Vance also seemed to agree when a podcast host suggested that having grandparents help raise children was a ‘weird, unadvertised feature of marrying an Indian woman’
JD Vance agreed with the notion that raising grandchildren was “the whole purpose of the postmenopausal female,” an unearthed 2020 podcast shows.
Vance also seemed to concur when the host suggested that having grandparents help raise children was a “weird, unadvertised feature of marrying an Indian woman.”
It’s the latest in comments from the Republican nominee for vice president about women and “traditional” roles that have drawn ire. Vance has faced intense criticism in recent weeks for previous sexist comments, including his remarks about “cat ladies.”
To be fair, this is a legitimate scientific hypothesis (the Grandmother Hypothesis) that attempts to explain why human females, unlike almost every other species, have a lifespan that outlasts their reproductive cycle. It’s just hypothesis, and even if it’s correct, drawing conclusions about women’s role in modern society based on a trait we developed before agriculture is just stupid, but what he’s saying isn’t as crazy as the headline is implying.
evolutionary biology doesn’t dictate my purpose as a man, nor should it dictate the purpose of a woman.
we’re not raping and murder machines and they’re not child rearing machines.
there’s no “to be fair”
Maybe you should have read all the way to my second sentence, where I made that exact point.
I did, and I’m just adding to it to say that there’s no reason to try to be charitable here.
There absolutely is. Vance is describing how his mother-in-law took a sabbatical to help with their first child, and this specific interaction becomes the focus of the article:
That’s…mostly correct. He should has said, “hypothesis,” instead of, “theory,” and it’s certainly oversimplification, but otherwise, that’s a correct assessment of the Grandmother Hypothesis.
Now, it’s fucking weird to apply that hypothesis to modern society. It’s very strange how Vance can only analyze his mother-in-laws actions through the lens of traditional family values vs. free market capitalism. It’s also pretty telling that Vance ignores the racist comment the interviewer makes when he calls this, “a weird, unadvertised feature of marrying an Indian woman.” But the article glossed over those comments and goes out of its way to make the, “postmenopausal women,” statement sound crazy, without even acknowledging the Grandmother Hypothesis.
It’d be like if Vance said, “You know, if multiverse theory is correct, there may be an Earth where couches have vaginas,” and I wrote an article about how Vance has this crazy belief that there’s more than one Earth. That’s actually not that crazy, and it really shouldn’t be the focus.
That’s fair, I don’t think the nuance really changes how inappropriate his comments are (nor do you) but perhaps I was too harsh to say there’s no need to be charitable.
He’s a scumbag regardless, and I could understand not confronting the other person in the moment but afaik he hasn’t distanced himself from these comments since, but you weren’t making excuses for him as my reaction implied.
“It takes a village”
The single family unit isolated from outside help, whether it be community or extended family, while raising children is a pretty modern phenomenon.
Yeah, pretty much nothing in our biology has prepared us for late stage capitalism.