Childless Women Not Surprised By JD Vance’s Views
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We also know he’s not alone in his thinking
The vitriol about childless women spewed by JD Vance isn’t new. What took people’s breath away is that he said aloud what more than a few think about women who are not mothers.
Like many a few years back, I cheered the announcement of Kamala Harris as Vice President. Why wouldn’t I? She’s whip smart and highly accomplished among many other admirable characteristics. But beyond that, I took a quiet, special pride in the joyful celebrations surrounding her appointment.
That’s because Kamala is, like me, a woman who did not give birth. Some 15–20% of American women over 35 haven’t given birth. But you wouldn’t know it, from the lack of recognition and representation we typically get. I had high hopes that having the second most powerful person in America be a woman who hadn’t given birth might bring newfound recognition, understanding and respect, might change some minds, broaden some thinking.
My hopes sank, though, as the narrative focus moved away from the reality of her impressive lived life and shifted to bolstering her credentials as a mother. It was headspinning, starting in 2019, how quickly Kamala became synonymous with ‘Momala.’ This started when Harris penned an essay for Elle that ran Mother’s Day weekend. Closer to the election, Glamour set up a Zoom call and launched into an hour long chat “about the important stuff — how Cole and Ella got to know the woman they call Momala.”
Perhaps the Biden-Harris team wanted to prevent Harris from experiencing the criticism that followed former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard. Gillard, a progressive who became prime minister in 2010, also did not birth children. The Toronto Star reported how she was vilified for this during the campaign:
“Gillard, 48, has long been attacked by the Liberal opposition (in Australia, Liberals are the main right-wing party) for not starting a family. One Liberal senator said she was unfit for leadership because she is ‘deliberately barren.’ A Liberal frontbencher claimed she couldn’t ‘understand the way parents think’ because she has no children.”
Here in the U.S., we’ve proven no better. There’s a history of slams against powerful or high-achieving women—including former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Supreme Court Justices Sonya Sotamayor and Elena Kagan—for not being mothers.
Until JD Vance, the top prize for shade-throwing went to a 2010 Washington Post oped published when Kagan assumed her post on the Supreme Court, that ran with the headline “The Supreme Court needs more mothers,” and includes this gem:
“Motherhood offers a one-word verifier. It signals a woman with an intensity of life experiences, jammed with joys and fears, unpredictability and intimacy, all outside the workplace.
So, those of us who are not mothers lack all of the above?
Grist covered the “controversy” over the fact that Kagan hadn’t given birth, finding that “Obama’s pick signifies continued progress in the fight for women’s equality, the discussion surrounding that pick shows how much prejudice still exists toward another group: the childfree.”
Similarly, in 2016, UK energy minister Andrea Leadsom had to apologize for a dig she made about then-Prime Minister Theresa May, who does not have children. Leadsom, who had aspirations to replace May as prime minister, had said that she would make a better leader than May as she, a mother of three, had a “very, real stake” in the country’s future.
Ouch.
From Senator to Momala
Right after the 2020 election, there was an 800% increase in Google searches for ‘Does Kamala Harris have children.’ That had to set off alarm bells among the Veep team tasked with data crunching and public opinion monitoring.
Harris’ abundant achievements, friendships, wit, dance moves and warmth, it seems, were not enough. It was time for a full-on PR campaign to soften and ‘maternalize’ her image further.
November 7, the day media called the race for Biden-Harris, I watched, with relief, as America met our president- and vice-president-elect. The same day Oprah Magazine, headlined a feature on the historic Vice President pick putting Momala front and center.
Wonderful, sure, that the blended family gets along so well. But she joined the family. upon when marrying Doug Emhoff when the ‘kids’ were 17 and 21
The victory festivities in Wilmington, Delaware, had me grooving to the music, oohing and ahhing over the fireworks. I felt tears of happiness run down my cheeks seeing a woman as Vice President-elect. I also felt a little sadness. It was hard not to notice the efforts made to hide an ugly, painful truth: childless/childfree women are not fully welcome on center stage.
I recalled a line in Harris’ vice President acceptance speech when she said: “I’ve had a lot of titles in my career, and certainly, vice president will be great. But ‘momala’ will always be the one that means the most.”
A month following the election that narrative gets more fixed each day. Women’s Health this week reported: “In Harris’ next role as VP, you’ll also likely see more of her family, her two children with husband Douglas Emhoff. While you address her as madame vice president, the kids will call her by their own term, ‘Momala.’”
Momala message sent and received. Can we talk about something else, please? Women today possess many other facets and identities. And the rest of the administration?
I tuned into MSNBC at the time to revel in the announcement about then President-Elect Biden’s all-female communications team. Now this looked promising. That is, until Nicole Wallace felt compelled to call out, breathlessly, that they were “moms like me.”
WTF? Can we not just celebrate the historic nature of this diverse group of women without throwing shade at women who don’t have children in the process? I turned off the TV fed up with the mom cheerleading squad. Surely we’re more evolved than this? Didn’t we survive the Mommy and Me and Mom’s Club era of the 1990s and 2000s? Are we doomed, now, to return? Apparently, yes.
Media Relish Moms
I know. Consider the source. But still, the headline reminded me of a New York Times review of the TV show “The Talk” in 2010: “The show’s organizing theme and chief preoccupation is motherhood and child rearing. Guests, male and female, are introduced by how many children they have; the hosts talk at great length, and tearfully, about their own experiences.” The reviewer jokes that the hosts would introduce Stalin as “‘Stalin, father of two.’ ”
Society may not be as overtly intolerant of childless women as the 1970s portrayed in the Mrs. America series. There you’ll see chilling scenes showing Cate Blanchett as the Anti-ERA’s fearless leader, Phyllis Schlafly. A mother of six, Schlafly took particular glee in demonizing childless women. She targeted one of the ERA advocates, Gloria Steinem. Single, childless and nearing 40 Steinem was, in Schlafly’s words: “a miserable, pathetic woman.” Sound familiar?
The thing is this: there was so much promise of things changing back in the 1970s…but they didn’t. We’ve gotten stuck in some kind of loop, proving over and over again that women who haven’t given birth are not full-fledged human beings. So, yes, it’s surprising and curious that women who are not mothers remain suspect. Today’s obsession with all things ‘mom’ also begs a different question.
What’s The Message To The Next Generation?
Consider what the motherhood fixation says about women who are not mothers by circumstance, chance, or choice. Back to hat 15–20% of us? That we’re somehow less than? That we’re equivalent to the dreaded ‘unwomen’ in Margaret Atwood’s dystopian world?
The first step to eradicating shade-throwing and prejudice is to recognize how often it’s done and the insidiousness it breeds. Call it out when we see it and refuse to stand for it.
In the words of another norm-shattering pioneer, Shirley Chisholm who ‘dared to be herself,’ I think it’s high time childless women got our due.
