Dear JD

By Cristina DC Pastor

The “childless cat ladies” you made fun of in your 2021 interview with Tucker Carlson? Some of them are my friends.

G is an accomplished Manhattan journalist who works for one of the largest colleges. She married in her mid-40s and so she and her husband are late in the “procreation” business. She loves her nieces and nephews and sent some of them to school. And so with her generosity, the rest of the family who lived in a rural province and acquiesced they would never be able to go to school because of poverty, got their education.

My friend R is a high-ranking chemist in a prestigious pharmaceutical company. She too married late. She was fortunate to have a husband who accepted with grace and humility the fact they may not have a growing family. They enjoyed moments spent with nieces and nephews, some of whom accompanied them on their travels abroad.

Fertility is a reason my friend N cannot have children. She and her husband married in their late 20s and so the prospect of having children is quite favorable. But after years of trying, through IVF and other folk healing practices, getting pregnant remained beyond reach. Her doctor said her ovulations are being disrupted by hormonal issues and the medicines she takes for other health conditions. They remain a most loving couple who make times for things they love like attending cooking classes and dancing.

You see, JD, being childless is, most often, not by choice.  Delaying children, perhaps putting Career ahead of Family, is a decision some women make early in their lives realizing later on that “oops, it’s way past my prime.” Regretfully. A Boston Globe report citing 2023 data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation puts the number of American adults who “did not have biological children” at about 38 percent or 101 million. Forty-six million are women.

It is true there may be some women who make the conscious decision to remain childless. For financial reasons. The love they have for their husbands or partners is so strong but, in the meantime that they are just getting their feet wet at their jobs, they prefer to stay focused. It is never because they dislike children or find them a pestering presence. It could be a matter of economics: They cannot afford to have them in the meantime. It is not because they abhor the conventions of a traditional family (with parents and child/children) and are out to sabotage society with their alternative, nonconformist lifestyle and their “anti-child ideology.”

My three friends have privately felt the scornful eyes of society on them for not having children. To many, they will always be the “nice Tita” and never the “loving mom.” And while that impression is ok with them, it is not fair that they are being marginalized and demonized by unfair and hurtful comments like yours: “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.”– JD Vance  

I have never seen a significant survey where the opinions of childless ladies are sought and valued. They have a voice too and want to be heard.

And no, not all of them have cats!

© The FilAm 2024