Advertisement

transcript

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email transcripts@nytimes.com with any questions.

Hey, “Matter of Opinion” listeners. Before we get the show going, I want to tell you about a great new podcast from the “New York Times.” It’s called “The Opinions.” Each episode brings you one big idea in 10 minutes or less.

On “The Opinions,” you’ll hear smart, surprising perspectives that’ll make you think differently about the news of the day. They’ll be arguments from “Times” writers like us, but you’ll also hear voices like former Supreme Court justices, political insiders, even punk rock icons rebelling against Vladimir Putin, all in the time it takes to walk the dog or unload the dishwasher. New episodes drop Monday through Thursday, so do yourself a favor. Go follow “The Opinions” on your favorite podcast player. And now, onto our show.

From “New York Times Opinion,” I’m Ross Douthat.

I’m Michelle Cottle.

I’m Carlos Lozada.

And this is “Matter of Opinion.”

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Carlos, welcome back.

It is good to be back.

Woohoo.

Is it good to be back? Because we have deliberately postponed the symposium on childless cat ladies until your return.

Oh, I’m here for the childless cat lady content.

You’re here for the childless cat ladies. You’re upset we didn’t get to the childless cat ladies before.

That’s right. That’s right. It seemed inexcusable, frankly.

It was inexcusable. But this is a no-excuse zone.

No more excuses.

No more excuses. So, last weekend, Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, did a round of interviews on the Sunday morning shows — three, I believe — where, once again, he was asked about his controversial comments from 2021 when he complained that the country is being run by, quote, “a bunch of childless cat ladies.”

And this time, he argued, that all that he meant by that jibe was that Democrats are, quote, “anti-family.” And then he pivoted to talking about family policy, and child tax credits, and other subjects that make my heart beat faster.

Pitter patter.

So we’re going to try and cover the same ground as Senator Vance and talk in this episode about cat ladies, but also family policy. We’ll talk about what it means to be pro or anti-family in this election and otherwise. And then we’ll try and step back to the context that is driving some of this debate — the question of, why are people all over the world having fewer and fewer kids?

And we have a special guest. We’ve invited our colleague, Jessica Grose, to wade into these waters with us since she is someone who covers American culture and politics, but writes a lot about family and parenthood. So, Jessica, welcome.

Thank you so much for having me.

Hey, Jess.

Welcome. Welcome.

Are you excited to be here for the —

I’m very excited. I’m raring — I’m truly raring to go.

OK that’s good. That’s good, because you’re going to start us off. So just give us your hot take. Why has this one phrase, uttered to Tucker Carlson three years ago, engendered so much outrage, discussion, controversy? What is the meaning? What is the cultural meaning of childless cat ladies?

Well, first of all, I want to say JD Vance said a lot of things on a lot of podcasts in 2021.

We can all relate to that, just for the record.

Yapping on podcasts is an unfortunate millennial tick. So he had a collection of things that he said. The childless cat lady jibe is based on previous notions that educated women are incompatible with family life.

And he called out three politicians — Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg and AOC — as part of this childless cat lady cotillion. And Kamala is a stepparent, a very involved stepparent. And so many people who are stepparents were offended like, oh, I’m not a real parent. I’m something else.

People who didn’t have children, either because they really wanted children and it didn’t happen for them or were childless by choice, they found this offensive. There just were a lot of groups that were not psyched about being demeaned in this way.

He managed to offend everyone.

Yeah. It was a roughie. He managed to offend a lot of people, and he also managed to play into some pre-existing political narratives that we all know exist.

Right. As a conservative, I have my own theories about what he was thinking. But I’m curious what you guys think he was thinking, because, presumably, he didn’t go into the interview thinking, my intention is to offend anyone who has ever struggled with fertility or who has ever owned a cat, right? What’s your view of where the impulse to make this critique came from?

All we have to go on for that is what he said and how he has explained it after the fact, barring our ability to get deep into his mind. So the only reason he was talking to Tucker Carlson and spoke about childless cat ladies is because a few days earlier, he had given a speech where he spoke about the need to give parents more voting power than non-parents. Now, he’s saying that that wasn’t a policy proposal, it was just a thought experiment. So I went back and read the full speech.

Of course you did.

The “American Conservative Magazine” had the kindness to post it for us. And he is absolutely making a full-on policy proposal. He even beats his chest about it. He says, oh, “The Atlantic” and the “Washington Post” are going to critique me and ask me if I really mean that non-parents should have a lesser voice than parents, if parents should get a bigger say in how our democracy functions.

Yes, absolutely. So let’s do it. Let’s push better public policy. Now, that took us to childless cat ladies.

And here, he says, no, no, no, no. I wasn’t being mean and insulting to people without children. I was making a serious proposal about the child tax credit or something. But, again, if you watch the full Tucker interview, you see that that’s not what’s going on.

This is who he’s upset at. You’re right, Jess, he talks about Kamala Harris, and Pete Buttigieg, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But then he just says, look, it’s people who live in small apartments in New York who are obsessed with their jobs, who look down on you and middle America, who hate normal Americans for the choices they’ve made.

So you think, OK, maybe here he’s going to broaden it out and talk about how the policies he’s really thinking about in his head are things that can help all Americans. But he says, no, I’m also talking about the elite media, those miserable people in New York and DC who are just wrapped up in their lives instead of in their families. Now, he wants us to believe that was all a critique of policy and, really, a case for the Child Tax Credit?

This was trolling. This was trolling of Democrats and elites by a guy who had just announced for the US Senate and was trying to distance himself from all the elites he’d spent years cozying himself up to. So when he’s proposing policy, he says he’s not. When he’s trolling, he says he’s proposing policy.

Like, he has made a mess of this. Stick to what you believe. Stick to what you said. But in trying to fix it, he has shown that you don’t really know what JD Vance actually believes.

Well, Carlos, I just really want to point out that there was a vote on the child tax credit that he simply skipped out on.

Yes, there was. He claims it was kind of a show vote.

Yeah, yeah.

It was a show vote. Schumer knew they couldn’t pass it. But you know what? JD walked right into that trap.

And when you set yourself up, you can’t then whine that somebody has figured out what you’re doing. So I think there are two pieces to this. One, the way he expressed himself.

Tucker, in particular, has kind of a snide country club yapping that he likes to go down to make any point. And JD kind of just slid right into that. It’s the ribbing each other, rolling their eyes — yeah, yeah. Ugly cat ladies, whatever.

The bigger critique, and he’s made it expressly, is that these are people that are just miserable with their choices and they want to make the rest of us miserable as well. I think that is another quote that has been out there. That’s actually a broader trend that you often have seen conservative men, in particular, make over the years to make themselves feel better by promoting this idea of what liberal women are.

And I’m going to take you back here to 25 years ago when I was a very young reporter. I went down to talk to a very conservative pastor in Fort Lauderdale about — I think at the time he was doing the Pray Away the Gay stuff. He was running some kind of big program that was supposed to claw back gay people from their life of sin.

And when he met me, he visibly was startled. And then he said the quiet part out loud, which is like, well, I assumed that a liberal woman would be old and ugly, but here you are. And I was like, really, dude? But you get a lot of that — the idea that liberal women must be unhappy, and can’t get a man, and are just kind of, I don’t know, rejects from traditional life is not a new thing.

So let me offer you my theory, which — well, first of all, I’m really grateful to Carlos for bringing up the Vance proposal to allow parents to vote on behalf of their kids. Fundamentally, that’s what the proposal is.

The idea is that you basically give children under the age of 18 political representation through their parents, because this is a pet idea of mine. It’s a terrific idea. And I’d actually like us to spend the remainder of the podcast debating it. And since I am the moderator —

But, Ross, Vance is not proposing anything. It was just a thought experiment. He didn’t mean it.

I can make that happen. But, no, we don’t have to debate. It’s called demeny voting. And if you Google it, you’ll find all kinds of wonderful things, a lot of good ideas out there. But I’m resisting that temptation. So my basic —

No, you’re not. You just did it.

It was for, like, 30 seconds. So my view, as a conservative, right, is I’ve been writing about family policy, arguing about things like the child tax credit for, I don’t know, 15 or 20 years, I guess.

And I think this is more true on the right than on the left, but I think it’s true on both the right and the left — that this is an area of public policy that, with the exception of parents who are sort of deep in the trenches of having young toddlers, it’s just really hard to generate a lot of excitement about it.

People will support things in the abstract. Sure, supporting families is nice and so on. But just the words “family policy” can make a lot of people’s eyes glaze over.

And I think what you see in what Vance was doing in all of those cases is to basically do what politicians often do when they’re trying to amp up an issue, trying to make it into a culture war issue. And so he’s saying, this is a place where your lifestyle and the lifestyle of urban professional liberals are in deep tension.

The liberals don’t care about kids, or don’t want to have kids, or are miserable, and so on. And there’s a culture war, basically. That’s what he’s trying to do. He’s trying to turn it into a culture war issue.

You’re trying to make it sound all grown up and thoughtful, though, as opposed to just culture war.

Well, sure. I think generally, culture war is a really important part of politics. And sometimes making an issue a culture war issue is a smart idea.

And sometimes if you want to pass policy, you need to ramp that down if you have an issue that actually isn’t a culture war issue. And liberals love the child tax credit.

Some liberals do.

It’s not the Democratic Party that has been taken that shit.

Right. So this is what I’m coming around to, though, to Jessica’s initial point. As culture war forays go, this was a total disaster. It was a reverse wedge issue. It turned everyone against Vance.

But the response, if you watch the Sunday shows, is that now he has to double and triple down on support for a big fat child tax credit, which, I agree, Michelle, is not something that Republicans always support.

Always?

Well, there’s been — I mean, not to bore you, but there’s always been a faction in the Republican coalition —

Sure. A faction that’s gotten its butt kicked by the majority of the party.

Right. But now — this is my point — now, Thanks to this whole thing, the Republican ticket is now committed — the Trump-Vance ticket —

Three-dimensional chess.

Is committed to a bigger tax credit.

Is Trump committed to this?

Yeah, I —

The veep candidate cares, but.

Well, this is my question — are we approaching family policy consensus? What do you guys think?

OK. Well, OK —

What a journey I led you on.

That was good, Ross.

I will say, I do think the pandemic was a turning point in terms of more cohesive bipartisan efforts to elevate family policy, to have cross-platform coming together about child care, in particular, because it becomes a business issue, which Republicans love. The Chamber of Commerce Foundation is behind some help in child care.

It is still not a top issue, and it is not thought of as a kitchen table issue, which I think it needs to be. And the part of it, and I just saw this in the sort of vague plans for Harris’ economic policy, that they’re bringing elder care into the discussion.

Oh, please, god, yes.

Yes, that is the most under-discussed issue. And it is actually, to me, an under-discussed issue in the birth rate conversation, because I do wonder if people are having fewer children because they know that their parents are living longer and that they will have to be responsible for them. And the person who is most likely to be responsible for elder care is a woman in her late-40s.

And so sort of widening the care conversation and not just making it about, why aren’t people having more kids, why aren’t people having more kids, I think will end up being a more productive conversation and bring in more stakeholders in a way that actually might move this forward instead just having the same arguments about childless cat ladies that people have been having since Michelle was a baby reporter.

So stipulating, again, that the conversation about childless cat ladies has been a big culture war dead end —

I’ve really enjoyed it, though.

Well, I mean, it’s been good for podcasts, right? I guess I have the opposite reaction. My sense, generally, is that the Democrats, on family policy issues, are always more willing to spend money than the Republicans. And that is generally a good thing and to their credit.

What I’m more skeptical of is that Democrats are very leery of anything connected to the word “birth rate.” But, more generally, Democrats like the idea of this broad, we are going to subsidize care in all its forms. And the problem is that money is actually not an unlimited resource.

And if you’re planning to subsidize care in all its forms, you get endless competing stakeholders. It’s like, are we paying for daycare centers? Are we paying for elder care? Are we paying for this? Are we paying for that?

And, in fact, it seems to me like the central front in family policy is almost always parents dealing with kids, especially kids under the age of 10, trying to make work-life balance work, trying to make the juggle work, and not having enough money and support to go around. So when I hear, oh, the Harris campaign, they’re going to make this a conversation about care more broadly, I’m like, great, that’s going to end up meaning less money directly for parents and more money for this broad panoply of competing interest groups.

But, as you just said, part of the reason it hasn’t moved forward is because once parents are no longer in that sort of crunch time, nobody cares about it. It’s not an issue that has broad valence for enough people. And so, in terms of actually getting anything passed, more voters have to care.

But this is why you have to give the parents the votes on behalf of their children, don’t you?

We’re moving on.

No. No, but something like paid family leave, which doesn’t have to just be for parents — everybody loves it, but it is not a priority. It is like 16th on the list of things that they rank as important. And so the only way to have it be more important is to bring more people in the conversation.

There’s an interesting tension there, because Lydia’s not here, but she might say the Republicans have been on a real journey about being the family party. There was a time when it was family values — remember, like George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush talked about family values.

It was family values right up until they got a presidential candidate who was the most morally degenerate creature on the planet.

I mean, back then, family values was this broader, more generic thing about being a decent person, being loyal to your spouse. It was a contrast to Bill Clinton that both Bushes played on. I remember in one of George H.W.‘s diaries, he thought he was going to win the ‘92 election because he was just a better person than Bill Clinton.

Which he was.

That doesn’t necessarily win you elections, Ross.

Going back to George W. Bush’s campaign slogan, which was restore honor and dignity to the White House, right?

Right. Yeah. The party has now relinquished that mantle, right, in the Trump era. It can no longer call itself the party of family values in that sense. So it’s now the pro-family party in the sense that it wants people to have more children.

And it wants you to have more children. It will then take away rights to make it harder for you to have less children. But it doesn’t necessarily want to help you with specific policies that make caring for that family a little easier, right — some of the policies that Jess has outlined.

Look at the Republican platform, they say they’re pro-family in their economic policies, but in a very broad sense, in kind of a universalist sense. We want to bring prices down and have a robust economy that’ll help everyone, which is true, but nonspecific. The Democrats, they do want a lot of those specific policies that help you once you have children, but they don’t seem to care much whether or when you have those kids.

Right. I think you can see the journey that the Republican Party has been on, in part, as a journey from a world where it was sort taken for granted that people would have kids — not everyone, but that people having children was sort of understood as a default of American society. And in that world, the thing a lot of conservatives were most concerned about were parents having kids out of wedlock, basically, girls having kids as teenagers.

And almost all of the policy debates in the 1980s and 1990s, the Republican position was, we don’t want to spend too much money on family policy, lest we encourage parental irresponsibility. And that default is still very powerful. And if you look at the conflicts inside the Republican Party, including the ones that Vance has waded into, there are people on one side saying, we have a serious crisis of the American family and we need to spend more money on it, and other people saying, well, you can’t spend more money because you end up subsidizing people dropping out of the workforce and you’re back to bad welfare policies and so on.

That’s been the internal Republican debate on this for the last 10 years or so. And one of the interesting things about having Vance as the VP is that he is very much associated more with the spend money side. But it all reflects a sort of changing sense of, what are the actual crises in American life?

This is why it’s disappointing that he has stumbled into this so kind of ham-fistedly is that there is a serious debate to be had, but the more you tie parenthood to some kind of creepy ethnonationalism, or patriotic duty, or make the idea that people who, for some reason, don’t meet your version of parenthood are somehow deficient or unpatriotic, the more you polarize this and make it all the more unappealing for people to have children, especially women.

If you’re going to promote the idea that the way forward is to tie women’s hands and take away their options, then you’re not going to win hearts and minds. And you’re going to get labeled weird.

All right. Let’s take a break. And when we come back, we’ll talk more about the polarization of family issues.

I do want to talk about the cultural issues a little bit that Ross was referring to. There was this book in 2010 called “Red Families Versus Blue Families,” and it was the idea that red states were more likely to have children out of wedlock, to get divorced, whereas blue states had this more sort of responsible success sequence,........

© The New York Times