Childless Cat Woman
There’s plenty already being said on the topic of JD Vance’s “Childless Cat Woman” comments from 2021, which recently resurfaced after officially being named Trump’s VP candidate.
I’ve been bemused by this phrase and the way it’s rattled around in my head the past week as I go through my daily routines: Here’s the Childless Cat Woman in action, watering her garden in her house dress, as her cats look on through the window. Here she is again, demonstrating the fine art of fussing over these creatures she proclaims to be her “fur babies,” being that of course, as a CCW, she has no actual children of her own.
In truth, Vance’s words don’t bother me much (mainly because I’m not too concerned with his thoughts on my existence), but the sentiment touches on a larger issue that I’ve thought about quite a bit over the past few decades.
For me, that focuses on what he said in his follow-up remarks after the media shitstorm. Ultimately, he argues that the experience of becoming a parent is essentially the only reason why people would be vested in the future of this country and the future generations who’d be living in it.
“I know the media wants to attack me and wants me to back down on this, Megyn, but the simple point that I made is that having children, becoming a father, becoming a mother, I really do think it changes your perspective in a pretty profound way.”
I don’t disagree that having children is life-changing, or that it changes your perspective on life/what’s important. But thinking this experience is the only/most profound way to form one’s commitment to helping the greater good narrowly limits how we can build community and show up as caregivers. It erases so many of us who’ve experienced profound, life-changing events that equally commit us to caring for and upholding the value of family, however that family is comprised.
My mom was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s the summer after I graduated from college, which changed my perspective about family profoundly. I was 22 years old at the time, and my mom was 54. Very suddenly, the life I planned for myself fell away and I began preparing for a very different reality, one that required me to care for my mom in ways she once cared for me. Her decline was gradual at first, but within just a few years, she needed help with dressing, bathing, and personal care. The level and intensity of the care she required grew with time and for the 18 years she stayed at home with my dad (with the help of additional caregivers for the last half of that time),
Though I haven’t ventured into the world of parenting myself (jury’s still out on that one, tbh), I’ve amassed more years of hands-on experience changing diapers than many of my friends who have kids, have had to deepen the reserves of grace and patience that exist within me, have learned through challenge and heartbreak what it really takes to love someone truly. And I’ve experienced firsthand the countless ways the system is not set up to accommodate individuals in similar situations as my mom, or the families who love them, or really, any families at all.
That experience is what commits me to the idea of helping creating community in the truest defintion, one that provides space for everyone, not just those who fit neatly into general categories of what “family” should look like. And regardless of whether or not I become a mother biologically, my commitment to that cannot be altered.
Hot takes like Vance’s are inevitable, but there’s an opportunity for us all to challenge that thinking. How can we expand our definition of what it means to be committed to family? How can we celebrate the many ways that people show up for one another, regardless of biological ties? What if we started to see our relationship to the collective as being familial v. limiting that to only mean one’s nuclear family? Would we all feel more supported? Would we all feel truly seen?