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Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance’s past remarks on Americans who opt not to have children have struck a nerve during a tense presidential election season.
Unearthed and popularized by his opponents, Vance’s 2021 castigation of Democratic Party leaders as “childless cat ladies” and his depiction of Democrats as a party whose “entire future … is controlled by people without children” has created a firestorm, prompting actress Jennifer Aniston, among many others, to take understandable umbrage.
In that interview three years ago with Tucker Carlson, Vance took his position a step further, questioning whether those forgoing parenthood should enjoy the same status as those who procreate. “And how does it make sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a stake in it?” he asked rhetorically.
Since his selection as former President Donald Trump’s running mate, Vance has been given several opportunities to clarify matters. He’s chosen mainly to double down, ascribing any number of societal ills to America’s historically low birth rate.
The quotes rightly are viewed as insulting to those who for any number of reasons, ranging from infertility to simple personal preference, don’t procreate. But Vance isn’t wrong to draw attention to a U.S. birth rate that last year fell to 1.62 births per woman, the lowest since the U.S. began keeping records in the 1930s, according to the Wall Street Journal, and well below the rate of 2.1 needed to keep the nation’s population stable.
There are numerous reasons for the trend, which, by the way, holds for much of the Western world. The cost of raising a child to age 18 has ballooned to more than $300,000 on average for a middle-class family of four, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The daunting cost of raising a family in all likelihood is the biggest factor.