Free Republic

Recently, a book tour gave me the opportunity to travel around America. Budgets being what they are, I primarily chose cities where I had friends who would happily provide me with places to stay. These were homes, almost without exception, filled with children. I have no children of my own, and this felt like a serendipitous chance to catch up with many of the kids in my life.In America, there is a persistent, pernicious belief that the only way to be invested in a child’s life is to be a parent — and, for women, to give birth to that...

Anumber of conservative women have criticized Donald Trump's running mate, Senator JD Vance, after his "childless cat ladies" comment reemerged.

By now, you’re probably aware Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance has described Democrats as “childless cat ladies” with no “direct stake” in America’s future. We, on the other hand, have been ears-deep in data. ... About 38 percent of Democrats had never had children as of 2022, compared with 26 percent of Republicans, according to the universally beloved General Social Survey from the universally beloved NORC at the University of Chicago.... ... in recent years, Democrats have become a bit more likely to be childless no matter their age. In fact, they’re more likely to be childless across almost every...

CNN busted Trump running mate pick Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) over unearthed recordings in which he refers to childless people as “sociopaths” and “psychotic” amid outrage over similar comments. Vance has faced outrage this week over a 2021 interview that went viral, in which Vance derided “childless cat ladies” who “don’t really have a direct stake in” the country. In an interview with Fox News, Vance claimed critics were “aggressively lying” about what he said and that his remarks were “radically taken this out of context.” But on Tuesday’s edition of CNN News Central, anchor John Berman ran down a...

A video has emerged showing previous comments of Vice President Kamala Harris questioning whether young people should forgo having children due to “climate anxiety.” While speaking at Reading Area Community College in Reading, Pennsylvania, Harris spoke about how during the 2020 presidential election, there was a “record turnout” because younger voters showed up. Harris added how young voters were vocal about how they were “going to direct and decide” the future of our nation, and how they have taken charge of issues such as climate change.

Leftist women are getting their knickers in a twist about how JD Vance, in 2021, described Kamala Harris and other childless leftist women. The fact is that Vance’s colorful language accurately describes a real and troubling phenomenon amongst a certain segment of childless women (not I hasten to add, all childless women) in America.Soon after Vance announced his candidacy for the Ohio Senate stated during a speech that “the childless left” isn’t committed to America’s future because, without offspring, leftists have no direct stake in the future. In response to Tucker Carlson’s inquiries, Vance expanded on what he meant by...

Every Monday I meet with a group of female friends in a London restaurant. We sit at a table near the window and discuss our lives. We have many things in common. We are all in our mid-50s and highly educated career women. But there is a vacuum in our lives. We are all single and childless. I increasingly feel, as do many of my intimates, that feminism has failed our generation. I grew up with its beliefs. No, strike that. I was force-fed them. By the age of 13, Christmas presents from my Women's Lib aunt were books by...

While vapid, childless celebrities like Chelsea Handler disseminate weird propaganda through corporate media to reassure themselves and their peers that their lack of reproduction is somehow an enlightened act of self-fulfillment, objective reality says otherwise. It turns out, researchers have quantified the proportion of childless women whose status was intentional, and the number is extremely low. ... Who are the childless and how many of them wanted children? The closest we can come is a 2010 meta-analysis by the Dutch academic Prof Renske Keiser, which suggested that only 10% of childless women actively chose not to become mothers. That leaves...

The world is ending because we’re running out of people. Or at least, one world—the one where people think babies cause problems. In this bleak dystopia—i.e., Current Year America—only half of women under age 45 have children. But this is only half the story. The other half of the story—the weird half—is they think those numbers are good news. More women avoiding motherhood? That is progress now, dear.

Stories about parental regret might get clicks, but BuzzFeed acting as a PR machine against motherhood might also influence people’s decision to become a parent.As BuzzFeed contemplates its future, the website should reconsider its approach to motherhood. The media outlet is rethinking its news division because it loses money, offering voluntary buyouts. BuzzFeed would likely gain some mom consumers if it changed its tune on motherhood. In April, BuzzFeed ran an article headlined, “Mothers Are Revealing How They Realized They Regret Having Children And How They’re Coping Now, And They’re Such Nuanced And Valid Feelings.” The first mom the article...

Let me put this as William F. Buckley might have said it – as a patriotic conservative, it is your duty to call upon that booty. Last week the census report came out and it is a lights n’ sirens red alert emergency –America’s population grew at the smallest rate since the Great Depression. Down this road to extinction just a few years ahead of us are the morally and culturally exhausted nations of Europe which have not seen their people hitting replacement rate in a generation. The problem is that Americans are not making babies, and we need to...

Pandemic policies at tech companies have created a rift between parents offered more benefits and resentful workers who don’t have children. When the coronavirus closed schools and child care centers and turned American parenthood into a multitasking nightmare, many tech companies rushed to help their employees. They used their comfortable profit margins to extend workers new benefits, including extra time off for parents to help them care for their children. It wasn’t long before employees without children started to ask: What about us? At a recent companywide meeting, Facebook employees repeatedly argued that work policies created in response to Covid-19...

Because Europe’s top political leaders do not have children, they do not know what it means to be a mother or father and therefore have “no reason to worry about the future of the continent,” reported the Gatestone Institute. The institute specifically cited the childless European leaders German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, French President Emmanuel Macron, Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, Luxembourg's Prime Minister Xavier Bettel and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. “Merkel's childless status mirrors German society: 30% of German women have not had children, according to European Union statistics, with the figure rising among...

This was not the headline that the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics gave its recent release of provisional fertility data for 2012. But for the first time, in 2012 Russia’s birth rate actually exceeded that of the United States. This is a significant reversal from the past when the US had a birth rate that was as much as 75% higher than Russia’s. The speed and scale of the convergence is impressive. Since 2008, the Russian birth rate has increased by about 10% while the United States has slumped by about 9%. [snip] Essentially, Russian wages have never been...

Time – The Overpriced News Brochure ($4.99 for 60 pages) - had an intense erotic experience with the cover story in its August 12th issue, "The Childfree Life: When having it all means not having children." Please note the choice of words – not childless but childfree, like cancer-free, as if children are a life-threatening disease, which is pretty much the way the contraceptive left views them. The organ of elite opinion begins by telling us that today "one in five American women will end their child-bearing years maternity-free, compared to 1 in 10 in the 1970s." In this and...

My husband and I choose to be childless in Seattle, writes editorial columnist Sharon Pian Chan My husband and I just ended our debate about having children. To breed or not to breed, this was the question... We have decided we have other things to give to the world. We won’t be having kids. We choose to be childless in Seattle. ... Feminism empowered women to talk about motherhood as a pursuit that deserves as much attention as men’s work. In the past 20 years, women have bravely spoken about struggles to conceive, which helped educate a generation about fertility....

Nearly one in five American women in her early 40s is childless, according to a report that shows a striking increase in women who don't have biological children. The trend was much less common in the 1970s, when one in 10 women did not have children by 40 to 44, the age bracket researchers use to designate the end of childbearing years. The report, released Friday by the Pew Research Center, cites social and cultural shifts behind the change, including less pressure to have children, better contraceptive measures and expanded job opportunities for women. (snip) Overall, the report found that...

Laura S. Scott loves her husband. And that, she says, is enough to sustain a marriage. They don't need children. "Two Is Enough" is the name of her book explaining a couple's guide to living childless by choice. "I think I knew very early I didn't want to be a mom," Scott tells me. "I never imagined myself a mom, even as a small child. I never played with dolls. I was 15 when I told my mom, and she suggested things might change with my hormones. Nothing changed." Scott is 47. She's too young to conceive (excuse the pun)...

ANAND, India - Every night in this quiet western Indian city, 15 pregnant women prepare for sleep in the spacious house they share, ascending the stairs in a procession of ballooned bellies, to bedrooms that become a landscape of soft hills. A team of maids, cooks and doctors looks after the women, whose pregnancies would be unusual anywhere else but are common here. The young mothers of Anand, a place famous for its milk, are pregnant with the children of infertile couples from around the world. The small clinic at Kaival Hospital matches infertile couples with local women, cares for...

Carolyn Moynihan | Wednesday, 5 September 2007 Dogs in prams Childless Japanese women push the country's culture of cute too far. It is not unknown for little girls to try and dress the family cat or puppy in baby clothes and wheel it about in a pram. Mostly they don't succeed but the instinct is understandable enough. A live pet is much more interesting than an inanimate doll, having the warmth, cuddliness and cuteness of a real baby, and it makes playing mothers so much more fun. It seems perfectly natural and predictable behaviour. An adult woman trying the...