The Politics of ‘Family’
Terry H. Schwadron
Aug. 6, 2024
The problem with making the American family the basis of an election campaign is simple: “Family” has a lot of different meanings.
Of course, what Axios.com reports as “ the hyper-politicization of the American family” has come with a China-like push for increased child-bearing among white, middle-class family with a mom, dad and children whose lifestyle choices could more easily describe the America of the 1950s as today.
So, when Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, spreads his “weird” focus on proposing extra votes to families with children or hitting at “childless cat ladies” of all genders as a goad to greater public concern about families, it just hits much of the country as being both anti-democratic and wrongly pressing for more procreation among its White citizens.
Vance seems to promote a narrow view of the ideal family to push back against the effects of immigration and, more generally, a view that sees changing U.S. demographics as a “replacement” theory in setting the country’s direction and values.
We saw another sad irony for Vance’s thinking last week when his own Republican colleagues in the Senate killed a deal that would have done something about supporting families by extending expired child tax credits. Adding to the hypocrisy was that Vance was campaigning with a call to give families with children a different tax rate — in effect, the same conclusion as the rejected child tax credit would have achieved.
This is the same Republican Senate caucus that has blocked preservation of IVF procedures even when blocked by state legislation about abortion — clearly a goal that would bolster child-rearing among those with medical needs.
Declining Birth Rates
It is true that the U.S. fertility rate has been steadily declining, as it has in other developed countries, for decades. The 1.62 births per U.S. woman rate in 2023 was a record low. A recent Pew survey found that 47% of adults under 50 who don’t have kids say they’re unlikely to have them — up 10 points from 2018. It is also true that the decline is steeper among whites than non-whites.
After the cat-ladies remark, The Washington Post went on the hunt and found that in 2022 survey, the about 38% of Democrats had never had children as compared with 26% of Republicans
There are lots of reasons for declining births, from the expense of raising children to choices that have led to later marriage, no marriage or broken marriages, to the nature of marriage not limited to men and women, to an array of living and lifestyle choices. There are families by choice, families who hunker in one place, and families that prosper in disparate ways. Corporations often like to suggest their workforces are families, and every war movie promotes war buddies as brothers in arms.
At the same time, Axios notes that we’ve witnessed “ a growing chorus of conservative pundits, influencers and politicians promoting a specific, traditional image of family life — and criticizing people who don’t live that way.”
Enter Vance and his family emphasis as something that he not only believes, but clearly feels should form a solid platform for adults to think about the country’s future in the hands of its kids and grandkids. Just as obviously, he thinks this message is a political winner.
Perhaps surprised or disappointed about how awful an impression he made by suggesting that leaders without children “don’t really have a direct stake” in the country’s future, he has backpedaled by saying he has been quoted out of context. But he has made the point repeatedly, adding that childlessness “makes people more sociopathic and ultimately our whole country a little bit less, less mentally stable.”
Politics of ‘Rights’
To a real extent, this political season has hinged on opposing views of the rights of individuals. Democrats see conservative states moving against abortion rights, voting rights, community policing responsibilities, the right to seek asylum, the right to housing and health. Republicans see rights as freedom from regulation and from mandates for vaccines, for example, from adhering to social or legal norms to assure affirmative action and diversity and inclusion, freedom from a government that would impose solutions to address social inequities.
A declining birth rate, more severe among Whites, does have ramifications for the country’s future, its jobs, growth and its immigration policies.
There is nothing wrong with a discussion about the role of family, it is the limited view that is being imposed on families that has proved upsetting and the failure to recognize that the decision to have children is so intensely personal. What Vance, Tucker Carlson and their crowd ignore is that government has no role in that decision.
The Heritage Foundation — the group behind Project 2025 — has proposed policies for a potential second Trump administration that would promote having children and raising them in nuclear families, including limiting access to contraceptives, banning no-fault divorce and ending policies that subsidize “single-motherhood.”
Vance’s politics aim at the decision by an increasing number of women to pursue education and career. It is hard to hear him without hearing echoes of Handmaids Tale-type insistence that a woman’s place is in the nursery. The right-wing podcasters and broadcasters talking up “masculinity” are describing a male-dominated world at work and at home.
Vance and his insult-insistent running mate may not know it, but we do have three adult children — and they all vote.
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