Once again, the mad/selfish-women-who-refuse-to-bear-children trope is upon us. Always lurking there or there abouts, it occasionally bubbles up to the surface at opportune moments. This time, according to the delightful JD Vance, we women without children are crazy cat ladies with miserable lives who thus want everyone else to be miserable.
This is by no means an original take, of course, though to look at Tucker Carlson’s customary gormless, open-gobbed demeanour in the now widely circulating video clip, you’d think JD had just revealed the meaning of life. (Tucker is easily impressed, as evidenced by his recent forays into the delights of Russian supermarkets. They, ahem, ‘radicalised’ him.)
Like all easy tropes, this one does not bear any logical scrutiny. It’s not supposed to. This is not necessary to its function of keeping women in their place. All women, not just the childless ones. It’s meant to exhaust us. And divide us.
Having children does not define us
My experience, such as it is, tells me that people are in no way defined by their procreational status in terms of their character or ability to feel compassion (or happiness for that matter). I have met and observed people with children who are wonderfully caring; and people who only care about their own children; and people who don’t even care about their own children, or who care about them, but not in a way that is for the children’s ultimate benefit. The people without children I meet or observe are similarly diverse.
People are different. No one thing defines us. Mind-blowing.
The childless woman tropes that emanate from politicians and the media also surface closer to home. It’s the way these things work. Pervasively, insidiously. Women without children almost all have tales of family members, male and female, trying to belittle them and infantilise them with this nonsense. And god help us if we are also single. I mean, just shoot us already.
What do these tropes really tell us?
When people suggest that women without children do not have a stake in society or the future of humankind, it tells us nothing about the object of their sneering and everything about them.
It is beyond easy to find examples of women without children who contribute to society in massive ways. I offer you Dolly Parton’s big-hearted patronage (matronage?) of literacy and vaccine research, just because she is fabulous. Now look around you at the equally fabulous women, and men, supporting society in schools, hospitals, care homes and day-to-day life, and tell me they all have children. Conversely, tell me that everyone with children cares about society and the future world. Tell me there are no selfish or nasty people with children. No psychopaths with children. I mean, where to begin?
So, again, while these statements from people like Vance tell us nothing about people in general, they tell us everything about the people who utter them. They shine a light on their fears and insecurities regarding their own fragile identity. They tell us that they cannot envisage a world where people care about something which doesn’t directly benefit them or theirs. They really don’t get it. We should probably feel sorry for them to live such cynical, hollowed-out lives. Maybe we would if they were not so intent on controlling and hurting us.
On a final note …
Among the endless throwaway comments that are impossible to counter without exhausting arguments and justifications, there is one that particularly irks me. When parents say, ‘Since I’ve had children, I can’t watch children suffering on TV’, I just think: What was wrong with you before? I don’t say it. But just maybe I’ll start. Look what happens when you make us angry.
PS I’m as terrified of cats as JD Vance is of strong women who are not his mamaw. I am occasionally miserable, usually when exposed to mean, nonsensical tropes, but sometimes just because. I wish misery on very few. Probably a bit crazy, to be fair.
