No, Kamala Harris doesn’t have any kids – but so what?

For centuries, women have been constrained by male ideas about how they should be. Now that women are part of the political arena, those expectations weigh even more heavily.

We can’t be too soft and nurturing, because then we won’t be taken seriously. We can’t be too smart, sassy or strong, because then we are seen as intimidating or cold. And now, according to JD Vance and the latest chatter on X, we can’t hold positions of power if we don’t have children and therefore don’t have “skin in the game”.

As a woman without children myself, I’m aghast – but hardly astonished by these comments. In 2021, Trump’s running mate Vance attacked Kamala Harris and other childless democrats in an interview with Tucker Carlson, calling her and her team “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.” The clip has now gone viral again on social media.

In making these vile and stereotypical comments, Vance essentially asserted that a person who does not have children is intrinsically less valuable than someone who does. He ignored a study by Paul Dolan, a professor of behavioural science at the London School of Economics, that suggests women without children are the happiest demographic. Vance also claimed that that child-free people have “no physical commitment to the future of this country."

Despite the fact that Kamala has stepchildren, a niece and grandnieces, she apparently has no “direct stake” in the future of her country because she has no biological children of her own. That’s as patently untrue as it is offensive.

This week, conservative lawyer Will Chamberlain posted on X that Harris shouldn’t become president because she doesn’t have children and therefore doesn’t have “skin in the game, a stake in the future, and the lived experience of raising children”.

If a deep and loving connection to stepchildren, nieces and nephews doesn’t count, what does that mean for blended families, adoptive parents, foster parents, or parents who have lost a child? There are plenty of ways to create a positive legacy, and biological parenting is only one of them.

It’s deeply offensive to say that if you don’t have kids, you don’t have a stake in the future. I don’t have children. There are no stepchildren in my life. Nor am I a “cat lady”. You don’t need to be a parent to care deeply about the future of our planet and the generations that will follow you.

There are plenty of politicians with children who have made a spectacular mess of running their country. The ability or desire to have children has no bearing on an individual’s passion, intelligence or empathy; qualities that Vance seems to be lacking in spades.

It clearly doesn’t suit outdated misogynistic agendas to have a strong woman living life on her own terms and influencing policy. Men can live a life of their choosing, unencumbered by societal expectations. Women are still being judged on their desire or ability to procreate. So, inevitably we have the far right claiming that a woman without children is not qualified to run the country.

What’s really going on here? I think the patriarchy is running scared. Women are waking up to the fact that motherhood is challenging and that they have agency in how they live their lives. Regardless of steps forward in gender equality, it’s still the woman’s life that will fundamentally change when a child comes along.

The UK birth rate has been falling for years and in the US it has reached a historic low. Policy makers must surely be worried. Yet rather than enacting plans that will support women who want to embrace motherhood; like better healthcare, childcare and more affordable housing, it’s easier to lash out at women who don’t toe the baby-making line. Women like Kamala Harris. Women who have decided to live life on their own terms.

Vance has also intimated that people without children should have fewer voting rights. Apparently not having children makes you a second-class citizen. Really? If you take that dystopian argument to its logical conclusion, then no man should get a vote about anything that affects female healthcare, reproductive rights or abortion.

The pro-natalist rhetoric gets louder and louder as birth rates get lower and lower. Women exerting their reproductive rights seems to awaken the ire of every misogynist on the planet. Rights that Trump’s administration are only too keen to reverse, having indicated that abortion, birth control and even IVF will be at risk should he win the election.

Kamala has skin in the game for every woman in America, every woman of colour, and every woman without a child. If she wins this election, she will be the first female president of the United States. Her legacy will echo through the decades. I’d argue she has more skin in the game than any of Trump’s coterie of misogynists.