“Childless cat ladies” have long contributed to the well-being of America’s children – and the nation

Parenthood, Single people And the US birth rate have taken an even bigger place within the 2024 presidential race than every other race in recent memory.

Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance has been criticized for his 2021 criticism of “Childless cat ladies“, they say no “physical commitment” to the longer term of the country.

In August 2024, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, also a Republican, made it clear that Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris had no children to have.Keep them humble“, although she is a stepmother to two children, whom she “dry.”

As a historian of girls, families and kids within the USAI believe these biological definitions of motherhood are too narrow. The past can function a reminder of this other types of motherhood are also essential.

My research provides a broader perspective on women's experiences as moms and a deeper understanding of how women without biological children contribute to the country and its future.

“Mother of all children”

One of those women was Katharine Bement Davis, the topic of my current research.

Born in Buffalo, New York, in 1860, Davis was a member of a generation of “recent womenwho sought higher education, built skilled careers, and fought for political rights.

Other women of this generation included Nobel Peace Prize winner Jane Addams, Nurse Lillian Wald, Prison reformer Miriam Van Waters, Child protection attorney Julia Lathrop, Sophonisba Breckinridge, social work pioneer And First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt – to call just just a few.

Of this group, only Roosevelt had children of his own. But all of them saw themselves as “Mothers of all children“, as one historian has described juvenile justice advocates. They took responsibility for the nation's well-being and used their identities as public moms to shape American politics.

In one 1927 letter to her college classmatesDavis reflected whimsically on her life selections:

“First of all, I'm still an old maid; Therefore, I cannot write interesting things about my husband and children and how I treated him and how I raised them. But most of all, I had a lot to do taking care of other people's husbands and children.”

In fact, Davis' life illustrated the various meanings of motherhood.

Like many seemingly childless women, Davis was a loving aunt. Together together with her single sisters Helen and Charlotte, she taken care of her only niece Frances, whose mother died when she was still a toddler. Mid-Twenties Frances lived with all three aunts while attending school in New York City.

Black Feminist Scholars Call the sort of arrangement, long practiced in African American communities, “othermothering.”

Davis and other white women of her generation also became involved within the care of kids, whether through formal adoption or informal care. For example, Breckinridge helped raise her nieces and nephewswhile Van Waters legally adopted a daughter.

“Maternalism is the coming great power in government”

Throughout her life, Davis took advantage of what she wanted called “the methods of motherhood” to advertise the common good.

After Teaching school in Western New York , arrange a playground in a working-class neighborhood in Philadelphia and Supervising young offenders in New York Statebecame Davis New York's first female corrections commissioner in 1914.

Just months into their sentence, male inmates at Blackwell's Island Penitentiary staged a serious riot. Davis put down the revolt and established her own authority by addressing the unruly prisoners like wayward children. “You have to behave” she announced. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

After successfully using “maternal methods” to regain control of “the bad guys of Blackwell's Island”, Davis announced that “maternalism” is “the coming great power in government.”

Following her colleagues within the suffrage movement, Davis used the language of maternalism to advertise women's right to vote. Like other feminist pacifists, she believed that ladies “the maternal half of humanity.” Finally, like many activists within the USA and EuropeShe believed that every one women—no matter whether or not they had children of their very own or not—were liable for the well-being of all children.

Insisting that “wise motherhood” is crucial to higher government, Davis argued that ladies needed the proper to vote – and that the nation needed female voters. Maternalist activists also advertised Juvenile justice, parks and playgrounds, health programs and financial support for needy families and kids lay the muse for the fashionable welfare state.

Give women the proper to decide on

While she advocated for the common good and demanded political rights, Davis also advocated for what she and her contemporaries called: “voluntary motherhood” – the concept that women should give you the chance to regulate their reproductive lives.

Davis supported efforts upset Comstock Act of 1873that defined contraception and abortion as obscene and made distributing contraceptive information or devices through the U.S. Postal Service a federal crime.

States followed federal precedent by “Mini Comstock Laws“Contraception is criminalized. However, within the Twenties, some states allowed doctors to prescribe contraceptives resembling diaphragms and spermicides to guard their patients' health.

When she surveyed 1,000 married women for a study on female sexuality within the Twenties, Davis found that the majority of their study participants used contraceptives. In addition, almost one in ten reported having had a minimum of one abortion The procedure was illegal in every state.

And if Davis asked the ladies their opinions on contraception — or because the survey put it, “the use of means to make parenthood voluntary rather than random” — it found that about three-quarters of respondents agreed.

When the childless take over

So-called childless women like Davis have shown that they care in regards to the well-being of kids, women and the country.

In the last century Maternalists and feminists have often worked together to attain their goals. In fact, sometimes it was the identical people.

But today Republican politicians seem like attempting to drive a wedge between moms and others. As a current one New York Times One article states: “The politics of motherhood” has change into a “campaign cudgel.”

However, as Davis understood, many issues affecting moms are essential to all women. Additionally, Davis believed that everybody – not only birth moms – has a responsibility for the health and well-being of future generations. Finally, she insisted that ladies should control their very own destiny.

So was Davis a childless cat lady?

So, a grainy photo of her petting a kitten suggests that she loved cats.

As for her childless status, considering her entire spectrum work on behalf of the nation's childrenthe reply becomes slightly more complicated.