She has no humility. She has no concern for the future of this country. She and other childfree women look down on Americans who choose to have children.
These are just some of the accusations Republicans have hurled at Vice President Kamala Harris, who is under attack not for anything she has done or said, but for not having any biological children.
The latest criticism came from Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who last week appeared at a campaign event for former President Donald J. Trump and proclaimed that her three children have instilled in her the humility she needs to maintain in national politics.
“My kids keep me humble,” she told the crowd, “and unfortunately, Kamala Harris has nothing to keep her humble.”
Call it the motherhood divide. The presidential election has exposed a fissure in American culture — or at least the culture of today’s most prominent politicians — over the deeply personal (and usually private) decision of whether to have children. With the election likely to be decided by a slim margin that may decide which way the women’s vote swings, motherhood itself has become a campaign driver.
Conservatives are trying to appeal to voters who see existential value in motherhood. Leading Republicans, including Mr. Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, have linked reproductive concerns to the U.S.’s declining birthrate, denigrating childfree women like Ms. Harris in the process.
“This is not a criticism of people who, for various reasons, have been unable to have children,” Vance said in a July interview with commentator Megyn Kelly. He was referring to past comments he had made calling Harris and other Democratic leaders “childless catwomen” who have no direct stake in the country’s future. “This is a criticism of the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-children.”
Democrats report having fewer children than Republicans. A 2022 University of Chicago survey found that 38% of Democrats did not have children as of that year, compared with 26% of Republicans. But these numbers don’t support the claim that the Democratic Party is dominated by people without children or families.
The majority of American families are also considered nontraditional: more children are raised by remarried parents, single parents, cohabiting parents, or no parents at all than by first-time parents.
Some Republican strategists don’t think attacking people who might not have children is a winning strategy.
“When you attack someone because of their identity, you offend everyone who shares that identity,” said Whit Ayers, a longtime Republican pollster, “so when you attack them for not having children, you offend everyone who has never had children for any reason.”
Meanwhile, the left is trying to appeal to women who believe that motherhood is valuable but also a choice.
Democrats argue that the decision not to have children is part of a series of choices people should be able to make individually, and that many Americans choose not to have children because the government is failing to provide adequate services, like affordable child care and quality maternal and child health care.
Speaking with Oprah Winfrey on Thursday, Harris recounted the story of Amber Thurman, a 28-year-old mother from Georgia who died after not receiving proper treatment after complications from a medication abortion.
“This is a health care crisis that affects both patients and health care workers,” Harris said, slamming the abortion restrictions enacted after Roe v. Wade expires in 2022. Trump has praised the move.
Harris has not directly responded to Republicans who have accused her of not valuing her family because she doesn’t have any children of her own, saying her step-family looks after them instead.
“It’s egregious that someone in a leadership position like the governor would make such offensive and out of touch statements,” Doug Emhoff, Harris’ husband and father to the vice president’s stepsons, Cole and Ella, said of Sanders’ comments in an interview with ABC News last week. “It’s as if you have to have biological children to be humble, yet at the same time you say women should be humble,” he added.
Emhoff’s ex-wife, Kirsten Emhoff, also responded to Sanders on social media, writing, “Kamala Harris has spent her entire career working for people, for all families,” adding, “And that makes me incredibly humble.”
Anya Jabbour, a history professor at the University of Montana who studies gender and politics, said reproductive status has long been used to marginalize women’s place in politics.
She said the “cat woman” trope is outdated: opponents of the American suffrage movement used cats as a symbol of femininity, depicting men as being confined to their homes with their cats if women won the right to vote.
“There’s a long history of false dichotomy between feminism and maternalism – people who see their identity as centred around motherhood,” Dr Jabbour said.
She added that cases like Thurman’s in Georgia show that “reproductive rights and the interests of mothers are, in fact, very closely intertwined.”
