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A few months ago, I read a novel for a women’s book club called Romantic Comedy. It was about — you guessed it — romance and comedy, specifically in the life of its single, 36-year-old female protagonist; her career as a writer for “SNL” analog “The Night Owls;” and the phenomenon of funny, ugly men wooing women way hotter than they are but funny, ugly women struggling to pull off the reverse.

While the entire tone of Romantic Comedy is leftist, even down to its tired Covid plotline, the ultimate message is accidentally conservative (Spoiler!): It doesn’t matter how much of an independent, successful #BossB-tch you are, inside each woman is a biological urge to find the stability of a husband and, though the story doesn’t get this far, leave a legacy of children. Against all odds, protagonist Sally Millz gives up part of herself by giving up her job at “TNO” and marries the male main character. Her job will never fulfill her the way marriage can, and she knows it.

This book has been circling my mind ever since Democrats turned J.D. Vance’s years-old comments about “childless cat ladies” into both a victim card and a rallying cry. Vance’s point was that America, through the Democrat Party and their corporate friends, is run largely by people “who don’t really have a direct stake in it” and who are “miserable [in] their own lives.”

The unmarried and childless Oprah Winfrey capitalized on Vance’s comments in a cringey speech at the Democratic National Convention, being sure to pause for mindless applause. Selena Gomez mentioned the phrase at the Emmys. And, of course, Taylor Swift proudly signed her presidential endorsement of Kamala Harris as a “Childless Cat Lady” herself, after which the media have been “YASSSSS QUEEN”-ing for two weeks.

But J.D. Vance is right about the importance of having families, and the Taylor Swifts of the world know it. Do you know how I know? Because behind Swift’s snarky, election-year Instagram post is a 34-year-old woman who’s long dreamed of getting married and having babies.

Taylor Swift’s Mommy Lust

Even if you hate Taylor Swift, you can’t help but have heard her song “Love Story,” which is all about a couple planning to wed. Then there’s “Paper Rings,” about not needing “fancy things” to marry someone you love. Or “Mary’s Song,” from Swift’s eponymous album, which includes this stanza:

Take me back to the time when we walked down the aisle
Our whole town came and our mamas cried
You said I do and I did too
Take me home where we met so many years before
We’ll rock our babies on that very front porch
After all this time, you and I
I’ll be eighty-seven; you’ll be eighty-nine
I’ll still look at you like the stars that shine
In the sky

But that wasn’t just the dream of 16-year-old Swift. Her 2020 song “Peace” longs to “give you my wild, give you a child.” And the video for the title track of her “Lover” album shows Swift dreaming of a home, husband, and little one.

Even now, Taylor Swift and boyfriend Travis Kelce reportedly want to get married and have children “sooner rather than later.” That’s an awfully domestic thing for a proud childless cat lady to want …

A Culture of Selfishness

Thus while the “Childless Cat Lady” moniker has become such a viral picture of a supposedly powerful choice, reality reveals it’s not a satisfying one. Women can’t help but admit that fact eventually, even if their lavish DINK lifestyles blind them to it for a while.

That’s why so many women in their twenties and thirties are rushing to freeze their eggs, and many in their thirties and forties are grasping at artificial reproductive measures, which ultimately contribute to a culture of death. After all, many of the human lives these desperate women create through IVF will be thrown into the trash. It’s all part and parcel of the same culture of selfishness.

Melissa Persling is currently paying the price for that culture, having penned an article in Business Insider last year titled, “I’m 38 and single, and I recently realized I want a child. I’m terrified I’ve missed my opportunity.” After divorcing her first husband — ultimately because he wanted children and she didn’t — and then breaking up a subsequent long-term relationship with an older man who didn’t want children, Persling wrote:

I also began to feel selfish for spending so much time focusing solely on myself. I went from proudly proclaiming I was too self-centered to be bothered with a family to realizing there was more to life than independence and the pleasures of living for oneself. My very existence started to feel shallow and hollow.

Now, months after that realization and at nearly 39, I feel panicked thinking I’ll be a single, childless middle-aged woman. I worry that my youthful looks will fade and that I won’t be able to attract the man I want to spend the rest of my life with. If I sound desperate, it’s because I honestly do feel a little desperate. At my age, I know that creating life may not be an option for me.

In other words, the allure of the self-centered childless cat lady lifestyle inevitably faded — maybe after it was too late to reverse course. The empowerment it promised was a lie.

“It is such a ‘me’-focused culture right now,” Persling added in a clip on Fox News. “I just think a lot of us are missing out. … I don’t want to wake up at, you know, 60 by myself and go, ‘Well, I had a lot of fun.’ I want to wake up at 60 next to the love of my life, raising a family, you know, doing the things that are really important and the things that really matter.”

Happy Kid Ladies

Four months ago, Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker spoke these truths about womanhood, telling a Catholic college’s graduating class, “I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you … I have seen it firsthand how much happier someone can be when they disregard the outside noise and move closer and closer to God’s will in their life.” He spoke highly of his amazing wife, Isabelle, who has zero regrets about her decision to become a wife and mother.

Feminists responded with outrage, deeply offended at the notion that motherhood could be a fulfilling choice.

But maybe that’s because deep down, they know it’s true. Just like Taylor Swift, Sally Millz, Melissa Persling, and every other woman who tries to fill their hollowness with work, fame, or a partisan echo chamber — whether they admit it or not.

Their present and future misery is an indictment of their life-limiting choices — and they should change course before it’s too late. The chosen path of a childless cat lady will never ultimately satisfy.

Kylee Griswold is the managing editor of The Federalist. She previously worked as the copy editor for the Washington Examiner magazine and as an editor and producer at National Geographic. She holds a B.S. in communication arts/speech and an A.S. in criminal justice and writes on topics including feminism and gender issues, religion, and the media. Follow her on Twitter @kyleezempel.