Does Parenthood Make You a Good Person?

Vice President Kamala Harris

Let me answer my title question unambiguously: No. The very fact that we need child abuse and neglect laws demonstrates that childbearing doesn’t make people good, or improve their character. Childbearing is a biological process, in itself literally no higher in moral regard than passing a bowel movement. Any human being can do it, and the worst people you know probably have.

Conservatives have espoused the moral necessity of childbearing at least since I’ve followed politics. Radio host Dr. Laura Schlessinger loudly demanded her listeners have more babies so frequently, that it was a recurrent Saturday Night Live joke throughout the 1990s. Certainly, not all babies were equal, as Vice President Dan Quayle’s dig at Murphy Brown’s fictional out-of-wedlock pregnancy almost certainly torpedoed his political aspirations.

This week, when incumbent President Joe Biden removed himself from nomination, kicking his support to Vice President Kamala Harris, conservatives reawakened the shopworn argument. I’m unclear who originated the dig, but it got adopted by Republican VP nominee J.D. Vance, and subsequently became a right-wing talking point. How can Harris govern America, they wonder aloud, without the experience of raising her own hatchlings?

The flaws in this argument should be so obvious that they don’t deserve refutation. Should be. First, there’s nothing politically necessary about having children. You know who else, like Harris, had stepchildren, but no children of his own? George Washington. Other Presidents have had distant, neglectful relationships with their children; tales of Theodore Roosevelt’s inability to corral his daughter Alice remain hilarious today, over a century later.

Besides, there are numerous reasons—illness, birth defect, injury—why a woman might be unable to bear children, and others—childhood abuse, professional ambition—why she might choose not to. None of these reasons are anybody’s business. Indeed, after years of complaining about the Biden Administration’s “Nanny State” policies, conservatives suddenly demand a national mommy? Friends, your messaging machine is broken.

Senator J.D. Vance

Parenthood has no magical redeeming qualities. As stated, we need child abuse and neglect laws to effectively prosecute parents who misuse their authority. Amid the furor over “groomers,” supposed advocates overlooked the fact that parents, not drag queens, are the people most likely to sexually abuse children. As civic organizations, community arts, and religion continue dwindling, trapping people indoors with their families and nobody else, this is likely to increase.

One need only look across the electoral aisle to witness this. While Harris prioritized public service over parenthood, Former President Trump has a strictly transactional relationship with his own children, who were raised by paid caregivers. He’s openly discussed his physical attraction to his eldest daughter, Ivanka, but gives little sign that he knows his second daughter’s name, Tiffany. Trump clan portraits look less like family than like hostage situations.

Okay, but let’s get Aristotelian here. From a philosophical perspective, we can say that something is necessary without being sufficient. Conventional eyesight is necessary for reading a printed book, but it isn’t sufficient, as one still needs the skill of reading, and probably a level of personal discipline too. Parenthood isn’t sufficient, and doesn’t magically make a person good. But is parenthood a necessary condition for goodness?

Of course not. I wouldn’t have asked otherwise. Countless people without children have nevertheless accomplished great good for humanity and their countries, from Dietrich Bonhoeffer to Dolly Parton. One needn’t have kids to feel invested in their communities or value a healthy future for humankind; one only need recognize that other humans have feelings, ambitions, and dignity of their own, simply because they are human.

And that’s saying nothing about how expensive prenatal medicine, child care, pediatric medicine, and other obligations of parenthood are in America, during a time of diminished wages.

Please don’t misunderstand me; I don’t mean to disparage parenthood. Many of my best friends are parents, and indeed, I’m descended from a long line of parents, grandparents, and other childbearers. I greatly respect people who voluntarily accept the burden of parenthood and embrace its many responsibilities. Despite my dour comments in the opening paragraph, I’ve seen many people choose parenthood to channel their best, most constructive impulses.

Yet some of us haven’t had kids, for reasons unique to ourselves, and face constant pressure to procreate. From well-meaning aunts urging us to “fulfill our potential,” to J.D. Vance’s longstanding claim that childless people shouldn’t vote, singletons face vast formal and informal pressure to conform. By reducing people to their childbearing capacity, such pressures are literally dehumanizing—which, Vance’s campaign proves, may be the point.