Politicians, presidents and pronatalism

What do Andrea Leadsom, a UK politician and JD Vance, Trump’s sidekick, have in common?

They’ve made politics pro-natal by deciding that parenting gives people more political credentials by publically questioning Theresa May and Kamala Harris’s ability to do their jobs, respectively. Neither May or Harris have birthed children (neither have all the US presidents current and before).

Leadsom shared these words in The Times “…genuinely I feel that being a mum means you have a very real stake in the future of our country, a tangible stake. [May] possibly has nieces, nephews, lots of people, but I have children who are going to have children who will directly be a part of what happens next.”

May was compelled to share publicly that she and her husband had tried unsuccessfully to have children (a private matter that nobody should have to explain or justify). She said this of Leadsom’s comments: “I don’t think it matters whether somebody has children. The next prime minister, what matters is what they are going to do for every child in this country.” Leadsom dropped out of the leadership race for the Conservative Party, and Theresa May become the Prime Minister. Whether May was successful depends on your political beliefs but being a parent had nothing to do with the job.

Leadsom, Vance, and Trump are parents (the latter convicted of sexual assault). I wrote about childlessness being taxed a while back and wondered how parents felt when Boris Johnson, the father of ‘seven known children’, was held up as a role model and protagonist in this potential robbery. I think that now. Just because Vance is able to father, does it mean he has the experience to make rules?

How did we get to being so divided?

Leadsom, and Vance both used the term childless, which, for clarity, most of us who are childless use as we're not parents ‘not by choice’. Childfree tends to be the term for those who chose not to have children (for whom I have tremendous respect). Language is important here. Mocking and undermining childless people when there’s grief involved is cruel, but I suspect that the wording is no more considered than the resulting feelings, with no awaress of the differences between childless and childfree or the reasons why one isn't a parent.

Melanie Notkin of the Savy Auntie explains on X/Twitter that “earlier this year, the CDC published the National Survey of Family Growth, reporting that 45 percent of women ages 15–49 were childless. Ten percent of women of fertile age were childless-by-choice, three percent suffered from infertility, and one-third of childless women (32 percent) are what the CDC calls “temporarily childless.” These women desire to have at least one child, though most (80 percent) are single and hoping to marry before motherhood. These data of course don’t include those of us outside the ovulation window who remain childless, not by choice. To dismiss all those who don’t have children as not caring about the future is not only cruel, it’s wrong. In fact, non-parents have played a vital role in our evolution. Without us, experts say, the human race would not have survived.”

We’ve been called hussies, whores and socially excluded

There’s a barometer of responses that highlights social ignorance. If language matters, then action is equally critical in terms of active care. How many of those who were angered by Vance reached out to a non-parent in their life to check they were okay? This cruelty to childless women is nothing new. Society easily overlooks the micro aggressions on the daily.

Historically, women who were childless had bricks tied to their feet, hunted down and drowned — murdered — for infertility or spinsterhood. We’ve been called hussies, whores and socially excluded. I recall several women and a childless couple in my childhood village who were private (and possibly grieving). I was told not to talk to them and that the couple were ‘weird’.

The term ‘as a mother’ is bandied around, often in times of crisis, with echoes of Leadsom and May, in which women use their parental status to exclude others. That happens in regular conversation, in films, books and advertising.

Caitlin Moran jumped on the bandwagon on Twitter/X today to tell us that Vance had offended Taylor Swift, the ultimate childless cat lady. Swift actually hasn’t shared if she’s childless or childfree. Moran also tactlessly said once that she felt childless when her youngest left home.

Moran selectively plays the childless word for kicks and attention, not unlike Vance. It is tasteless.

She's far from alone.

I've been called a cruel wicked woman for not thinking of the orphans. Told I'm not 'doing it right'. That it wasn't 'God's path' and perhaps I 'did haven't have the right qualities' or it was 'fate'. You might read this and think I shouldn't have taken it to heart and it says something about attitude, but it's still painful because there's a grief there.

This week has proved how the critique is endless and opinionated. It's a snapshot into what it's like to be childless in a pronatal world. It doesn't shock me at all but it may shock you and I hope it does. Society needs to do a lot better.

At this time of the year, posts on social media, conversations in business groups or around the water cooler in offices assume we are all tackling school holidays. It’s an exclusion. Childless women working long hours to cover for colleagues on school holidays is an exclusion. It’s juxtaposition to theoretically being able to take holiday when we like and the loneliness of a mid-March windswept beach, longing for the warmth of a July sun in a life we aren’t living.

People in my other project, the Full Stop community speak of other people's attitudes holding back their ability to cope more than childlessness itself. Five years and 64 episodes on, we are still finding ways to communicate how childlessness can impact and empower peoples lives.

Language matters, actions more

I encourage anyone incensed by Vance’s comments to check their own bias too. Checking-in with a person who is childless to see how they are feeling and listen. It gives childless people the opportunity to be seen and heard which creates strength in a pro-natal society that seems to only take action when famous people are under attack or there is a great hashtag to follow. Speak up for us, listen, learn and do that each day.

Celebrate all women for all the things we contribute, not the 'missing' parts, and let’s not give Vance and his cronies, the extra airtime or traffic.

That’s a show of solidarity and action that will go a long way to getting politicians out of our uterus and put this division into the past where it belongs and move on.

I recommend these inspiring resources that celebrate and elevate childless cat, and non-cat women, and their allies of which I hope you’re one.

World Childless Week’s ‘I Am Me’ is a celebration of less famous but equally magnificent childless women (with and without cats).

Alli’s Childfree By Choice Medium channel on not being a parent by choice for more clarity on terms.

The Full Stop podcast with Katy from MIST on language, workplace and being inclusive to childless people in any part of your life.

Gateway Women’s 700 childless women role models (can you feel Valance’s balls shrivelling? ) and founder Jody Day’s TEDX talk with mention of childless cat ladies.

Storyhouse Childless in Chester welcomes everyone to learn about not being a parent (including those who are parents).