Sorry JD Vance, but being a 'childless cat lady' is actually not a bad thing (Guardian)
Arwa Mahdawi
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Anyway, I’m not really here to write about what a hateful and self-serving hypocrite Vance is*. A million thinkpieces have been published on that already. If you’re in a masochistic mood please do read up on how excited he is to force rape victims to give birth and how he thinks divorce laws have gone too far and how he reckons Britain is an “Islamist country”.
No, what I’m really here to say is that, rather than being the insult conservatives seem to think it is, “childless cat lady” is a state that more women actually ought to aspire to. Rather than being “miserable”, as Vance said, women who are childfree by choice are often happier and healthier than men and married women with children. This isn’t my opinion; there’s data that backs this up. Back in 2019, Paul Dolan, a professor of behavioural science at the London School of Economics, made headlines when, during a speech at Hay festival, he cited evidence that women are happier without kids or a spouse.
“[I[f you’re a man, you should probably get married; if you’re a woman, don’t bother,” Dolan joked about the longitudinal data suggesting “the healthiest and happiest population subgroup are women who never married or had children.” Dolan didn’t say anything about cats but I’m sure there’s a case to be made that a feline friend only adds to life satisfaction. Of course, there’s no point telling the likes of Vance that their misogynistic and anti-cat assumptions are wrong. Republicans don’t like to have facts get in the way of their feelings.
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more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/20/jd-vance-childless-by-choice
*But she does a pretty good job of that, with links in the article.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Cats are about the same size as human infants, they have round faces and big round eyes and make squeaky baby-like sounds, ergo they must be baby substitutes for sad, homely old maids who never could get a husband or have children of their own, so they adopt these little baby-like animals to fill that great empty void in their lives that attractive, sexy, real women with husbands were able to satisfy.
Actually, the great thing about cats is that they aren't much like children at all. Some have compared them to deranged toddlers with fangs and claws and the ability to leap six feet straight into the air, but the similarity ends there. You don't have to buy them clothes or take them on play dates or impoverish yourself to save for their college or wipe their butts (usually) or step on their Legos barefoot or worry that they're going to crash your car. Life with cats has its own challenges, but I've never envied people with children, and I sure as hell don't care what a hateful fake-hillbilly neckbeard like JD Vance thinks.
For a number of reasons, we live in a pretty nice apartment complex that allows pets. It is basically the manifestation of the pet parent culture - lots of single or divorced women and men of various ages, (though trending younger, not surprisingly) quite a few couples both traditional and not, relatively few children. About 1 in 3 have pets, primarily dogs and cats.
We are reaching a point in our society where marriage and childbearing is no longer considered a mandatory activity. Fewer people own homes (or can afford to), birth control has reduced the number of accidental children dramatically, religion (which generally encourages children "within the faith"
is diminishing in importance, and companionship, rather than sex, is becoming the biggest motivator for couples to stay attached to one another. So it's not even remotely surprising that pets are replacing children on people's bucket lists.
This is bad news for conservatives in particular. The male conservative mindset is one of dominance, and this begins by dominating your spouse and your children. The worst thing that you can call a conservative man is henpecked - it implies that they don't have "control" over their families. Conservatives have strong ideas about roles and dominance in society as well, and even in many corporations, you can't get into senior management if you aren't married (and male), partially because being married also means that you are not likely to up and reroot your home and your family if a better opportunity comes along. Single men are less religious, yet married women also tend to create their own societies within churches that tie the men to those churches as well. Religions have always encourage large families as well, because this equates to more true believers indoctrinated in the church from the time that they are in diapers.
There's a reason that cats have long been seen with suspicion by churches. Men "need" women for many reasons, but women for the most part only "need" men because bearing and raising children (and all of the attendant work that comes with it) means that they aren't spending time developing their own economic foundation. An independent woman with cats for companionship doesn't fall within the control structures of either churches or their contemporary corporate counterparts, and this gives them power of their own. This is a very thing not only to conservative men, but also incels (who for some reason would probably find life much more enjoyable if they got a cat).
Confession: My wife and I have two female adult children and two cats, though the younger of the two, a shorthair calico, thinks that she's a dog (she was raised around dogs and has a very high pitched voice that she uses to howl with), while the older is a 14-year-old Russian Blue kitty who is, as the vet has told us, borrowing lives from other cats, and we're already preparing for the time when she leaves us.
So I may be a bit biased.
