JD Vance’s Wife Usha Tries To Give Context To Her Husband’s ‘Childless Cat Ladies’ Comments
She claims that his remarks were taken out of context.
Consolidated News Photos | Shutterstock By now, most Americans have heard JD Vance’s remarks regarding “childless cat ladies” that he made on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show.
However, Vance’s wife, Usha, is attempting to defend her husband’s choice of words, claiming that his comments were taken out of context and he did not mean to offend childless women who just so happened to have pet cats.
Usha Vance said her husband’s ‘childless cat lady’ comment was just a ‘quip.’
In 2021, the Republican Vice President nominee slammed Democrats who were running the country as “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made.”
“You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]. The entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children,” he added.
“We should support more people who actually have kids because those are the people who ultimately have a more direct stake in the future of this country.”
Vance’s remarks offended other Americans who are childless, some by choice and some not, believing that he viewed any women of childbearing age who do not have children as inferior and unintelligent.
Now, Vance’s wife Usha is attempting to clean up the mess of controversy her husband left behind with his remarks, defending his words as just a sarcastic “quip” that was taken out of context.
“The reality is, JD made a quote — I mean, he made a quip, and he made a quip in service of making a point that he wanted to make that was substantive,” Usha stated in her first solo interview with Fox & Friends. “And I just wish sometimes that people would talk about those things and that we would spend a lot less time just sort of going through this three-word phrase or that three-word phrase.”
Usha, who works as a lawyer, added that her husband’s comments were a result of the difficulties of being a parent in this country and his frustration directed toward childless politicians’ policies, which make it even harder.
However, she claimed that JD’s intention was never to offend those who are childless by choice or those struggling to have families of their own.
“JD, absolutely at the time and today, would never, ever, ever want to say something to hurt someone who was trying to have a family, who really was struggling with that,” Usha said.
“I also understand there are a lot of other reasons why people may choose not to have families, and many of those reasons are very good.”
After hearing her husband's cat lady statements, Usha Vance took a moment to get a better understanding of what he was really saying.
“Let’s try to look at the real conversation he’s trying to have and engage with it,” she urged other Americans.
“For those of us who do have families, for the many of us who want to have families, and for whom it’s really hard, what can we do to make it better? What can we do to make it easier to live in 2024?”
While defending her husband and standing by the fact he did not mean any harm in his 2021 remarks, Usha did not highlight any U.S. policies that make life more difficult for families.
Consolidated News Photos | Shutterstock
In fact, to the Vances’ relief, childless Americans pay higher taxes than those with families due to the Child Tax Credit, a tax benefit offered by the United States federal government to help families with the costs of raising children.
JD Vance’s childless cat lady remarks are not the first time he has taken a jab at single, childless Americans.
On a conservative podcast in 2020, Vance classified childless Americans, notably those in the nation’s “leadership class,” as “more sociopathic” than those with children. He claimed they made the country “less mentally stable” as a whole and that the “most deranged” and “most psychotic” users on X (formerly known as Twitter) were typically childless.
“There are just these basic cadences of life that I think are really powerful and really valuable when you have kids in your life,” JD said. “And the fact that so many people, especially in America’s leadership class, just don’t have that in their lives.”
Even if Usha claimed that her husband did not intend to offend childless Americans, his past remarks seemed to say otherwise.
Having a family is a personal choice that does not define one’s capabilities or character.
Some people may be fulfilled in life with just themselves, a small apartment, and a cat — and that is okay despite what JD Vance thinks!
Success is not measured by how many children you have or whether you are married. Some of the most accomplished and happy people in the world are childless — look at Dolly Parton and Oprah Winfrey. They have also done more for children globally than most women with children of their own.
The "crazy childless cat lady trope" is tired. It's a lazy talking point meant to be slung as an insult, but it's had the opposite effect. Instead, it's become a "call to action" for all women. Reproductive rights, the choice to have or not have children, body autonomy, and the value of women in society are not party issues—they are women's rights issues.
Megan Quinn is a writer at YourTango who covers entertainment and news, self, love, and relationships.