I didn’t have very high hopes for the first millennial running for vice president on a major party ticket – any guy running with Donald Trump has to be spineless and sycophantic by nature, as a job requirement – but boy, JD Vance has been not only disappointing but confusing and creepy.

In 2021 at a forum for the Center of Christian Virtue, he said of Randi Weingarten, a teachers union leader, “She doesn’t have a single child. If she wants to brainwash and destroy the minds of children, she should have some of her own and leave ours the hell alone.” (How Christian and virtuous of him.) He also said that teachers “without kids trying to brainwash the minds of our children … that really disorients me and disturbs me.”

I took that as an insult to Sister Edward Mary, who spent countless years (she always seemed ageless to me) as the principal of Catherine McAuley High School. Sister Edward Mary could teach Machiavelli a thing or two about the balance of love, fear and respect. (I loved her, except when I knew I was out of uniform, and then I feared her popping out from behind a potted plant and handing me a detention slip.) She dedicated her life to the education of young women, which is clearly a cause JD Vance is not a fan of. That makes sense: Education gives you knowledge, knowledge is power, and Vance definitely doesn’t like the idea of women in power. Or having any power at all, especially over their own bodies.

Vance has also been known to state that choosing not to have children is evidence of a “value set” that has made such a woman “a miserable person who ‘can’t have kids because I already passed the biological period when it was possible. … But I’m really better than these other people. What I’m going to do is project my, like, racial and gender sensitivities on the rest of them … even though the way that I think has made me a miserable person.’ ”

Again, an insult not only to Sister Edward Mary but also to my first grade teacher, Sister Patricia, an old-school nun who made me join the after-school rosary club because I talked too much in class. And to Sister Priscilla, my third grade teacher, a cancer survivor who taught me the cursive I still use today. Sister Mary, my sixth grade teacher, who had a cellphone and a hybrid car in 2003, way before it was cool, and who taught me that sucking on a piece of hard candy is the best and tastiest way to get rid of hiccups. Sister Carol, the basketball coach. Sister Frances Clare, who taught all my friends French. And those were just the nuns.

I’m sure that if JD Vance had thought for a single second before opening his big mouth, he would have made an exception to his insults and said that women in religious orders were, of course, not miserable and trying to ruin the lives of children everywhere. (After all, the Republican Party depends on the votes of conservative Christians.) But I’ve met plenty of child-free women and teachers, and I can promise you that none of them are bitter and miserable. (Well, after they catch the third stomach bug of the season, maybe some of the teachers, but that’s got nothing to do with motherhood.)

I don’t want to play along with Vance’s games of insults but he’s wrong, and I’m not afraid to say that.

A woman does not need to have given birth to children in order to be an effective teacher. Also, no teacher I’ve ever met – and I’ve met an awful lot – is trying to brainwash and destroy the minds of children. They’ve got their hands full trying to get the kids to put down their cellphones and learn an algebraic equation.

Women have been choosing to remain without children for thousands of years. The only major difference is that these days, most women who do it aren’t swearing vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Maybe that’s what freaks out men like JD Vance – the idea that large numbers of women are running their own lives around the country, unrestrained by the tethers of motherhood or the rules of religious orders.

The whole point of the American dream is having the freedom to choose your own fate and make your own way in the world. With apologies to my old pal Billy Shakes … to be or not to be a mother, that is the question. It is one of the most pivotal questions in a woman’s life. Being insulted by some weird guy from Ohio isn’t going to change any minds.

Victoria Hugo-Vidal is a Maine millennial. She can be contacted at:
themainemillennial@gmail.com
Twitter: @mainemillennial