TRIGGERnometry - Was JD Vance Right About Childless Cat Ladies? - Konstantin Kisin

Episode Date: August 16, 2024

Understandably, the resurfacing of these comments has led to uproar in the media and fierce debate online. I say “understandably” because his comments were crude and lacked the nuance required to properly discuss such contentious and, in my view, important issues. Why they are contentious is obvious, but why are they important? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Was J.D. Vance right about childless cat ladies? Over the last couple of weeks, Donald Trump's running mate and potential vice president, J.D. Vance, has come under heavy criticism for remarks he made in 2021. Speaking on Tucker Carlson tonight, Vance claimed that we are effectively run in this country by a bunch of childless cat ladies, before adding, if you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. Understandably, the resurfacing of these comments has led to uproar in the media and fierce debate online. I say understandably because his comments were crude and lacked the nuance required to properly discuss such contentious and, in my view, important issues.

Why they are contentious is obvious, but why are they important? For a start, the Western world is going through a population crisis. We are not having enough children. And crucially, it's not that mothers are having fewer children, it's that fewer women are becoming mothers in the first place. place. If current trends continue, the childless population will keep growing. What is more, the rapid polarization of Anglosphere politics in the last decade has brought into sharp relief the significant differences in the voting preferences of various ethnic, marital and sex-based groups. In the course of the usual back and forth about this online, I replied to a tweet by

my friend and former trigonometry guest Sidney Watson, in which she wondered why people focused on childless women so much, but nobody seems to care about childless men. I attempted to explain that the focus on childless women specifically, while appearing unfair, has an understandable origin. The main thrust of my argument was that we would not pretend that becoming a parent has no impact on your worldview, and therefore by definition not becoming a parent also affects how you think about the world, especially if you're a childless woman past childbearing age for whom that childlessness is both permanent and irreversible. I don't want to rehash that conversation here. Rather, it was a sarcastic reply to that

exchange that caught my attention and sparked the thought process that led to this video. As if parents are enlightened when it comes to politics, said the reply. This really got me thinking. Enlightened is a poor character of the parental worldview. Parenthood does not raise your IQ. But what it does do is put you into full connection with the entire lineage of humanity. It makes you understand that you're merely the intermediary step between the people who came before you and the people who are coming after you. It makes you realize that you're not even remotely the center of the universe. It forces you to try so much harder to be the very best possible version of yourself every single day because you cannot bear to see the price you will pay for

failing. And the fact that despite doing your very best every single day, you fail regularly anyway, humbles you. Any illusion you may have had about your own perfection vanishes rapidly. It also makes you more empathetic in a very particular kind of way. When you see the face of your newborn child for the first time, it imprints in your consciousness the fact that everyone you have ever met and everyone you will ever meet, whether they're the worst scumbag in the world or the purest angel, was once an innocent little bundle too. It makes you more risk-conscious. I don't necessarily mean risk-averse. You may be one of those parents who really wants to let their kids make their own mistakes, but you are more aware of risk and more aware of vulnerability. Of your

child's, of your own, yes, but also of all other things too. Does this make you a better person? After all, this is the implication, right? If you claim there's a difference between you, between people with children and people without, that means automatically that you're saying people with children are morally better. I don't know if it makes you morally better, but does it make you better at some things? It would be absurd to claim it doesn't. We evolved for millions of years in various life forms to ensure that parents are pretty damn good at getting their children to adulthood.

Those who weren't died out. So when it comes to politics, I don't know that calling single women childless cat ladies is a winning strategy. we ought not pretend that becoming a parent is an entirely neutral event when it comes to how you see the world. The characteristics of childless people are optimized for the first few decades of life. Having fun, meeting new people, work hard, play hard, finding your way in life, exploring new experiences, traveling, personal achievement, ambition, experimentation, etc. Your planning horizon is short because almost inevitably it is limited to the duration of your own life.

These are all great qualities and incredibly adaptive for the evolutionary objective of young adulthood. finding a mate to produce offspring. But once someone becomes a parent, other things comes enter stage. Responsibility, duty, pragmatism, stability. Your job is no longer to find a mate and produce offspring. You're now trying to give your offspring the best possible chance of reaching adulthood and reproducing themselves. These are different postures towards the world. Is one better than the other for some things? Yes. And is the other better than the former for some other things? Yes. Given the choice and all other things being equal, which of those two values sets would I personally want in the lead of the most

powerful country in the world? Undoubtedly, a parent. I urge you to rewind and listen to what I just said. I didn't say a parent is better than non-parent. I said all other things being equal. You don't get my vote because you're a parent. In the same way, you don't get my vote for any other single reason. But is being a parent a plus in my book? Absolutely. And it shouldn't be controversial to say so. If you enjoy these videos, please remember they're available on my substack days, weeks or sometimes even months ahead of time. So click the link in the description, head over there now and subscribe. Not loving your AT&T or T Mobile Bill? Yeah, we've been hearing that a lot.

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