Hey, JD Vance, I Don’t Have Kids and I Still Love Our Country

Can someone without biological children still care about their country? JD Vance, the Republican nominee for vice president, Ohio senator, and bestselling author seems to think the answer is no. His statements on the subject are a high-profile failure of emotional intelligence and of leadership. They’re a lesson for every leader in what not to say.

You likely have heard by now that Vance ruffled a lot of feathers with his comments, in a 2021 interview, about how our country is being run by a bunch of childless women with cats. As a childless woman with two cats myself, it’s hard for me not to take this personally.  I’m not the only one. Now that Vance is one-half of a major party’s ticket, those comments have resurfaced and a lot of people have attacked what he said in the media and social media–especially the phrase “childless cat ladies,” which, of course, describes many millions of American voters.

But if you listen to all of what he said, it gets even more hurtful. Here goes:

“We are effectively run in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, 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. And it’s just a basic fact if you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC–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.”

Wow. It’s hard not to take offense at the idea that I don’t really care about this nation because I’ve never given birth to a child. 

Since being nominated to the Republican presidential ticket, Vance went on The Megyn Kelly Show on SiriusXM on Friday to better explain his remarks. For one thing, he noted that he has nothing against cats. He also said that he never meant to attack childless people–especially those (like me) who wanted to have biological children but weren’t able to. He refined his remarks into an attack on what he called the Democrats’ anti-family values, a much better political message than “childless cat ladies.” But he didn’t walk back anything he had said about how people without children can’t care about our country as much as those who do.

Vance seems to believe that in order to have a real stake in the future, you not only must have children, they must be biologically yours. He named Pete Buttigieg as an example of a childless, and thus stake-less, Democrat. At the time, Buttigieg and his husband were in the process of adopting twins. As for Kamala Harris, one of his “childless cat ladies,” she has two stepchildren who call her “Momala.” And, by the way, she has no pets. 

As for me, I’ve had stepchildren for 24 years and I’ve known my step-grandchildren their entire lives. We may not be biologically linked, but I worry about their welfare, about the nation we’re leaving them, and about how the changing climate will affect them, and their children’s children, after my husband and I are long gone. Not having kids does not prevent me from loving this nation and caring deeply about its future. I do, and so do most of the childless Americans I know. 

A failure of emotional intelligence.

Beyond being insulting and just plain wrong, Vance’s comments weren’t the smartest thing for a leader to say. Emotional intelligence is partly about empathy–understanding how the things you do and say will make other people feel. An emotionally intelligent leader would have known how just how these comments would land, and how much of a negative reaction they would cause. 

You can learn from his mistake. Before you make sweeping public statements, especially on issues people care deeply about, take a second to ask yourself how those statements will be received. More important, ask yourself how they will make people feel. There are more than a few voters out there who don’t have biological children, and may even have a cat or two. Some of them are Republicans. If I were Vance, I wouldn’t want those people feeling the way I do right now.