JD Vance’s 2021 comments on how the Democrats are run by “childless cat ladies” are obviously – and probably deliberately – offensive, but the broader point of his remarks is one that’s worth considering. Vance’s broader point was that people without children “don’t really have a direct stake” in the country. He means, of course, that childless people don’t have a direct stake in the future of their country. Political decisions often have effects that persist or ramify for years to come: Vance thinks that if you’re childless, you have no direct reason to care about any effects after you die.
He doesn’t limit the scope of the point to politicians. He thinks that voters with children should have more of a say in politics than those without. “If you don’t have as much of an investment in the future of this country, maybe you shouldn’t get nearly the same voice.”
Vance is by no means alone in thinking that parents should have more power at the ballot box than non-parents. A number oftheorists have suggested that parents should have proxy votes on behalf of their children. Politics in democracies is notoriously focused on the short-term. Governments may have little capacity to enact policies that impose costs now for the sake of benefits that will materialise years from now, especially if political rivals can credibly promise to avoid those short-term costs.
Our collective failure to respond to the problem of climate change anywhere near adequately might be explained by this election cycle driven focus on the near term. Proxy votes for children might help to overcome this focus. Parents presumably care about the future well-being of their children, and therefore might be expected to take a longer-term view. They might, for example, take climate change more seriously because its harms will impact their children more than they impact themselves.
It’s an idea worth taking seriously, but is it true? There are countervailing considerations. One worry is that those with children might be more partial than those without. This is the obverse of Vance’s point. Caring about the future well-being of your children might come at the cost of a reduction in impartial concern with the well-being of people more generally. After all, you want your children to do well, and doing well often entails doing better than others. Many goods are positional: their value depends, in part, on how they are distributed. People send their children to private schools, for example, in part to give them an edge over others. Perhaps those without children are better stewards of their nation because they are not concerned that some particular people do very much better than others.
In part, it’s an empirical question. We might look to the literature on the effects of parenthood on environmental concern and action for evidence. If having children makes people more concerned about the future, then we should expect more concern about climate change and a greater willingness to act on environmental ends. The evidence is mixed.
Some studies find an increase in concern with the environment but little to no effect on action. Others find a reduction in willingness to engage in green-friendly action. Parents have extra demands on their time and their money and may lack the capacity to pay short-term costs for longer-term benefits (even benefits that will accrue to their children). They may prefer to invest in actions that make it more likely that their children will be better off than others, rather than in actions that make everyone better off. It may be that parenthood has different effects on different groups of people, perhaps depending on how much capacity they have to pay short term costs; whatever the overall picture, it seems that any overall effect is extremely weak.
It’s worth noting that the proposal that parents have proxy votes on behalf of their children is different to Vance’s apparent proposal. Vance suggests that those with children have a stake in the future of their country and therefore should have a greater say. The proxy vote proposal is not committed to this view. It might be justified on the basis that everyone deserves political representation; since children lack the capacity to represent themselves, their parents should exercise this power on their behalf. The difference between these two proposals, in practice, is this: on the proxy view, parents lose their additional votes as soon as their children are old enough to vote for themselves. On Vance’s apparent view, parents retain their additional voting power throughout their lives.
The evidence that parents do not care more for the future of their country generally is stronger evidence against Vance’s proposal than against the proxy vote proposal. We might think fairness demands that children be represented, even if parents do not take a longer-term view than non-parents. In addition or instead, we might think that proxy voting on behalf of children rebalances voter demographics by reducing the relative power of older voters. This last justification would be ironic, given the extent to which the presidential election has been dominated by concerns about the candidates’ ages.
I think that Vance’s point can be also somewhat different. Let us suppose that he wants to say that all the political ideologies are led by the intellectuals (for details see Johnson Paul, Intellectuals). The feminism is pure example of this. Especially in the 60’s the feminism was proclaimed by the women who were part of elite (actresses, journalists etc.). But such “elite” woman is far away from the needs of average people with average income and with average/common concerns (see Fukuyama Francis. 2000. Great Disruption). Consequently the danger of each political ideology lies in the two things. First that in the extreme shape it tends to eradication of the enemies or treating the enemies as not people but just living objects (see the magazine “Medusa” published by the Bradford Lesbian and Feminist Community in the 70’s declaring that men are only the lower form of animals…). Second: the political ideology’s base is rather theoretical because of the above mentioned reasons (the ideology is formed by the people who are cut off the reality). Therefore the radical political ideology ends up with the totally not intended consequences. In that sense the feminism made free not women but men. These men are liberated from their duties and average women are obliged to take care of everything. Because these “childless cat ladies” wanted it so…. ..
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Calls by politicians to the children of god play along this same line. So considering Vances comments in the context of simple political speak he is saying no more than those with the most votes should use their power in a way which suits only their own supporters, ignoring other communities. That does seem to fit within that current ideology, playing with perceptions of power in a very deniable yet threatening way, but appears clearly anti-social to the broader community.
However it is the essence of politics that the politician offers some programme that suit to some part of the society. It depends on the politicians skills or capabilities or on the political programme’s quality how many voters (supporters) the politician persuades. And of course each political program is based on some political ideology. Either green or conservative, liberal, socialist, far left, far right etc. The society is not the unified mass. On the contrary it consists of the individuals who are different and who have different concerns. The task of politics is to solve this natural conflict without violence and if possible with reasonable solutions. And also on the principle of government of majority. The politician who allegedly talks in the name of „the broader community“ or he/she proclaims that he/she represents all of us is usually non-democratic. This is the diction of dictatorship or populism that considers the society as a solid mass in which all the individuals have the same concern. But this „unified society“ is not reality. It is just an artificial idea.
Well put, and so correct. I would add the observation that the pressures to consider a broader population can reduce tension at the interfaces between ideological spheres producing more ‘tolerant’ structures overall. Using raw power to impose one social groups perspectives upon all other groups is one type of thing you mention, but your intermediate comments regarding political skill sets and acumen appear as the more important aspect.
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