Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance has been pilloried for lamenting that “childless cat ladies” are running and ruining his country. An op-ed by New York Times columnist Tressie McMillan Cottom captures the outrage of hyperventilating journalists:

he is calling on a set of sexist, racist ideas about which women are even allowed to count as real women. Namely, married mothers are real women, and the rest of us are horrible divergences from the social contract.

This fury was triggered by a conversation that Vance had with Tucker Carlson in 2021, which in turn was based on a speech that Vance gave to students at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, in Virginia.

Mocking “childless cat ladies” is crude, tactless, and needlessly provocative. It’s not a good look for an aspiring politician. However, I am not running for vice-president and I feel at liberty to say that there is something to it. Just search on Amazon for “cat stroller”. For some women – I have no idea how many -- a petite pet is a less demanding substitute for a child.

4 Wheels Pet Stroller for $39.81 on Amazon 

In his speech Vance was less caustic and more thoughtful. It’s worth going back to his words to see if they are just the ravings of a racist, sexist nut job, as journalists at the New York Times and elsewhere seem to think.

• "The rejection of the American family is perhaps the most pernicious and most evil thing that the left has done in this country."

Attributing family-cide to one party or the other is counter-productive. Both Democrats and Republicans have supported policies which fail the family. But there is no doubt that undermining the nuclear family is one of the worst outcomes of 20th century social policy in the US (and elsewhere). Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which ought to be a benchmark for all social policy, states unequivocally: “The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.”

Now the words “family” or “families” are mentioned 92 times the 2024 Democratic Party Platform. But they are nearly all linked to dollar signs or LGBTQI+ advocacy. "Marriage" is mentioned three times -- all references to same-sex marriage. The Democrats – and to be fair, a lot of Republicans as well – have abandoned the notion of a mother-father-children model of family as fundamental to society. The famous social critic Christopher Lasch described the family memorably as “a haven in a heartless world”. A society which is indifferent to whether or not a child (or an adult, for that matter) has robust family ties as support and consolation has failed.

• "Why have we let the Democrat Party become controlled by people who don’t have children? … And why is this just a normal fact of American life? That the leaders of our country should be people who don’t have a personal and direct stake in it via their own offspring, via their own children and grandchildren?"

Mightn’t this allegation be a bit unfair? Are all Republican candidates parents of large families? I doubt it. Part of the answer to Vance’s question is that politics on either side of the aisle is an all-consuming job. It demands energy and commitment which is often stolen from family life.

However, it’s a fair question. Will an elite class without children fashion society in its own image, according to its own values? No one scruples to accuse a billionaire politician like Trump with fashioning policies to feather his own nest. No one hesitates to accuse a politician elected with the support of unions of favouring labour.

And having children is an affirmation of hope in the future. In a very interesting and highly praised recent book,  What Are Children For?: On Ambivalence and Choice, two women, Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman, make a strong argument for this. Berg is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of California, Irvine, and Wiseman is managing editor of The Point. 

“Having children might still be the most basic way to affirm our existence. This is not only because bringing forth and nurturing life is the most literal way of doing so. Nor is it simply because parenting is the greatest responsibility an individual human being can assume for another. Having children is the most basic way of affirming life, above all, because the fact of human life is the condition for all others.”