When Procreation Becomes Political
… tell J.D. it’s a losing position
Let me start with this: Anyone can procreate. Or, more accurately, anyone physically capable of procreating can. In fact, it’s so easy for most people that preventing procreation has made the pharmaceutical industry billions, while the need for options when procreation is considered unwise or unwanted has pushed abortion to a hot-button issue. In other words, it’s not rare, this act of human-making. It’s also not something that defines a person as either good or bad, meritorious or useless, admirable or ignoble.
Someone tell J.D. that.
I’m one of eleven children. Third oldest, third girl, then came three boys, then girl-boy-girl-boy-girl. Same two parents for all. Eleven children born over a twenty-year period. Being in that first group of three girls, growing up in an era when females were expected to be the responsible ones regardless of how many males were milling about, I was designated a “little-mommy” from an early age. Daily assisting in household tasks, family chores, occasional turtle wrangling (the only pet allowed), and the specific care of the third boy — my older sisters were likewise in charge of brothers “one” and “two,” respectively — I can say without equivocation that I know big families. Not only my own, but regular interactions with the many other big families in my small midwestern Christian/Catholic town gave me insight on a very personal level. And what I know is that big families are not the arbiter of either “it looks like so much fun!” happiness or “kill me with that many” hell on earth. They can be both. They can be one or the other. They can be neither. They can destroy a child, leave them moderately confused, or set them singing “Doe, a deer.”
I also have a child, one biological child; an event that came fairly late in my procreational window of opportunity. It took me that long to get to the decision because after the eighteen “little mommy” years of childhood, I wasn’t sure I needed further experience in the role. I’d hit the road at nineteen with a mission to live Unshackled Life like a religion, and having babies did not fit the paradigm. At all.
And let me say, those unshackled years — wild, creative; dramatic — were phenomenal. No regrets. But at some fortuitous moment I met the man I would ultimately marry, and for the first time in my life the procreational light flickered: “Oh, this is the kind of person you have children with!” I’d never met one of those before. So, madly in love and absolutely certain I was ready for the plot turn, we brought a son into the world who is and will always be my heart and soul.
But I stopped there. Just one. After growing up as I did, one was all I could mentally and emotionally manage. I knew from watching my mother struggle in her role as the “mother of many” how much not paying attention to one’s aptitude for the job could damage you. And others. So, yes: one child.
I know small families, too.
I say all this as foundation for my thoughts on the raging (enraging) pontification of a certain VP candidate who’s been spouting all kinds of Handmaid’s Tale nonsense about parenthood, framing the act of procreation as a politicized metric of human value and worth, a competition that can be judged, adjudicated; measured, and, based on participate rates, either rewarded or demonized.
In the past few weeks, Vance has come under fire for resurfaced comments attacking “childless cat ladies” as “miserable” and bad for society; claiming that childless people tend to be “deranged” and “psychotic”; and proposing giving extra voting power to parents with young children.
“We have, I believe, a civilizational crisis in this country,” Vance said at the 2021 Napa Institute event. “Even among healthy, intact families, they’re not having enough kids such that we’re going to have a long-term future in this country.”
(“Enough kids”? Sheesh. Who gets to determine that?)
Despite those views being wielded during this current political campaign, their origins sprang from a strain of theocratic nationalism that has permeated much of the Republican Party. The Slate piece quoted above — J.D. Vance Used to Be an Atheist. What He Believes Now Is Telling: He’s not an evangelical Christian. He’s a Catholic — of a very specific type — offers further insight on the particular “framework” from which J.D. now operates:
They aim to control women’s reproductive choices and individual freedoms concerning gender, sexuality, and identity; they prefer isolationist economic policies; they support unions and labor protections and oppose immigration; and they seek to elevate religious organizations’ place in their schools and civic institutions. […]
There’s a term for intellectual Catholics with a similar worldview: integralists. There’s no universally accepted platform uniting integralists; it’s more of an intellectual framework built around the idea that Catholic moral theology should govern society. Mat Schmalz, a religious studies professor at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, defined it simply as the idea of “integrating spiritual and worldly, or integrating church and state.” In other words: church before state.
(Ah, so I guess church and state would then determine what was “enough kids.” I see.)
The article’s author, Molly Olmstead, clarifies that while J.D. hasn’t fully identified as an “integralist,” some who’ve listened to him think, “Vance’s views, particularly around policing gender expression, indicate that he is at least ‘pulling from a Catholic integralist strain.’”
Which, to this former Catholic daughter from a large family who raced into independence like a starving child and believes with all my damn heart that no one — no government, no country, no religion — can impose its beliefs on any other, this viewpoint is not only regressively anti-American and terrifyingly authoritarian, it’s fucking awful, certainly when it comes to defining the worth of humans based on whether or not they’ve created other, or, even, enough, humans.
I have many friends and family members with children, many with none. I know people who’ve happily chosen not to procreate and others who’ve suffered for their inability to do so. I know those who’ve adopted, conceived by IVF, or raised other people’s kids; gay couples raising both biological and adopted children; grandparents caring for children abandoned by their parents. I know compassionate folk who’ve taken in foster kids, provided care and financial aid for children’s homes; some who volunteer for organizations focused on needy kids.
In other words, all kinds of people embodying all kinds of roles within all kinds of definitions of children, family, and care. No rules about “enough,” when, how, or why, just love, concern, and compassion.
I’m also clear that parents and caretakers can be wildly disparate in their quality of care. I know mothers and fathers who are awful people; many more who are stellar examples of the best of us. I know parents who abuse, berate, diminish, and demean, and many more who uplift, encourage, and accept unconditionally. I know childless people who can relate to and interact better with kids than some parents can. I also know childless people who, yes, do better with cats.
The point is, the choice to procreate is deeply private and personal, as is the outcome of that choice, whether it begets children or otherwise, and in what number (“enough children”… that just chafes me!). And while there are many metrics under the bubble of parenting that can indicate quality of character, community contribution, human compassion, empathy, and general “good people” qualifiers, the act alone, and the number it involves, offers no such metric.
And none of it belongs in the hands of government entities or participants, certainly not those who seek to impose their religious beliefs and tenets under the auspices of “church before state.”
Whatever memes and battle cries illustrate the contrasts of this election — which are wide and divergent — there is no denying that the Trump/Vance ticket is all about big government, invasive government; government that wants to determine every aspect of your personal life from what you read, who you love, how you identify; where you worship (or don’t), to what you do with your body, who’s allowed to care for that body, and how many other bodies your body creates. That’s not only, to repeat myself, anti-American, it’s anti-human, and it’s unacceptable.
Let’s tell J.D…. vote accordingly.
