In an interview with The New York Times published Saturday, Ohio Sen. JD Vance defended the substance of his controversial remark about “childless cat ladies” — but said he wishes he had worded it differently.
Comments Vance made about women during his 2021 Senate campaign have resurfaced in the wake of his selection as Donald Trump’s vice presidential nominee. In one Fox News segment that year, Vance dismissed Vice President Kamala Harris as one of the “childless cat ladies” who are “miserable” with their lives.
“I think most people who probably have watched this have said something dumb — have said something that they wish they had put differently,” he told the Times’ Lulu Garcia-Navarro on Saturday.
But he defended the idea that there’s a “pathological frustration” with children in U.S. society, and said it was “deranged” to choose not to have kids due to climate change concerns.
For a decade, Americans have had fewer children, in part due to factors including economic insecurity, political uncertainty, shifting gender norms and a lessening stigma around not having kids.