The DNC’s Vision of Family Might Not Be Palatable to Republicans—and That’s a Good Thing

We all know that there has long been a valorization of the conventional nuclear family in Republican thinking, and this year is no exception. Look to vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance’s stance on “childless cat ladies.” (Spoiler: He doesn’t like them!) Or there’s the thread of conservative thinking that would give parents more voting power than nonparents (an idea Vance once seemed to endorse). I do my best not to be too dialed in to what Republican-aligned extremists think of Ella Emhoff’s tattoos (take it from this heavily tatted Jewish daughter: If your parents can get over the body art, the rest of the world will too), but hearing a right-wing commentator charmingly opine that “this is pretty much the nightmare scenario for most people with a daughter” feels like a sign that the GOP has a very, very limited idea of what a family should look like.

Meanwhile, on stage (and off) at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, there’s quite a different vision of family playing out—and it’s one that looks a lot more like what the rest of the country looks like. A 2023 Pew Research Center report notes that interracial and interethnic marriages, LGBTQ+ marriages, and later-in-life marriages are all becoming more common, with more and more women choosing not to have children, having fewer children, or having children without being married. In Chicago this week we saw members of Kamala Harris’s blended, extended family—including her stepkids, Ella and Cole; her niece and her two young daughters; and her husband Doug Emhoff’s ex-wife, Kerstin, with whom Harris is said to have a close relationship. (A joke circulated on X that Kerstin is more supportive of her ex-husband than Melania Trump is of her current husband.)