The US presidential election took a positive turn this week, with Joe Biden stepping down and Kamala Harris becoming the lead candidate for the party. Not so positive were the immediate attacks launched by the Republicans, including a reprise of JD Vance's 2021 comments about the Democrats being a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable about their own lives and want to make the rest of the country miserable too. 

Vance included US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttegieg and US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, together with Kamala Harris, in his comments. How does it make any sense that we've turned our country over to people who don't really have a direct stake in it? Vance asked.

Where do you start with comments like this? Perhaps by ignoring them, because they are so wrong? However, I couldn't miss the opportunity to put together a few rebuttals.

- When making his comment, Vance ignored that Taylor Swift is the queen of childless cat ladies (she has three cats) as well as having a lot of influence, including on elections. Also, Swift doesn't appear miserable, but who would know? Maybe Vance does?

- People who don't have children don't have a stake in a country? People's own existence isn't sufficient for them to have a stake, they have to have offspring? Everyone out there without children, you might as well be dead already.

- People who have children don't necessarily act in a way to make a better future, for themselves, their children, or anyone else. If everyone who had children was concerned about the future, wouldn't we have already made great inroads on combatting climate change, given there are more people with children than without?

- JD Vance has three children. This is one too many – the planet can't withstand the weight of the human population as it is. We don't need people increasing the numbers of humans on the planet so two is the appropriate number of children for two parents. When did you last see a politician criticised for having too many children?

- Do children only count if they are biological children? Pete Buttegieg has adopted twins. Kamala Harris has children – she has two stepchildren. Or do people only have a stake in the future of biological children because they have no aspirations above an organism-level wish for their DNA to survive?

I know where Vance is coming from, however. Not because I agree with his comments but because I have experienced so many comments and situations that tell me I don't really have children because I have a stepchild, not a biological child (and, for that matter, maybe my parents don't really have me as a child because I am adopted).

The very word stepparent, worse, stepmother, isn't marketed well. The most common word linked with stepmother is evil. In the Cinderella story, Lady Tremaine is the epitome of the evil stepmother, torturing Cinderella because she is the reminder of how Tremaine's husband loved his first wife more. Apparently, there are at least 900 famous stories in English about evil stepmothers to remind people just how wicked stepmothers are, However, these stories exist in a vacuum of empirical evidence regarding stepmothers' actual evilness. 

I'm going off track. Vance isn't calling Kamala evil, he's just saying she isn't really invested in the country. She's only been Attorney General and a Senator for California, Vice President of the US for the last four years. Not invested at all!

I end where I began –  the best response to comments like Vance's is almost certainly to ignore them. Politics of this type, attacking the person rather than their policies, may well get social media hits and influence votes. However, such attacks are a poor way to create a great future for children, yours or anyone else's, unless a divisive and biased future is what you wish upon your inheritors.