The Republican obsession with women who haven’t given birth is just weird

Stepmothers don’t get enough credit.

Parenting someone else’s offspring can be a really tough job. As a stepmother myself, I understand the challenges that often accompany being part of a blended family, and it’s admirable that Vice President Kamala Harris manages to have great relationships with both her stepchildren, who call her “Momala.”

Harris inexplicably found herself having to address the topic of motherhood on Sunday when she appeared on the popular Call Her Daddy podcast. Host Alex Cooper brought up the topic by saying, “I saw the governor of Arkansas said, ‘My kids keep me humble. Unfortunately, Kamala Harris doesn’t have anything keeping her humble.’ How did that make you feel?”

Harris responded, “I don’t think she understands that there are a whole lot of women out here who are not aspiring to be humble,” and “Families come in all kinds of shapes and forms, and they are family nonetheless.”

I have no qualms with Cooper asking the question. That was her right. But with everything else that’s going on right now — encouraging economic news at home, wars in Ukraine and Gaza abroad, and, hello, Harris is vying to be the leader of the free world in a month or so — it’s galling that the vice president would even have to go there. Male political candidates who also haven’t given birth never get held to the same ridiculous parenting standards. Donald Trump has five children with three different women. He is somebody who certainly could use the humility check Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders claims she gets from her own children and that she believes Harris lacks.

Sanders’ comments are the kind of mean girl stunt people usually try to pull off in private. But there it was out in the open, Sanders attempting to shame Harris for not being a biological mother. The subtext of that is that she has somehow got something over on Harris — in her dreams maybe, but nowhere else.

But we’ve heard this kind of nonsense before after old video of Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, surfaced of him during an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson putting down certain Democratic leaders, calling them “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”

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“It’s just a basic fact — you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] — the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children,” Vance continued. “And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”

He later tried to pass off what he said back then as sarcasm, but we caught the shade, as the young folks say. We know what he meant. And we reject it. The actress Tracee Ellis Ross challenged that kind of thinking during a livestream with former talk show host Oprah Winfrey in support of Harris last month, saying, “As a 52-year-old childless woman ... the childless women have been mothering the world and elevating culture as aunts, godmothers, teachers, mentors, sisters, and friends, and this goes on.”

She ended by saying what really should go without saying: “You do not need to push out a baby to help push humanity forward.”

In other words, motherhood doesn’t have to define you. Families come in all sorts of configurations these days.

Male political candidates who also haven’t given birth never get held to the same ridiculous parenting standards.

I married later in life and made a conscious choice not to have biological children. My mother actually advised me not to, fearing it would disrupt my life too much. Also, I prioritized caring for her and my father, who were dealing with health issues. My husband had a son from a previous marriage and was ambivalent about having more children.

Even though we are now empty nesters, my life is full. I don’t feel like I’ve missed anything. I’m a stepmother, an aunt, and a godmother to four, and my life has been made richer by all these experiences. I get what Harris meant when she told Cooper: “We have our family by blood, and then we have our family by love. And I have both. And I consider it to be a real blessing.”

I’m not sure what offends me more: that Sanders had the audacity to try and take a dig at Harris for not giving birth, or her implication that Harris needs to be humbled. She was picking on the wrong one. Harris isn’t about to play small just to make Sanders and others like her feel big. As Harris pointed out on the podcast, “This is not the 1950s.”

And thank goodness it isn’t.