section_path: 2024 presidential election/Comments on childlessness
section_name: Comments on childlessness
paragraph_text: Comments on childlessness
  
  Shortly after being named Trump's running mate, Vance was criticized for saying in a 2021 Fox News interview, "we are effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, 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." The resurfaced comments, which were posted by MeidasTouch editor-in-chief Ron Filipkowski, sparked an immediate backlash across news and social media. On July 26, 2024, Vance clarified his remarks on The Megyn Kelly Show, saying, "It's not a criticism of people who don't have children" and "this is about criticizing the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child". He has said that being "pro-babies and pro-family" should be the Republican Party's highest priority.
  
  After backlash to the Fox News interview, additional comments that Vance had made in interviews about childless people resurfaced. In a 2020 podcast interview, he said that being childless "makes people more sociopathic and ultimately our whole country a little bit less, less mentally stable". Vance's campaign referred to "radical childless leaders in this country" in a fundraising email sent after his appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight. CNN found multiple examples of Vance making similarly disparaging remarks about childless people, primarily Democratic officials. In a 2021 speech at a Center for Christian Virtue leadership meeting, Vance said that childless teachers were "trying to brainwash the minds of our children" and criticized American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, saying: "If she wants to brainwash and destroy the minds of children, she should have some of her own and leave ours the hell alone." He also suggested in a March 2021 interview on The Charlie Kirk Show that childless people should be taxed at a higher rate than those with children, adding that the U.S. should "reward the things that we think are good" and "punish the things that we think are bad". In an August 2024 interview on Face the Nation, Vance said he supported increasing the child tax credit from $2,000 per child to $5,000 per child, even though his Senate Republican colleagues had blocked an expanded child tax credit two weeks earlier while he was absent for the vote, having called it a "show vote" and saying it would not have passed even if he had been present.