But instead of thinking about why some women who might like to be married are not, and why some people who might like to have children don’t have them, those Republican masterminds have decided to treat women who aren’t or don’t as a canker on society. And that means that, at a time when every woman who does lean Republican should be individually precious to the Republican cause, they can’t seem to do enough to chase them out the door.
For instance, through Vance’s comments, which cut women who are less married or less childful than they might wish to be to the quick. His attack completely missed its intended target of people who are childless and unmarried by choice – why would they care what he thinks – and plunged into the hearts of women who want exactly those things but have been deprived them by a society of skewiff incentives.
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The US (much like Australia) is pretty askew for many women. Men are increasingly dropping out of education and the workforce, making them unreliable breadwinners. Which is, incidentally, why studies find that low-income women decide to eschew marriage altogether, even to the father of their children – after all, a demotivated man without an income is too often just another mouth to feed. Republicans, of all people – focused as they are on the effect free trade and open borders have had on the working class – should be attuned to how male unemployment has impacted women.
So modern women get an education, if they can, and spend years establishing a career, to ensure they don’t get stuck in the underemployed underclass, or relying on a man who is. But setting yourself up burns hungrily through a woman’s prime reproductive years. Perhaps in that time she’s been partnered with one of the many feckless and fancy-free men created by the sexual revolution, who see no reason to be burdened by the product of unprotected sex when they can shilly-shally around wondering what they really want throughout a woman’s 30s. They agonise over their youthful freedom, while her fertility inevitably expires.
But somehow the Republicans don’t realise that their nuclear family fantasy is failing because there isn’t a cavalry of decent, mature and responsible men coming for these women. Instead, Trump’s team appears to be encouraging and revelling in an extended male infancy by talking to its voters like they’re 10-year-old boys. The choice of pro-wrestler Hulk Hogan to launch Trump’s campaign, the Trump as superhero memes, and Dukes of Hazzard fan edits say it all.
Right now, the US election is between kidults and cats. If White Dudes for Trump don’t grow up quickly, America better stock up on Snappy Tom.
Parnell Palme McGuinness is managing director at campaigns firm Agenda C. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens.
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