JV Last at the Bulwark explains what all this “single cat ladies” stuff is all about:
Watching the JD Vance / New Right obsession with natalism, I’m struck by how racially coded it is. Because while Vance and his confederates are super-duper concerned about childless people who “have no stake in America’s future” I have also heard many conservatives/Republicans express a great deal of concern about brown people having too many babies.
Here, for example, is the Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald in 2007:
Unless the life chances of children raised by single mothers suddenly improve, the explosive growth of the U.S. Hispanic population over the next couple of decades does not bode well for American social stability.
The dimensions of the Hispanic baby boom are startling. The Hispanic birthrate is twice as high as that of the rest of the American population. That high fertility rate—even more than unbounded levels of immigration—will fuel the rapid Hispanic population boom in the coming decades.
By 2050, the Latino population will have tripled, the Census Bureau projects. One in four Americans will be Hispanic by midcentury, twice the current ratio.
Pretty obvious what her problem is there, isn’t it?
You may have forgotten, but back in the 1990s, conservatives were worried about African-American women having too many babies, so they pushed for a welfare “family cap” which denied extra benefits for low-income women (translation: African-American women) who had children while on public assistance.
Sometimes the Republican pro-natalists let the mask slip. Last year in Texas Republicans pushed a bill that would give large property tax credits to households with four or more children.
As Last notes, the law only applies to couples who own their houses which favors whites people. Natch.
So remember: When you hear JD Vance & Co. talk about the importance of having babies because parenthood gives you some sort of special stake in the country, sure, that’s a batshirt idea.
But this batshirt idea isn’t even on the level. They mean something very different. Here’s what they actually mean: They are threatened by the fertility patterns of minorities and view white women who don’t have babies as race-traitors.
All you have to do is look at their great love of Viktor Orban whose natalist policies were explictly designed to boost their white population in the face of what he saw as the threat from immigrants. White women need to make babies, damn it! Get back in the kitchen and the bedroom!