JD Vance’s much-ridiculed comment about cat women who have no children and the hysteria on the right about the decrease in child-bearing deserve some careful analysis.
First of all, Vance’s comment is a sad reflection on both his intellect and capacity for empathy. It is true in political life that one often exaggerates or makes a statement for dramatic effect. But his cat women critique was such a cruelly contemptuous statement that it calls into question his character and integrity.
People are childless for so many reasons. Many of those reasons are deeply personal or painful – infertility, miscarriages, failed IVF, lack of a suitable partner, domestic violence, weak financial status, health issues. Vance’s callous disregard for this large segment of childlessness is simply pathetic and contemptible.
There seem to be three general reasons why the right is so concerned with a declining birthrate. The first is what is generally known as ‘replacement theory’. Since it is the white population where birthrate decline is the fastest, conservatives fear that the US population will rapidly become non-white. This is an unsettling thought for many both for political and cultural reasons. However, it is also a lost cause, as there is no practical way to stop the growth of diverse racial and ethnic populations in our country. As one of my coaches used to say about almost everything - "get used to it"!
The second reason is a religious one. Conservative Christians believe that God commanded us to be ‘fruitful and multiply’, and the choice to have fewer or no children is almost sinful in their worldview. This ties into their general fear of the breakdown of the traditional family and their horror at what they see as its attendant modern expressions – premarital sex, abortion, gay relationships and marriage, gender issues, mixed families. This is also a lost cause short of implementing Handmaid's Tale types of laws and forcing women to give up careers.
The third reason is economic. A rapid decrease in population can have serious consequences on a nation’s economy. There can be a mismatch between the number of older citizens who are drawing down social security and Medicare and younger workers who are funding these things.
Additionally, the growth of GDP will slow with slowing population growth and could even potentially decline once the overall population actually begins to get smaller. This could make paying off the national debt more difficult among other things, if this occurs too rapidly.
This third reason is actually a reasonable concern. But the basic question is whether it is desirable for the USA, and indeed the world, to continue to increase its population. If one believes, as I do, that ultimately the earth needs to have a smaller population that can thrive in harmony with the rest of nature, then the transition to that smaller population must be very slow and steady so as not to cause major economic disruptions.
Ironically, the best way for the USA to manage this transition is to throttle immigration up and down to very slowly reduce the population. But this is such a fraught political issue and the immigration surges brought on by world events and climate change make this type of fine tuning extremely challenging.
In the end, people evolve, cultures evolve. We will never again become like the farm families of yesteryear with 6-9 children in each household (not to mention the several that would die before they reached adulthood). Public policy should not try to fight a rear-guard action against the modern cultural forces. Instead, we must acknowledge them, adapt to them and find ways to mitigate any negative effects through positive social and economic policies.
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