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Vance’s Fertile Mind on Infertility Rate

JD Vance told WSJ why he “Worries About Childlessness” & his persuasive linkage of nation’s low fertility rate to high housing costs, social isolation & lack of patriotism suggests Harris’ attacks against him on the point could boomerang against her.

 

As the WSJ article notes, in 2021, Vance had told Fox News the US is being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives & the choices that they’ve made & so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.” Maybe the crack’s a tad overarching & he singled out VP Kamala Harris who never gave birth. But, a closer read of Vance’s fertility concerns reveals it's based on the alarming news that the nation’s average number of kids per woman fell to 1.62 last year, the lowest on record & “well below the 2.1 replacement rate needed to keep population steady.”

 

In April, then, Vance described to the WSJ how the low fertility rate had many causes, no simple remedy & negative consequences well beyond the usual talking points of a smaller workforce & less sustainable programs like Social Security. In fact, the author of “Hillbilly Elegy” explained how “A very important part of kids’ social development obviously is spending time with other kids,” like brothers, sisters & cousins as well as the neighborhood gang. It of course leads to kids growing up more “socially isolated” & that manifests itself as “less marriage, much thinner friendship groups.” Greatly overlooked as a cause of smaller (or no families), he added, is the depressing if not unaffordable cost housing as well as raising a family these days. Vance suggested that all this may also be leading to less patriotism as once “jingoistic” Americans become more like their more pessimistic EU counterparts who see more dark than light in the future. Now if Vance can articulate all that in a debate after being baited by Harris on the issue …

 

Davd Soul


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