I’ve been working with children in some capacity since I was 11. Between babysitting, preschool teaching and nannying I’ve spent the majority of my lifetime helping parents raise and educate their children. In this time, I have amassed thousands of hours of experience as part of many families’ villages raising their children. I may not have children of my own, but I had a hand in raising hundreds of small humans.  I do not consider myself a drain on societyalthough people like JD Vance have something to say about it. 

 In 2021, JD Vance had some disparaging things to say about the childless demographic. He believes that those “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too…It's just a basic fact — you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC — the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children…And 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?".1  These sentiments are harmful and hurtful to me and others without children. This devalues our place in society as it says we are only a vessel for reproducing andunable to contribute in other ways. 

 “Cat Ladies” is my answer to those hurtful statements. I use the cat butt as a humorous symbol of the childless person. If JD Vance and others think that we are all just “crazy cat people”, then the symbol of childlessness should be that of a cat. And cat people love cat butts. Using materials from my past work with children such as cardstock, colorful yarn, markers, and glue helps start the conversation as to why people are childless and the way the current political climate chooses to view those people. Each paper cat butt is printed with a sonogram of an empty, unused uterus to represent the childless person. 

 The messaging is all around us: younger women get bombarded with fertility questions constantly while older childless women are shunned and ignored in society. My hanging cat butts reflect the sheer number of women who either chose not to reproduce or were unable to. Even if we wanted to be, the reality is that we can’t all be “barefoot and pregnant”