A Few Good Childless Cat Ladies

Rodney Clough
7 min readAug 31, 2024
Childless “cat lady” Journalist Lorena Hickok with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, c. 1935. Photo courtesy Corbis/Bettman Archive

A few influencers who have changed America’s struggle with equality and justice. They deserve our praise.

“Childless cat ladies” — women without children — deserve our respect, not candidate disdain. Diving into Vice-Presidential candidate J. D. Vance’s 2021 misogynistic calling “childless cat ladies,” some women leaders and influencers — Kamela Harris is a candidate — one concedes Mr. Vance’s churlish innuendo does raise a point:

Most progressive social legislation of recent note and consequence can be traced to early feminist influencers, many of whom were childless, all who were marginalized based on life choices.

Start with Eleanor Roosevelt (“ER”) whom, according to current public opinion, is revered as one of the most admired women of the twentieth century. Career writer/reporter, feminist and “childless,” Lorena Hickok was a close friend, advisor and companion to ER, from 1932 until Eleanor Roosevelt’s death in 1962.

“Hick” and ER got to know each other during FDR’s first run as President. A reporter for the AP assigned to cover the campaign, Hick requested her editor to assign her to Mrs. Roosevelt, as her title “First Lady” would avail her a public stature and voice worth hearing. What Hick found was a progressive organizer and communicator who deserved an expanded audience. It was Hick who convinced ER…

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Rodney Clough

Refuses to nap. Septuagenarian. Cliche’ raker. Writes weekly.