STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
What did vice presidential candidate JD Vance mean when he talked about childless cat ladies? The Republican has been defending comments he made back in 2021. Here's what he said years ago on Fox News.
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JD VANCE: We're 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. You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children.
INSKEEP: In reality, Harris is a stepmother. Pete Buttigieg is both a parent and a man. So Vance seemed to be saying you must have biological children to count. In another appearance, he said children should have the vote, which parents would get to cast - power to the parents. As objections spread in recent days, Vance returned to Fox, where Trey Gowdy told him that Americans will forgive if you ask for it. Vance didn't ask. Here's one of their exchanges.
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TREY GOWDY: George Washington did not have biological children and neither did James Madison. So I think you will agree with me that direct offspring are not necessary to be fully invested in the future of this country.
VANCE: Of course, not, Trey. I do think that being a parent actually has a profound effect on somebody's perspective, and we should honor and respect that. But there are a whole host of people who don't have children for a whole host of reasons. And they certainly are great people who can participate fully in the life of this country. And that's not what I said, Trey.
INSKEEP: Vance said Democrats lied about the 2021 remark that you heard. He also said we should pray and have sympathy for people without kids. Presidential historian Lindsay Chervinsky wrote about Vance's remarks back in 2021. She says Vance's comments reminded her of efforts to regulate who fully counts as American going back to Thomas Jefferson's idealized notion of a simple farmer.
LINDSAY CHERVINSKY: That basically meant a man who had enough land that he could care for his family and provide for his family and be financially independent. So he would not be earning his wages from anyone else and therefore could think for himself. That concept has really remained at the heart of what we think of as American culture. You know, the idea of a small house with a white picket fence and a yard where you can have your kids play with their dog, that, I think, is the evolved version of the concept.
INSKEEP: What happened in later generations?
CHERVINSKY: Well, in later generations we've seen ongoing dialogue about, you know, who counts as a citizen, who gets to be considered a citizen. And sometimes, you know, that has had a racial element. So over the decades, our idea of who is white and who is not has shifted. And then this was also, I think, a really important element when the suffrage movement started to gain traction, because there was an argument against suffrage that women didn't need the right to vote because their husbands were representing them. The husbands voted on behalf of the entire family, so you really only needed to have one vote per household.
INSKEEP: Oh. Now, this is very interesting because that resembles something that JD Vance has also said in the past, suggesting the idea that perhaps children should have the vote and the parents should cast the votes for the children - meaning you have more voting power if you have a large family.
CHERVINSKY: Yes, absolutely. I mean, and the idea is to try and prioritize certain types of people. And so for JD Vance, he's wanting to prioritize certain types of families. Now, whether or not that would extend to all types of families with children, my guess is not. But over time, I think that that concept has been a prevalent one.
INSKEEP: There are already numerous policies that governments at numerous levels have enacted to try to support families, to try to support children. This is generally seen as positive and popular, and it certainly has gotten through the democratic system. Is there some difference between all of that and what you hear JD Vance saying?
CHERVINSKY: I think so. I mean, I think it's a question of placing value on choices. So a lot of the financial policy that we've already seen in place is not saying that you are less than if you don't have children, but rather recognizing that it can be hard sometimes to raise a family, and expensive, and wanting to help people who are interested in doing so. But if you are establishing punitive policies against people who don't have children, that is a very different. That's like the carrot and stick concept of family rearing and your life choices. And so I think the carrot most people can agree upon because we want to be able to help families and recognize that they participate in the community. But the stick version does feel more malicious.
INSKEEP: Who is Vance appealing to when he makes remarks like these?
CHERVINSKY: I think Vance is appealing to a couple of sets of people. He is appealing to families who maybe feel like the America that they knew, or that they thought that they knew, is slipping out of their hands. He is appealing to people who feel like identity politics perhaps have taken on too much weight in our society or that gender roles have been inverted. And he's really playing into those existing divisions and trying to make them deeper and wider.
INSKEEP: Historian Lindsay Chervinsky. Thanks so much.
CHERVINSKY: Thank you for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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