Conservative Familes Continued

Welcome back to the JD Vance Childless Cat Ladies conversation with my family. This time, starring my sister, who shares a sad story in her line of work.

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 Hello everyone, and welcome back to Episode 1. 2 of the conservative families episode on the goldeythoughts podcast. Today, as promised, I have with me another very special person. We're going to be delving more into JD Vance's

childless cat lady's comment, but with the unique twist of we're not really going to worry about him so much, as I'm going to talk about my personal life.  And today I have with me my very esteemed, very lovely,  sister.

I'm going to call her Jo for this episode.  Is   Jo okay? Yeah, it's good. No, that's perfect. Thank you for joining me today, Jo. Thanks for having me love.  I'd have not spoken with you about this before, but mom had no clue about the JD Vance quote at all before I started interviewing  with her.

Have you at least heard about what he said? Yes. Okay. So,  this is for the people who may not have heard of the first podcast that I did, but I want to make a statement very briefly and then we're going to move on.  The full quote  is the Senator from Ohio said the country was being run, quote "By 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." End quote.  This is JD Vance, who is currently running for vice president of this country.

The previous podcast that I had before this one is where I spoke with my mother and I was so shocked at this because I don't recollect anything from my childhood where that was even considered a bad thing or where people who were childless

were considered to be looked down on. I didn't know that there was a stigma. Apparently there is. I just wanted to talk more about,  my own childhood and wanted to bring on people that could talk about that with me and maybe get their views.

So thank you J. D. Vance for bringing this childless cat lady's family even closer. I appreciate that.

 If you wanted to briefly go into your childhood, there is  an age gap between us. There are five years.  And then there were some parts of  your childhood that I wasn't around for.

 Jenn, there's not much to say about my childhood. You were there for most of it. I don't think you missed much of anything.  I think I was six when our parents divorced, you were 11.  And we were raised by a single mom without a college education.

And we were latchkey kids. mom wasn't there because she was working. We got off the bus, we went in the house, we scavenged food, she'd get home late.   It's so true. It's like, okay, you have one box of cereal between the two of you for a week, fight over it.

Listen, we figured it out. Okay.  Mom would get home late, cook us dinner, you know, around 7, 7: 30. Woman was so damn tired. You know, there wasn't even much conversation. And then, you know, went to bed.

And then of course, I'm a single mom now, so  I have a lot to say about this comment. 

 Do you remember women being called out for being childless during your youth?  Literally, no, and it didn't even strike me as- i'm so glad you brought this to my attention and said, Hey, Is this consistent with 

being raised as women in America, like you- Right? Do you remember that conversation that we all had, you know, back in the day?  Our fertility, you know, like... exactly. How the only thing we need to do in life is have children. Right. And it's the most- that didn't happen. And nor did I see it in entertainment.

 I didn't hear it in conversation with friends.  This just wasn't a center of anything. 

Thank you for bringing that up. That's also true. Would you describe your childhood as being more conservative? Not politically necessarily, as far as, like, values and that kind of thing? Oh yeah, definitely. I mean, we weren't liberal in any means. 

 And I remember being a part of church youth group. Church wasn't forced down our throats, but it was encouraged for sure. So. Mm hmm.

Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah.  I've already made the disclaimer in my other podcast, but I should say it here as well. This is kind of a deviation from the norm. This is not intended to be to be political commentary, or a political commentary podcast whatsoever.

It's just, this is personal to me. And I'm like, you know what? I want to talk about this, and this is the people I need to be talking about it with, is my family, because we grew up conservative. I haven't been paying really much attention to the political  stratosphere, but, I guess conservative now means that  we're going back to some sort of trad wife situation and  breeding is, definitely a thing.

Have you heard of the  trad wife movement?  Um, yes. Okay. 

 So. Well, I think what needs to be said here is that the conservative party and I'll say it, the Republican Party, from 20 years ago, is not the conservative party today.

And what it's come into is Christian nationalism. Mm.  I used to be Republican, because I do appreciate their economic viewpoints. I think they're strong, and,  I am for gun, um,  not having a lot of gun laws. I think it's important to own guns at home. I'm a single mom. I want to, you know, so I understand some of their stances.  It's violence against women.  For many reasons. A,  first off,  A woman's worth isn't her ability to reproduce or not.

And just imagine if the tables were turned. Mm hmm.  If I were to say to a man, Oh, you're infertile?  Sorry, you're miserable, and you're making everyone else miserable. I mean, that would be preposterous. I agree. 

Are they miserable because they're childless? Where's the focus on them? Agreed.

 Why would a person running for vice president of a country say that about  half of the country's population.  Why would he try to cause strife  because certainly you're going to have two voting parties take that statement differently, and that would cause strife within the home, which you supposedly care so much about. 

I don't know.  

 I think that women need to be very careful when men speak this way about or towards us, because the childless cat lady is really touching on this fear of an enlightened woman. I think it could spin into prosecution of women. 

 Have you ever sat around and pointed a finger at a childless man,  or scoffed at a man for not having children?  I don't believe I've ever done that, not even once. It's never even occurred to me  to even think about that.

Like, well, how many kids does he have?

 The way that men control women is through their womb.   If you have my child,  you're going to have less opportunity at the workplace, going out with your friends. Once you're a mother, you're just held to the standard of you must do everything for your child first, and I can say that because I'm a single mom and I had a kid at 18.

 I lost that,  those golden years of making choices for myself and, you know, exploring, and going out and partying, and probably being absolutely  a menace to society.  I had to  become responsible, and become a contributing member to society and work my fucking ass off.

You did. I admire you so much because  you're definitely well educated. You're college educated, whereas I am not.  You've definitely, you know, Made your way and I'm extremely proud of you.

Well, have you seen the Barbie movie? I haven't, unfortunately, I know. I have not been to the movie theater in so long.

Okay, no.  My biases are showing. I did go and see the new Dune movie when it came out. But that's the only thing I've seen. I would hope so. So I apologize. I almost said an incorrect statement where I'm like, I haven't been to the theater in so long. No, I saw Dune, but that's the only thing I've seen, unfortunately.

 Okay, so the Barbie movie is an incredible movie, and it's so pro women, and feminist movement, and  there's  this monologue one of the actresses does in the middle where she's like,  ""It doesn't matter what you do,

it's wrong. As a woman,. You have kids. It's wrong because you  can't contribute to the workforce. If you're in the workforce and you don't have kids, it's wrong because you're considered selfish. You know, and she goes into other things like, If you dress really revealing and cute, you're a slut. And if you dress, you know, baggy and comfortable, you're frumpy, and everything from,  how we can't, as women,  just be happy with something about ourselves,

like, it's something is always criticized. And so  the reason I'm bringing this up  is that,   Having children is both right and wrong, even in the workforce, for example, I, you know, I have my doctorate, I'm a provider,  and,  about maybe once a year, one of my colleagues,  goes out on maternity leave and my chief, who's a male, a white male, made the comment last year in our office and said,  How many more times do you women have to get pregnant?

No, no. No, Jo. No. What? Oh, my God. Okay. Yeah. And it leads the division. Very, very professional setting, by the way. Okay. Um,  because he wants,  he wants us to stop taking maternity leave because he wants us to be there working and staffing his unit because when we're out and we're working, you know, we're on maternity leave, he can't get coverage and he has to work more.

He faced some sort of consequence for that statement. Speech or no, absolutely. No, it was just like JD Vance, you know, as well. He was being a little sarcastic. Okay.

My goodness. Okay. 

 I'm gonna switch it up a little bit here and get more personal with it.   How do you view me as being childless?

Does that change your opinion on me as a person at all? No, my God, not in the slightest, Jenn. Honestly, I think it's rather responsible of you. It is. I think so too. I don't think I'm in a position to have kids. No, I remember when you made the choice, when you just kind of like announced it in your own way to the family and you're like, listen, guys, okay? 

I am selfish. I am a selfish person. I don't want to fucking raise kids.  And I thought to myself. I forgot saying that by the way.  I swear to God, I'm so glad you remember that I said that because I don't. Okay.  Everyone already knew that we were all relieved to  hear you say it. 

Okay. Well,  do you have any friends your age that don't have children? I do have friends that don't have children.

I can think of one in particular that I know very personally, who is a wonderful great friend to you. Mm hmm. She's an all star and yes,  those women, there's a couple more that come to mind. In the workplace, to be specific, they are expected to work about the holidays because they don't have kids.  It's just well, why do you want Christmas off?

 You want me to work Christmas and miss opening presents with my kids? Hmm So, they carry a little more responsibility and in that way, they need to be a little more available. If there's a call out. 

Having had children, has your opinion changed on a woman choosing not to have kids or like...

since before you had kids, to after you had kids, changed  on other women that do or don't,  has that wavered for you in any way? Oh, absolutely. My perspective has changed immensely having children and being a mother.  I would die, I would give my life to support the women's choice to not have children  because the, of the amount of suffering that I had to undergo to get through the early years of raising children by myself. 

and especially women who  don't have the family support that I had, or don't have the ability to go to college like I did. I love my kids. I don't even need to say that or justify that. You know that. They're my best friends. They're incredible. I spend every moment of my free time with him as humanly possible and... there's a story that I want to tell you that I'll never forget.  You know the new Florida abortion law that went into effect that you can't have an abortion after six weeks.

Mm hmm. Unless it's by rape or incest. So a mother came in to the hospital who  was 25  weeks pregnant, but she had lost    her bag of water's broke around 16 weeks,  far before an infant is ready to be born. And so, the reason why that's important, is because, if the bag of water is broken, then the lungs won't develop.

And so this child grew from the age of 16 weeks to 25 weeks. And the body grew, but the lungs never grew. And so this baby was born at 25 weeks with 16 week lungs. And so after many, many, many painful procedures,  and months  of,  being on a breathing tube, the baby passed in her arms and, she looked at me, and she told me her story.

She told me that  at 16 weeks when her waters broke, she went to the doctor and knew that  she needed to terminate the pregnancy because her baby wouldn't survive. She knew that in her heart. And the doctor said, hang on a second. Why don't we just, Just run some genetics, and run some blood work, and really see what's going on in there, and do some more tests and   those tests  several weeks and they came back normal, and there was no abnormal blood work and et cetera.

And so, she said, Okay, we're at 20 weeks now or 21 weeks.  I still feel like we need to terminate the pregnancy. I can't imagine having the baby and they're like,  Oh, sorry, you're going into the third trimester. It's too late. And so she was forced to carry this pregnancy until 25 weeks and then she was forced to watch her baby suffer for months in the NICU and then eventually die.

And she looked at me and she said, I never wanted this. Damn.  I told you.  I told you I never wanted this, and I've been in this hospital every day for months, watching my daughter suffer, and I knew this would happen,  and you didn't listen to me. And of course, it wasn't me, but she's just speaking to health care as a whole. 

And I'm sorry.  That's what I mean when I say I would give my life to protect women like that from having  children in that type of circumstance, and going through that pain, because she'll never forget that. No, of course it'll be painful for her to think about terminating her pregnancy at 16 weeks because her bag of waters broke. But think of how much more painful it was for her to go for months to the ICU every day and watch her baby get chest tubes and  IVs and blood work and see her crying. 

I don't know how you deal with it. You're one of the strongest people I've ever,  ever known.  Well, I don't know how she's dealing with it.   I just don't, I can't fathom this argument that the womb is the most important thing to a woman,  that's just not how we were raised.

In fact, those circumstances were either ultra, ultra conservative or not what she wanted, because the kids all kind of shared the same bike, and the same shoes and stuff. Yeah. 

 How do you think your opinion of me would change, if any, if I suddenly chose to have kids this late in life?  Um, I would be concerned,  just about your health and the health of your child.  You would take a professional stance of it,  Okay, I know how things could get harder for you, because you're over a certain age, and that's not good for you or the fetus. Yeah. But  I would be delighted.  I think what's important is that   women should be supported to choose in whatever direction  they want to go in. If, you all of a sudden, you wanted to have a child,  I want to be an aunt. Like, hello? That would be fantastic.

I would spoil the shit out of your kid. Thank you.  

So how would you feel if your daughter chose not to have kids? And would that opinion be any different if she chose not to have children versus your son's choosing not to have children?   It's really a well designed question,   I mean, my kids are young right now.

They're in their teens,   so if they were to get pregnant, let's say in the next five years, if it were my son, I would be less worried. I'm just going to say that out loud. Why? Because he could still go to college.  If it were my daughter, I would be much more concerned because just the, her physical ability to get to campus pregnant and then breastfeeding and, and dealing with the sleep deprivation.

I would be much more concerned about her ability to continue. I'm much more worried about my daughter getting pregnant than my sons because of loss of opportunity.     Is there anything that you want to add further  on this topic before I give my final thoughts to you?  Hmm.  I just want to say I'm sorry.  What?

That this was spoken out loud. Oh yeah, I do take, of course this comes from a personal place, right? Of course I take personal umbrage. I can't deny that. I'm like, why are you attacking me?  Yeah, it did kind of hurt me because I'm like,  Why  this person says that he wants to represent me  on a national level, and why on earth do you think I would vote for you, political party aside, why do you think that that would be something I would be. 

Cool with? I don't care if it was a Democrat who said it, it would irk me just as much because the statement, I think,  is deprecating. But yes, I can't pretend to take a lofty approach to it.  It's hurtful.

Here's why it's hurtful to me specifically.  It's not JD Vance.  It's the fact that it opened my brain to the fact that there's probably more people other than him. Because he said it at that level, so there's probably a good chance that there's a whole lot of men who are secretly thinking that about me.  And I , was clueless before the statement was made.  I never would have considered that.  Being a thing, but I guess it is.

I bet it was shocking, and I am  so sorry, because that's not coming from women.

 But what I was going to say is my thanks to you, not only for  coming on today, but like, thank you for making me not feel  like a weirdo  for... obviously mom having kids, because I exist. And you, having children yourself, for not looking at me like I'm some sort of outcast, and never making me feel that way during holidays or family gatherings. I don't feel less of a person.

So thank you for that.  Oh my gosh, not in a million years would I. And I, I wanted to say Mr. J. D. Vance. To you, sir, if you were to ever 

hear this   my worth is not my womb, and your worth is not your semen, sir. And so, you stay on your side of the street, and I'll stay on mine. 

Yeah. Well, he would love you anyway. Because you've had kids and you've contributed, you've done your part. Thank you for doing your American civic duty, ma'am. Appreciate you. Jesus, God. 

Not only do you do that, but  you help other women do their civic duty. So he loves you two times over. Like, if JD Vance  were to incur our family, I would be, like, everything he would hate. And you would be, like, at the beginning of it anyway, you would be everything that he loved. He would hear about you on paper and be like, Oh my God, I want to run up this woman and kiss her cheeks.

Like, you would definitely be that. On paper.  Well, it would be received like the donut shop moment. Did you see that reel? No. What? Oh, wait, hold on. Was, are you talking about Tim Walz? And he went into the donut shop.  Oh, no, no. It was, it was JD Vance. He went to the donut shop.

Yeah, I know. Yeah. Yeah. Something was weird about, yeah. Okay. So he went into a donut shop and he just acted real strange or something like that? It just wasn't well received. He walked in thinking that, we're going to lay out the red carpet for him and it's just, like, your regular old donut shop workers. Just normal Americans who are in there and he's like,  Hey everyone.

Sorry about this circus here. And she's like, what do you want to order? And he's like, Well,  I am running for vice president. And she's like, And? What do you want to order? And he's like, Uh, okay.

That's really awkward. But, it was very cringe. He deserved every moment of it. Yeah.  I've actually tried to stay away from things involving him ever since the childless cat lady thing. I'm like, you know what? I've made my decision on this guy. I don't need to.

Yeah, but I heard, I heard something earlier. 

 But anyway, I thank you so much for coming on today and sharing your time with me. I know it's very precious cause you're with your kids too.

So thank you so much.  Hey, I love you, Jenn. I don't know if this is what you're looking for, but, um, I, um, I love you girl. I love you too. Thank you for coming on. And it's perfect.  All right. All right. Talk to you later. Bye. Bye.