[Vance] defended his comments [last Friday]… ‘Obviously, it was a sarcastic comment. I’ve got nothing against cats,’ Vance said Friday on The Megyn Kelly Show on SiriusXM. ‘I know the media wants to attack me and wants me to back down, Megyn, but 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,’ Vance said.” CNBC
Many on both sides are critical of Vance’s comments:
“Now, it might have been sensible for [Vance] to put out a statement like this: ‘I said something boneheaded three years ago, and I regret it.’ But rather than doing cleanup and moving on, Vance is expanding the blast zone. On Friday, he [said] ‘Sometimes it’s the truest and most important points that cause them to attack you the most.’…
“As he opportunistically reinvented himself from NeverTrumper to ultimate MAGA warrior, Vance created a rich vein for opposition researchers to mine. Take, for instance, his idea, advanced in a 2021 speech, that people with children should be allowed to cast additional votes on behalf of their offspring… That was, he [said Friday], merely ‘a thought experiment.’ Uh, okay. But it was also another way of showing what little respect he has for people whose choices and circumstances are different from his own.”
Karen Tumulty, Washington Post
“There’s much to be said for traditional families. But Mr. Vance’s rhetoric and record show that he wants to leverage government to promote his own supposedly superior moral values, such as by using tax policy to reward those with more children. He’s even spoken favorably about a Hungarian government proposal that would forgive loans for married couples who have kids and stay together…
“Such ideas echo the left’s playbook of subsidizing electric vehicles, among other progressive priorities. Social scientists call these ‘nudges.’ But Americans don’t like to be nudged, judged, hectored or disdained. This was one lesson from Mr. Trump’s victory in 2016. George W. Bush liked to say he believed in ‘compassionate conservatism.’ Mr. Vance exemplifies censorious conservatism, a strain as off-putting as today’s imperious progressivism.”
Allysia Finley, Wall Street Journal
Other opinions below.
“Having kids does not appear to make you a champion of child welfare. Donald Trump has five children, all blood-related; his administration also separated more than 5,000 children from their parents under its ‘zero tolerance’ immigration policy… Vance himself voted last month to block legislation that would guarantee national access to in-vitro fertilization—many couples’ only hope for having a biological child…
“The GOP has a history of pro-family branding, but states led by Republicans tend to provide parents with less support—paid leave, affordable child care, universal preschool, expanded Medicaid—and have higher child-poverty and infant-mortality rates. ‘Cat lady’ Harris, meanwhile, led the Biden administration’s push for expanded child tax credits.”
Faith Hill, The Atlantic
“Millions of Americans are either in blended families or know a blended family… 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… [Vance has said] that ‘universal day care is class war on normal people.’ I don’t think Vance knows what ‘normal people’ are like.”
Sarah Jones, New York Magazine
“There are totally valid reasons why some people don't wind up having children. But Vance raised a good point in asking how and why the Democrats seem to have embraced and lionized a childless lifestyle in the fashion that they have. Perhaps it's driven in many cases by a focus on careers and/or money. But this has been more of a recent development…
“If people from either party are truly concerned about this, I would advise them to focus on making the country a better place to have and raise children in safety, security, and financial opportunity. It's not as if we've forgotten the recipe.”
Jazz Shaw, Hot Air
Some argue, “The point is not that failure to have children is a moral fault. The point is that having children often changes one’s perspective on the future in a way that simply doesn’t happen otherwise. I get it. My own perspective on the world moved to the Right after I left college and entered the dreaded Real World, where crime existed, and taxes had to be paid. I had skin in the game in a way I simply didn’t as a college student…
“It shifted again, not so much to the Left as away from GOP orthodoxy, when I became a father. Nothing makes you think about the future like having kids… Having kids doesn’t guarantee political wisdom, heaven knows, but for any thoughtful person, whatever their political alignment, it ought to shape the way you see politics, because as Vance put it, you have a flesh-and-blood stake in its future.”
Rod Dreher, Substack
