Cats and Dogs and the Elephant in the Room

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve always been more of a dog person.

And as a lifelong single woman, my preferred terms have become “fun aunt” and “spinster queen,” instead of “miserable childless cat lady.”

But joking aside, the “discourse” around single and childless people—and not just the most recent contributions from national political figures, but that which bubbles up all over the place with too frequent regularity—should be deeply disturbing to every thoughtful Christian because it exposes, at heart, some pretty significant theological errors.

Of course, I do understand that characterizing single, childless people as not only “miserable” because of their marital and parental status, but also as people uncommitted to societal flourishing, now and in the future, is problematic in all kinds of other ways, too. (For the record, the exact quote was “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?”) It would be quite easy to spend this essay pointing out the many logical, factual, and economic fallacies and false assumptions undergirding these statements: how much taxes and other financial burdens we bear as singles (and gladly, to support libraries and schools and parks and national defense and environmental efforts). How insensitive such a statement is to all who struggle with infertility, to all who contribute as foster, adoptive, and step-parents, and to all who serve as teachers and coaches and mentors. How astonishingly presumptuous it is to assume the happiness status of 117.6 million single Americans, or 46.4% of all U.S. adults, according to the U.S. Census Bureau in 2023. Surely, not all 117.6 million of us are “miserable.” I’m just glad no one told the childless George Washington that he didn’t “really have a direct stake” in the future of our country.

As I said, easy enough to dismantle. What troubles me is that this recently resurfaced “quip” (as the vice presidential candidate is now calling it) is really echoing a version of something much more widely observed within many segments of American Christian culture around marriage and children. Yes, America could do better caring for its children and providing policies and programs to make parenting easier. But such a claim does not need to rest on the exaltation of parents (or on a decrease of the electoral power of non-parents by giving parents the proxy votes of their children). Scratch the surface, and the second-class status of single, childless people shows up, encouraged among Christians by a kind of idolatry of family.

So how about a brief affirmative presentation, rather than a critical takedown. Let’s address a few key theological questions.

First: what saves me?

One of the reasons I am Reformed is that I am grateful that I do not have to do anything to be worthy of God’s love and salvation. Indeed, there is nothing I can do to be more beloved or more worth dying for. I am no less an image of God if I am never wife or mother. This seems like an obvious point, but so often there’s an implication, perhaps most strongly on social media, that marrying and/or procreating would raise my status somehow. “Come on,” the reaction goes, “whatever Paul said, marriage really is the norm.” But as Romans 8 reminds us, nothing can separate us from the deep and generous love of God, including what our family looks like–or doesn’t. (And NB: I’ve read several articles that claim single people are “kin-less.” Sorry, my father and siblings and nieces and aunts and uncles and cousins would like a word). Still, the status assumption directly challenges our real theology of vocation. And I’ll just say it: the TikTok tradwife is doing no more or less valuable work than I am, pace certain professional football players and their commencement addresses. Her vocation is no more valid (but also no less) than my own calling. The work of God’s kingdom requires all hands on deck, using our talents as fully as we can in service to God, whatever that work may be. But as Reformed people, we don’t rank some work as more holy than others.

Second: to whom do I owe my love and service?

It is a stunning failure of imagination–and, I would argue, a bit of a self-own–to not be able to believe that people could have a stake in society because they lack a direct biological connection to it through children that they produced. And more sadly, it tells me that the ability to act on principles beyond the immediate and material is also lacking. But, surely, our vision of the good should be undergirded by our theology. That theology teaches me that there are two great commandments: Love God. Love neighbor. There is no scriptural indication that I have to beget my neighbor to love him or her. (That doesn’t mean that one’s children can’t be a neighbor–it’s simply that for parents the neighborhood needs to be bigger). Indeed, the witness of the church for millennia is that it has cared for all sorts of people to whom there was no biological relation: the sick, the imprisoned, the widow, the orphan. As a single Christian, then, I wish for restoration and shalom because it is moving me towards what God loves by desiring for my neighbors what God would desire for them as well. That’s my “stake,” my motivation: not to work to only benefit my own, but to work to make things for my neighbor as I would like them for myself. What a much more capacious view of that generous God I love–a God that moves beyond the bonds of kith and kin to restore all of creation.

Third: what is the Christian definition of family?

Strong biological families are, of course, a blessing. But it is hard for me to see an argument that gives them theological primacy over the new vision of the family presented by Jesus and the New Testament writers, which radically reconceptualized the church as brothers and sisters together. Such a vision expands my “stake” because instead of only caring for my own (if I had children) or supposedly caring for no one (because I am childless), I instead care for the family of brothers and sisters to whom I am connected through the bonds of Christian love. It’s why the liturgy of baptism is so powerful: the generations of the congregation gathering together to take a vow to be the family of that child–and that includes every single and childless person who affirms their commitment. Our generous God gives us the biggest possible community to move through life–and the more the church can live into that, the better. As I often tell my students, I am not only your professor, I am your sister in Christ–and that should make a difference in our relationship in the classroom. The “stake” of baptism displaces the “stake” of biology.

Like so many other areas of our lives, I think, the way we talk about singleness and childlessness is often based in fears. You can probably name any number of them. I know that people across the political spectrum care deeply about their children and want them to thrive. We can, of course, disagree about policy solutions. But as Christians the denigration, diminishment, and dismissal of single and childless people needs to be addressed head on, especially because, when we don’t, it weakens our witness that says every person is Imago Dei. In our politics and our pulpits, we need to be attentive to any language that suggests anyone is less than, particularly when we have such an amazing vision of how everyone is essential to the beloved community.

Something we do not need to fear, however: I take great comfort, in the same way that I do not have to worry about earning my salvation, that I also do not have to worry about the continuity of the Church. God’s got that, too, it turns out. In his provocative 1991 book, After Christendom?: How the Church is to Behave If Freedom, Justice, and a Christian Nation Are Bad Ideas, Stanley Hauerwas has this beautiful assurance:

“…singleness is that practice intrinsic to the church, so that we are reminded as a people we live by hope, not biology. Put simply, singleness reminds the church we grow not through biological ascription but through witness and hospitality to the stranger… As Christians, we believe that every Christian in one generation might be called to singleness, yet God will create the church anew.” 

That’s a powerful word.

Thanks be to God for the family God is assembling to accomplish God’s good work, now and through all ages.

Photo by Stefan Kunze on Unsplash