Opinion: Why Do ‘Crazy’, Childless Cat Ladies Scare Men So Much?

US Vice-Presidential candidate J.D. Vance’s 2021 comment about “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made” has set the cat among the pigeons. Well, not so much among pigeons, but certainly among a lot of women who have come out breathing fire that he dared to make such a disparaging remark about women who do not have children. They have slammed his misogyny, his contempt for the choices that women make, and his portrayal of women without children as joyless creatures who try to fill their empty lives with their cats. (Clearly, Vance thinks that a mewling cat fits his vision of a pathetic childless woman much better than a barking dog).

Vance’s remark was, of course, a political one, meant to belittle women leaders in the liberal Democratic fold – women like Vice-President Kamala Harris, for instance – who do not have biological children. Nevertheless, there’s no doubt that it sprang from his deeply held belief that there is something lacking in women who are childless. That they are incomplete, incompetent, socially detached, and, hence, unworthy of respect. 

Only Contempt, Pity For Childless Women

Sounds familiar? Of course, it does! We Indian women are all too acquainted with this belief system. So much so that we could be forgiven for wondering what the caterwaul over Vance’s comment is all about. Heck, the guy merely verbalised his belief as offensively as he could, but isn’t this hostility exactly what childless women in our society are subjected to? Which makes one wonder if Vance’s sterling opinion about childless women was also bolstered by his Indian wife Usha, who is a serious procreator and has produced three children. 

But let us not speculate. Let us stick to facts. And the fact is that every Indian woman who has not had a child – whether by choice or for medical issues or for any other reason, whether she is affluent or underprivileged, stays in an urban high-rise or a rural hovel – is treated with contempt, pity and, in some cases, murderous cruelty. (We are talking about married women here, because, chhi chhi, no one expects unmarried women to have children. Besides, single women face another level of derision altogether).

‘Born A Woman, Suffer Like One’

Sure, child-bearing is a perfectly natural life choice. But for some weird reason, not having a child is considered monstrously unnatural. Try telling your officious aunt or over-friendly female neighbour that you have seen the misery and exhaustion of your friends who were new mothers, their eyes hollowed from sleeplessness; you’ve seen them give up their careers for their children, or be torn with guilt because they have gone back to their jobs. And, no, thank you, that life is not for you – you’d rather be childfree and carefree. Said aunt and neighbour will be horrified by your perversity, your unfeminine rejection of the reproductive instinct. You were born a woman, dammit, you should jolly well go through the pain of being one!

If you want to shock them some more, you could say that you prefer to spend the money that you earn on yourself, go on holidays, and be able to afford a better lifestyle than you could if you had a child. After this brazen expression of sinful self-centredness, they will probably shun you altogether. 

As a childfree woman, I can tell you that should you wish to not have a baby, your reproductive years will be signposted thus: First, gentle questions from female relatives about when you will give them the “good news”. Second, less gentle questions about why the “good news” is not forthcoming. Third, reassurances that you still have plenty of time to become a mother – and why not check out this fertility doctor, in case, you know, that is the problem. And finally, the stage when friends and relatives realise that you really have no intention of reproducing and, improbable as it may be, are happy with the choice you have made.

If Anything, Childless Women Should Get Tax Breaks

But wait, remaining child-free does not mean that you will be free from pitying looks and insinuations that you are a luckless woman who failed to achieve the true fulfilment of your womanhood by not producing a baby. Depending on your social, cultural and economic milieu, the reactions could range from being dismissed as a baanjh (barren woman), to melting commiseration over your so-called misfortune, to glowering resentment if you were so bold as to declare that you are not sorry that you are childless, that you enjoy your unencumbered status and thank your lucky stars that you don’t have to spend an arm and a leg on sending your child (or children) abroad to study, nor leave them to a world lurching towards a climate catastrophe.

With birth rates going down drastically in the West (the share of US adults under 50 who do not have children and are unlikely to ever have children rose from 37% in 2018 to 47% in 2023), one could argue that some folks there have reason to be worried about more and more women not going down the path of procreation. But no such problem exists in India. True, here, too, overall fertility rates are on the decline, but we are still a very long way from making a dent in our population burden and reaching a point when, say, 2 crore people do not apply for 60,000 railway jobs. Really, what women without children in this country ought to get is not hostility, but tax breaks for not adding to the population swell!

But fat chance of that happening – even if the current finance minister is replaced by another. Still, people like Vance in this country will have to get used to the idea that as women attain greater levels of education and financial independence, many more will choose not to have babies. Yes, it’s fun to blame women for everything they do or not do, but we are fast reaching a stage when we don’t give a damn.  

Meanwhile, hold my uterus – I’m off to a pet shop to get myself a cat. 

(Shuma Raha is a journalist and author)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author