ha. nope. tired.

the kamala essay i didn't want to write

“Tell me you’re going to write an essay.”

Of course, I felt seen when the texts and emails started pinging. Of course, I wished there was no need for my particular “someone other than a mother” expertise. Where to begin addressing Vice Presidential nominee J.D. Vance’s denigration of childless cat ladies? Or the maelstrom of defense that rushed to stepmom Kamala Harris?

Did I consider my options, even briefly, before responding, “Ha. Nope. Tired”?

If I had, I might have proposed a Catholic-to-Catholic letter to J.D. Vance. Look, you’re new around here, it might have started. So you could be forgiven for not knowing that pronatalism is a relatively recent rhetoric (say, in the last five hundred years) amongst our people. Truly, childlessness is next to godliness in the Catholic tradition, given the early church belief that resurrection precluded the need for procreation. Some of this got twisted into “abstinence is more spiritual than sex” shit but some of this remains counter-culturally sacred “biological families are not destiny” shit. So, be careful who you come for, J.D., because childless cat ladies very well may be, if you believe in Christian visions of the afterlife, your priests in the world to come. (See Reconceiving Infertility for more of this argument.)

Or, I might have proposed a more sociological approach to the reproach of Kamala Harris. Childless folk may freak the GOP out for “not having a direct stake” in our country but, trust, we invest a frick ton in our communities. To start, non-parents are no more likely than parents to self-report as selfish. Further, in a study of 1,000 childless women, 80% reported playing an active role in other people’s children lives. To boot, the childless and childfull have nearly identical rates of civic engagement, though the former are more likely to be intensely involved in their volunteer work. Non-parents are not better than parents, but they often have more community capacity than parents, and I thought community capacity—intensely direct stakes—is what the government wanted? No? (See Childfree by Choice for more of this argument.)

I suppose I could have led with either of these arguments—or a dozen more about the absurdity of the well-worn childless trope, but my defenses felt equally well-worn after almost a decade of living and researching and laying them out. Like that chunky handmade sweater I bought off Etsy some years ago, my defenses were warm and familiar and had served a purpose for a time. (I wore that chunky sweater to more than one Seattle wedding as my “Left coast dinner coat.”) But now, although I could pull them out of closets both real and proverbial with ease, they smelled musty to me. My defenses bored me. If someone wanted my hot take, they could read the book it took me two hot years to write, I thought to tell the pinging texts and emails.

Besides, I sighed to exactly no one, to defend the childless or childfree is to imply that there is something about that group of persons in need of defending—an aberrant or abhorrent something. It’s the same social marking at play when we ask any kind of woman who’s gone off-script in any kind of reproductive story, Why? Why only have one child? Why have more than three children? Why medically intervene to have a child? Why medically intervene to not have a child? Why choose to home school your child? Why choose to unschool your child? And, while we’re at it, Why do you like mothering so much? Why do you hate mothering so much? Why do you do more, less, all, none of what’s expected of you?

Hogwash. I want to live in a world where no explanation is needed to justify the existence of any of these human beings, Kamala and myself included. Yes, I’m still 100% committed to the belief that our reproductive choices or lack thereof are not 100% personal. We all live in an ecosystem; our lives should account for a terrible, holy tethering. Isn’t this what the Catholic tradition and our civic traditions impress upon us so compellingly, even if imperfectly? This being human is a group project. So, defend your reproductive inventories out of love for yourself, your kin, your community. But pay careful attention to who is asked to defend not just their lives but their worth.

I’ve come to peace with the fact that I became a foster parent, in part, to defend my worth as a childless woman. It wasn’t the biggest reason or the the most beautiful. Beautiful existed in the decision to foster, and later to adopt. But those who know me know I’ll always be a little haunted by what might have been if I didn’t feel compelled to prove anything, to proselytize anyone on the merit of being a childfree priest. Would I have become a kind of parent at all? Would I have contributed to my community in ways more intense and satisfying? Would I write more, drink less, sleep better, love weirder? Would I have simply responded to the family and strangers and haters who asked why about my life with a “Ha. Nope. Tired”?

Defenselessness, I’m learning, can be its own kind of peace. Honestly, I’m happy to be too tired to write much of anything these days about life’s indefensible absurdities. I’m happy to spend my typical writing day—Sunday—ordering morning groceries, playing afternoon kickball, reading Vanity Fair in bed with a black sky behind me. It’s been a simple kind of existence this Fall. And it occurred to me recently, after months of putting off just this sort of post, that maybe this was the kind of existence Rebecca Solnit had in mind when she said, “There is no good answer to how to be a woman; the art may instead lie in how we refuse the question.”

Ha.

Nope.

Tired.

XO,
Erin

me, refusing the question with my Sunday kickball team