Silly me. I did not realize that all this nonsense about “childless cat ladies” was directed at Kamala Harris personally. Nesrine Malik is here to set me and anyone else straight.[1]
Ronald Reagan was president when, at the age of 24, I made the decision not to have children. My doctor grumbled that I hadn’t yet reached the age of 25 but agreed to perform a vasectomy. I had it done for three reasons:
I realized, even then, that I was having trouble even taking care of myself. This particular realization has been more fully vindicated than I could possibly have imagined at that age, when I actually had a real job.[2] I have had an infuriating amount of difficulty finding real work since, only occasionally succeeding, and not at all now for over 23 years.
I wanted desperately not to replicate my father’s parenting. My father had some admirable qualities but mostly a furious temper, which he vented on me for even having been born.
Well, Ronald Reagan was president, being at least performatively insane to secure a negotiating advantage with the Soviet Union in arms limitation talks.[3] He was an actor; he performed it well, but his ideology was what really made it convincing. Between this and his attitude towards environmental protection, I sincerely worried about the world I would be leaving any children. The reasons have evolved,[4] but I can claim some vindication here as well.
Of course, conservatives—especially traditionalist conservatives—will reject each and every one of these reasons. Malik attributes the demand on women to bear children to capitalism;[5] but traditionalist conservatives are extremely patriarchal, even objecting to no-fault divorce.[6] It was for this reason that during Donald Trump’s presidency, I responded to the question of who would be worse, Trump or Mike Pence, saying that if you are a woman, Pence.
And I have to note that even now, women often have far more difficulty obtaining a sterilization procedure than I did, even back then.
The decision of anyone other than J. D. Vance to have children or not to is none of Vance’s fucking business. I am ashamed that his highly educated wife throws women under the bus to advance her own ambition[7] by tolerating it. And by the way, I’m a hopeless sucker for cats; he should leave them out of it.
[1] Nesrine Malik, “The right’s obsession with childless women isn’t just about ideology: it’s essential to the capitalist machine,” Guardian, September 2, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/sep/02/jd-vance-childless-women-kamala-harris
[2] This was my last computer programming job, at Quinn Company, a Caterpillar Tractor dealer in Selma, California. I held that job from 1981-1985. My subsequent adventures in high technology would include computer operations, technical writing, and very briefly, as the dot-com boom was imploding, systems administration; I am now hopelessly out of date, failing even to understand, for example, why some Python data structures even exist.
[3] Lou Cannon, President Reagan (New York: Public Affairs, 2006).
[4] David Benfell, “Can we please lock all these elites in a room by themselves?” Not Housebroken, September 2, 2024, https://nothousebroken.substack.com/p/can-we-please-lock-all-these-elites
[5] Nesrine Malik, “The right’s obsession with childless women isn’t just about ideology: it’s essential to the capitalist machine,” Guardian, September 2, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/sep/02/jd-vance-childless-women-kamala-harris
[6] David Benfell, “Conservative Views on Undocumented Migration” (doctoral dissertation, Saybrook, 2016). ProQuest (1765416126).
[7] Susan Matthews, “The One Thing You Need to Know to Understand Usha Vance,” Slate, July 29, 2024, https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/07/jd-vance-wife-usha-vance-politics-amy-chua.html