Having been around the political block a few times, I have seen more than a few wacky ideas from all sides. That said, JD Vance’s recent proposal that grandparents and other relatives might like to provide free childcare day in and day out takes the cake. He iced his cake by asserting that caring for children is “the whole purpose of the postmenopausal female.”
Vance is taking offending women to a whole new level.
He is correct, though, that childcare is an issue—a huge one. Childcare has become so expensive that it is out of reach to many families, in some cases costing more than rent or a house payment. In some families, parents work different shifts so one is always around for childcare, and others cobble together a childcare patchwork, often sharing with other parents in unregulated and unmonitored situations.
Vance clearly has no idea how lucky he and his wife are that her mother, a biology professor in California, took a sabbatical in order to help them with preschoolers in Ohio.
Years ago, the Dicksons of Fayetteville also had preschoolers, but no available relatives. Two of the 4 grandparents were no longer living, one was in declining health, and one lived in another town. An aunt and an uncle, both local, worked full-time, so JD Vance’s good fortune was not available to us. We muddled through, with multiple changes of childcare, some more successful than others, and we thought all were expensive.
Childcare is dramatically more expensive now, with millions more Americans in the Dicksons’ situation than in the Vances’.
Note to the North Carolina General Assembly and to the US Congress.
If the goal is a humming economy, which both electeds and candidates assert that it is, then making childcare both available and affordable is critical.
That is unless JD Vance can find a way to clone his mother-in-law a million-fold, and fast.
As a native Fayettevillian, I am encouraged that plans are proceeding for the Market House’s next chapter. City Council has approved plans that would extend the brick pavers now surrounding the historic structure to make more space for future activities such as displays and educational/cultural exhibits. The Market House, staring down its 200th birthday, has been a state house, a town hall, a library, an art museum, an office, and a community market for all sorts of goods sold by area residents to their neighbors. It has also been the site of the sale of human beings and, hence, a lightning rod for strong emotions.
While renovation plans have hit some bumps in the road, particularly traffic and utility issues, blessedly, none of the bumps seem insurmountable. The Market House has shaped our community and our state for nearly 2 centuries and shows us where we came from—the good, the bad, and the ugly, and with luck, a bright future ahead.

And, finally, while we all have America’s cats and dogs on our minds, CNN reported recently that estate attorneys say more and more pet owners are remembering beloved pets in their wills. Since pets are legally considered property, they cannot inherit outright, but they can and do have trusts set up for them, including residences and people to care for them although there is no guarantee the trustees actually do that.
Hotel magnate, Leona Helmsley, bequeathed $12M to her Maltese, but courts later knocked that down to $2M and awarded some of the rest to relatives she had deliberately excluded. News reports earlier this year revealed a Chinese mother who left nearly $3M to her pets because her children “never visited her.”
I love my doodle dog, Lulu, but she is not in the will—yet…..