On her blog The Road Less Travelled, loribeth posted a great piece about Elena Kagan and the uproar about her childlessness. It’s a very insightful post with some great comments.

She says:

I’m somewhat sympathetic to the argument that American women desperately need role models who have managed to rise to the top while also having a family. At the same time, reading stuff like:

“To me, if a woman doesn’t have a child, she has only an abstract ability to pass judgment on issues where motherhood is concerned.”

sets my teeth on edge. I would submit that parents pass many, many judgments on behalf of people without children that don’t necessarily serve our needs very well — and yet nobody seems to question their ability to speak for us.

In an NPR article about women in the Supreme Court, Nina Totenberg made a great point:

Before Sotomayor’s appointment to the court, there were six justices in the court’s history who were unmarried and had no children — all of whom were men.

I’d be willing to bet that during their nomination proceedings the topic of their childlessness never came up.