Democrats are loathe to admit it, but Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) was on to something when he said the Democratic Party was run by “childless cat ladies.”
“At the risk of giving Vance any credit here,” The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson writes, “I must admit that progressives do have a family problem.”
Thompson then quickly calls Vance “rude and revisionist” before saying that “the problem doesn’t exist at the level of individual choice, where conservative scolds tend to fixate. Rather, it exists at the level of urban family policy.”
Thompson is correct that the policies of the Democratic Party have made the states and cities they control family-unfriendly, but he’s wrong to suggest that individual choice doesn’t play a role here. It very much does.
Just this June, the Pew Research Center asked voters if society is better off when people make marriage and having children a priority. A resounding 59% of voters who supported former President Donald Trump said marriage and family make society better off, compared to just 19% of voters who supported President Joe Biden.
Considering these preferences, it isn’t surprising that Republicans do, in fact, have more children than Democrats and that childless adults are more likely to be Democrats.
Democrats simply value things like the environment and gender equity over having children. It’s that simple. The Democratic Party’s preference for gender equity and the environment over marriage and children shows up both in their personal choices and the policies they support.
That is why the Democratic Party fights permitting reform and makes it harder to build things. It is why they pursue child care policies that push mothers into full-time work, even when many mothers would rather work part time and spend more time caring for their own children.
Cities used to be great places for young families to go and find new opportunities. But as the Democratic Party has opened the border and let waves of low-skill immigrants flood every community, it has become harder for native families to move to urban areas that are creating new jobs.
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The federal government spends over $1 trillion on means-tested programs that punish marriage every year. Instead of helping young families get and stay married, the Democratic Party’s entire agenda only makes these penalties worse.
There is no doubt that Vance could change his message to alienate fewer voters, but the simple fact is the Democratic Party does not value marriage and family as highly as Republicans do, and it shows up in how they govern.