When Sadiq Khan was doing the rounds in his mayoral campaign he would, every so often, include some reference to his two daughters. He didn’t make a big deal of it; this wasn’t creepy or boastful in a Donald Trump way but the message was clear: he was an ordinary bloke and having a couple of daughters meant he had skin in the game when it came to issues such as law and order and schools. It also helped make the point that he was a Muslim feminist. He showed that it was quite possible for parenthood to be an asset in politics without its converse, an inability to have children, being a disadvantage. It’s one of those things that’s a plus but not a minus the other way.
But you’d never think it to judge from the tsunami of sheer hatred that engulfed poor Andrea Leadsom after her imprudent comment to the Times about how having children gives you a very real stake in society, which was, I am certain, the real reason she withdrew prematurely from the race. At the time, I thought it tactless to draw a comparison with Mrs May, but you could see what the unfortunate woman was getting at: she wanted to make the world a better place for the next generation, in part because she had children who were going into that world.
Which isn’t to say that those without children don’t give a toss (nephews and nieces, pace Alan Duncan and Ruth Davidson, give you a keen interest too, as do friends and neighbours); just that you’ve got an interest in, say, schools, when your children are actually at them, which is anything but academic. This is why, incidentally, I really minded when it turned out that David Cameron might well be taking little Ewan out of the state system to go to the feeder prep for St Paul’s; if he had children going to state secondaries I bet he’d have kept Michael Gove as Education Secretary. Mind you, Mrs Leadsom sent her boys to Rugby.
As a Catholic, I obviously don’t believe that you’re a better or more altruistic person for having children – I was, thank God, educated mostly by nuns and later my schooling included some admirable bachelor schoolmasters and academics. I mean, as Theo Hobson pointed out, Our Lord was childless. But in politics it helps if the electorate know you share their experience and outlook and problems, so what must Scottish voters make of their lot? None of those at the top have children. Two, Ruth Davidson and Kezia Dugdale, are lesbians; Nicola Sturgeon is married but possibly childless by choice. In England, Angela Eagle made her pitch to be Labour leader as a ‘gay woman’ which, it seems, gives her an insight into what it was to have ‘hopes and fears’ (we’ve got those too, you know).
My own view is that if some politicians are unmarried, like Edward Heath, or childless like Theresa May, it really doesn’t matter (and their energies may be usefully expended in service to the nation rather than their offspring), but the electorate should be able to feel that the people who run their affairs are not remote from their experience. Angela Merkel doesn’t have children (which doesn’t stop her being Mother to the nation) but her minister for families had six. That seems about right. And the anti-natalist loathing that was manifest on Twitter, medium for the unhinged, about Andrea Leadsom’s maternal pride says more about our culture than about her.
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