It looks like a family holiday card except that the woman and children posing with Republican Derrick Anderson are not his wife or his offspring.
Anderson, who running in a close race for Virginia’s seventh congressional district, was seen in another image seated around the dining table with the same woman and three girls.
The images came to light in an article by The New York Times, headlined “G.O.P. Candidates, Looking to Soften Their Image, Turn to Their Wives,” which reported how “male Republicans struggling to appeal to female voters concerned about their records on reproductive rights are unleashing their spouses to make the pitch on their behalf.”
However Anderson, who is childless, engaged to be married and lives alone with his dog, sought to borrow the wife and children from a longtime friend in an apparent effort to appear as a family man.
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I should preface this by saying this whole idea of renting a family for a photoshoot is just nuts and wrong and wtf on many levels, I’m not defending that.
I will say though this isn’t necessarily about being “less of a person”, I think that’s kind of reductive and may not really describe the guy’s intention.
I recently started a family at 42, so I’ve lived 20 some years as an adult without a partner and children and it’s true that I’ve felt somewhat excluded in some ways not having a partner and children. More-so than anything social, in 2024 it seems like it’s very very expensive to be single. Like there’s a very very narrow line you have to walk if you want to navigate life and be able to retire above the poverty line, and having a spouse is a requirement.
Another aspect is simply that my priorities have changed since having children. I mean I always knew logically or understood academically the issues relevant to families, but now I grok them, I really feel them in a way that I just couldn’t before. That doesn’t make me better or “more of a person”, it just makes my experience different.
Maybe it’s a bit like, as a white hetero male I can imagine what it might be like to belong to a minority, or understand the relevant issues logically, but I can never feel how that would feel.
With all that in mind I can understand how a childless person trying to get elected might think that being perceived as “childful” might make them more electable, but aside from being just weird and wrong it’s unethical and manipulative and naive.
Why are you being downvoted?
You must be new here 🤩
Someone said “people treat childless people as less-than”, and I rebutted them. It doesn’t matter that I may have made some valid points, I didn’t explicitly and breathlessly agree that childless people are treated unfairly, so it’s going to be unpopular.
Seriously though, almost all of my posts get at least 2 downvotes within 5 minutes. I’ve often wondered if I have a bot following.
You too?!?! Mine is only one downvote, but it’s on like 75% of my stuff. I thought someone had a vendetta against me, and a lot of free time. Then again, I am a childless cat man, so what do I know? 😂