Stop Giving Child-Free Women Side-Eye
By: Pamela M Tsigdinos
Tags: Motherhood, Society, Culture, Women, Feminism

We’ll take some overdue respect though, thanks.

Credit: Adam Schultz

Like many, I cheered the announcement of Kamala Harris as Vice President. Why wouldn’t I? She’s whip smart, highly accomplished, and conscientious, among other characteristics. But beyond that, I took a quiet, special pride in the joyful celebrations surrounding her appointment. That’s because Kamala is, like me, a woman who did not give birth.

15–20% of American women over 35 haven’t given birth. But you wouldn’t know it, from the degree of recognition and representation we typically get. I had high hopes that having the second most powerful person in America be a woman who hadn’t given birth could bring newfound recognition, understanding and respect, might change some minds, broaden some thinking.

My hopes sank, though, as the narrative focus moved away from the reality of her impressive lived life and shifted to bolstering her credentials as a mother. It was headspinning, starting in 2019, how quickly Kamala became synonymous with ‘Momala.’ This started on the campaign trail when Harris penned an essay for Elle that ran Mother’s Day weekend. Closer to the election, Glamour set up a Zoom call and launched into an hour long chat “about the important stuff — how Cole and Ella got to know the woman they call Momala.”

Perhaps the Biden-Harris team wanted to prevent Harris from experiencing the criticism that followed former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard. Gillard, a progressive who became prime minister in 2010, also did not birth children. The Toronto Star reported how she was vilified for this during the campaign:

“Gillard, 48, has long been attacked by the Liberal opposition (in Australia, Liberals are the main right-wing party) for not starting a family. One Liberal senator said she was unfit for leadership because she is ‘deliberately barren.’ A Liberal frontbencher claimed she couldn’t ‘understand the way parents think’ because she has no children.”

Here in the U.S., we’re no better. There’s a history of slams against powerful or high-achieving women—including former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Supreme Court Justices Sonya Sotamayor and Elena Kagan—for not being mothers.

Top prize for shade-throwing goes to a 2010 Washington Post oped published when Kagan assumed her post on the Supreme Court, that ran with the headline “The Supreme Court needs more mothers,” and includes this gem:

“Motherhood offers a one-word verifier. It signals a woman with an intensity of life experiences, jammed with joys and fears, unpredictability and intimacy, all outside the workplace.

So, those of us who are not mothers lack all of the above?

Grist covered the “controversy” over the fact that Kagan hadn’t given birth, finding that “Obama’s pick signifies continued progress in the fight for women’s equality, the discussion surrounding that pick shows how much prejudice still exists toward another group: the childfree.”

Similarly, in 2016, UK energy minister Andrea Leadsom had to apologize for a dig she made about then-Prime Minister Theresa May, who does not have children. Leadsom, who had aspirations to replace May as prime minister, had said that she would make a better leader than May as she, a mother of three, had a “very, real stake” in the country’s future.

Ouch.