Here’s what JD Vance told me about his ‘childless cat ladies’ attack on Democrats

The Scene

“I’m going to get in trouble for this,” JD Vance warned his audience at the conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute. “This isn’t being recorded, is it? Broadcast live?”

Three years ago, when his U.S. Senate campaign polled in single digits, Vance told a friendly crowd about an idea he’d been kicking around. Conservatives needed to “take aim” at “the childless left,” whose “rejection of the family” was undermining their country. No one in the “next gen of the Democratic Party” — Vice President Kamala Harris, Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — had biological children at the time.

“Why have we let the Democrat party become controlled by people who don’t have children?” he asked. “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?”

Vance knew he was being recorded, and ready when Democrats pounced on his comments. Five days after the speech, he repeated the basic “childless left” message on Tucker Carlson Tonight, the show he’d launched his campaign on. Yes, he’d said that parents of children deserved a bigger role in democracy than the sad “childless cat ladies” of the left, and he meant it. He once again named Harris, a stepmother of two, as part of that group.

“When somebody calls out that ‘Look, if you’re a miserable cat lady, you should not force your misery on the rest of the country,’ they just get really upset about it,” Vance said.

On Monday, the influential anti-Trump commentator Ron Filipkowski posted part of that interview on X, where it took off. That clip didn’t include the caveats Vance had shared with ISI, that he wasn’t talking about people who, “even though they would like to have kids, are unable to have them.” Commentators seeing this for the first time asked whether Vance’s mouth had already hurt the GOP ticket, with an insult to millions of women who might have been gettable for Trump.

David’s view

Vance had only directed the insult at the left — but he meant it. The line caught my eye at the time, and I talked to him about how it fit into his broader philosophy in 2022, when he was on the verge of winning the Republican nomination in Ohio’s Senate race.

Vance told me that the “childless left” idea grew out of a conversation with a friend who noted that Washington, D.C. was near the top of lists of cities where adults had the fewest children. (As The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson has noted, it’s partly due to the constant flow of young professionals who move later on).

“I was like — oh, that’s really odd, right?” Vance recalled. “The city that’s governing for the rest of the country is also the place that, in some ways, is the least like the rest of the country, where most people do want to have children, and most people do start families.”

The childless factor, said Vance, might explain why so many policymakers favored school mask mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic. “When you have children, and you’ve interacted with children regularly, I think you realize how many of the left policies are really harmful to kids,” he said. “That was the most egregious example.”

A self-described “natalist” with three young children, Vance is now the most influential Republican advocate of a movement to encourage more marriage, and easier family formation. That might include cash and healthcare incentives that his party was doctrinally opposed to, but that self-described “national conservatives” wanted to try, after seeing them implemented in Viktor Orban’s Hungary. He’s also decried the prevalence of divorce and its impact on children, including with comments that have also attracted attention in recent days.

Those views didn’t make it into the new GOP platform, and Democrats believe they’re offering more credible pro-child policies this year. In her maiden speeches as the likely Democratic nominee, Harris promised more affordable child care and paid family leave. She’s also the stepmother of Cole and Ella Emhoff, and often mentions the name they call her: “Momala.”

Vance’s rhetoric also connects with another topic that’s consumed his corner of the intellectual right in recent years: Acceptance of the transgender community and their access to health care. In a 2022 criticism of the pharmaceutical industry, published by the American Principles Project, Vance fretted that “progressive gender theory” was being embraced by some parents who, instead of identifying the source of “mental confusion” in their children, gave them medication that delayed puberty and might affect their fertility.

“Gender dysphoria is good for business,” Vance wrote, arguing — without evidence — that big pharma was driving recent increases in treatment as part of a larger plot to boost profits. “Puberty blockers for 12-year-olds become antidepressants for 22-year-olds become fertility treatments for 32-year olds.”

Elon Musk has struck the same notes, on natalism (“population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming”) and on gender identity. These are popular worries among Silicon Valley conservatives, many of whom Vance knows. Peter Thiel, whom Vance has called a “mentor,” helped fund his 2022 race and the Arizona U.S. Senate bid of his former foundation president Blake Masters. Now running for a safe GOP House seat near Phoenix, Masters has gone after Trump-endorsed opponent Abe Hamedeh, who’s 33, for not having children.

“I’ve got a wonderful wife. I’ve got four beautiful boys. That’s called skin in the game,” Masters said at an April candidate debate. “What we don’t need is someone with no wife and kids, right? No skin in the game.”

The View From Democrats

Buttigieg, who was in the process of adopting twins when Vance made the “childless left” remarks, has criticized the line repeatedly.

“The really sad thing is, he said that after Chasten and I had been through a fairly heartbreaking setback in our adoption journey,” Buttigieg told CNN on Tuesday. “He couldn’t have known that but maybe that’s why you shouldn’t be talking about other people’s children.” The election should be about all Americans’ families, he added, not questions about the families of politicians.

Notable

• Vance’s “childless left” remarks drew some friendly fire on the right at the time; in the Washington Free Beacon, Matt Continetti asked why the candidate was fighting with Republicans like Mitt Romney, who had their own pro-child policies.