Thanks to the American presidential election and vice-presidential hopeful, JD Vance, the term ‘childless cat lady’ had become a part of the political lexicon. It has been used to attack presidential candidate and the current Vice-President of the United States, Kamala Devi Harris, for not having biological children. This ‘failing’ – as the Republicans would have it – means that Harris has no real stake in the future; that she has no one in her life to ‘keep her humble’; and no understanding of the lives of everyday Americans who are raising families of their own.

There are so many things wrong with this view of childless – or childfree, if that’s the word you prefer – that it is hard to know where to start. It is absurd to suggest that just because you haven’t birthed babies, you are willing to let the world go to hell in a handbasket. And those who suggest this don’t understand either the concept of empathy or that of extended and blended families. As for the idea that women need to be kept ‘humble’ so that (presumably) they don’t try to rise above their stations; well frankly, this is a risible goal in the 21st century.

As the party of Christian values, surely the Republicans know that the progenitor of their religion, Jesus Christ, had no biological children of his own – which is why he regarded the entire world as his progeny. And nor, for that matter, did the mother who birthed him (the Virgin Mary – the clue is in the name), and yet she is revered as a universal mother figure in the Christian canon. So, maybe – just maybe – it is not imperative to have a child who shares your DNA to care about the wider world.

I can’t help but be thankful that this sort of narrative hasn’t taken hold in Indian politics – well, not as yet, at least. Our Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, has no children, and that fact has never been used to suggest that he is not concerned about the future of India. Instead, he is commended for this because it means that he is doing everything for the betterment of the country as a whole and not to improve the lot of his kids. Similarly, the Prime Minister In Waiting, Rahul Gandhi, doesn’t have children, and that isn’t seen as a failing either; rather people appear to be thankful that this fact could signal the end of dynastic politics in this country.

It helps, of course, that both Modi and Gandhi are men. And we do not have similar expectations of men as we do of women. Perhaps, if there was a childless woman asking to be Prime Minister of India, the same objections would be raised about her as well. Meanwhile in America, the Democrats and Harris’s own family are trying to defend her by saying that she does have children – step-children, who she has helped raise, and whose lives she is involved in.

But if you ask me, this is the wrong response. The right response would be to say that a woman doesn’t need children (biological, adopted, step, foster, whatever) to have her existence validated. Just being a woman – in herself, by herself, for herself – is enough.

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