My husband and I have three children. This makes us many things: Proud, exhausted, delighted, occasionally irritated, perpetually anxious, often overwhelmed by love and strangely aware of the varying quality of chicken strips in grocery store freezer sections. It does not, however, make us better people, more engaged citizens or entitled to have a greater say in this country’s political future.
Do I have more sunscreen, band-aids and hair ties on my person than my child-free relatives, friends and colleagues at any given time? Perhaps. Does this make me more valuable to society than they are? Most certainly not. So on behalf of parents everywhere, I would like to respectfully request that Republicans — including but not limited to Ohio Sen.
JD Vance and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders — stop trying to drive yet another wedge into our already divided nation by suggesting (and, in Vance’s case, outright stating) that people who have children are superior to those who don’t. Because honestly, you are giving parents a bad name.
And what with the school shootings, the lack of subsidized childcare and the current attack on reproductive rights, not to mention the fact that Christmas will arrive in stores on Nov. 1, we have enough to deal with. Vance has spent much of his political career denouncing nonparents.
Now, as the Republican vice-presidential nominee, he is targeting Vice President Kamala Harris and her now-infamous circle of “childless cat ladies.” (In Va.