Why DEI Work Shouldn’t Focus on Child-Free Cat Guys

To the Editor:

I am writing this letter in response to a “Letter from a Child-Free Cat Guy” (October 17, 2024) which argues that DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) efforts on campus need to include childless and childfree adults. As a sociologist and antiracist educator, I am discouraged when I see DEI and important concepts, such as microaggressions, misunderstood. DEI exists to disrupt ongoing systems of exclusion, for example white supremacy and patriarchy, which give unjust historical and present day privileges to some people and unjust, historical and present day harms to others. As we know, DEI efforts are under attack, not only throughout the nation, also in the academy. 

According to research, faculty with children are underrepresented at the tenure level. In the US, of women aged 40-49, 84.3% have had at least one child.  For men, 76.5% of the same age group have fathered at least one child. Yet, at the tenure level, only 44% of women and 70% of men have children. Especially so for women, and still so for men, when it comes to this career goal, having children depresses one’s likelihood of ascending rank. 

Further, the surgeon general recently issued a report warning the public that parents are not okay. Among many points, the report says culturally, the expectations of how to parent have increased. These conditions impact parents in academia. 

Microaggressions are not something that any category of people can claim. By definition, microaggressions must line up with historical and institutional harm and unjust outcomes. At the aggregate level, being childfree protects people from important societal risks, such as poverty. It is women, children, Native American, Black and Latine people, single parents, and especially single mothers, who are overrepresented in poverty, for example. 

As an anti-racist education immersed in the research underpinning the need for DEI, I find it problematic when people with identities that are not directly related to historically and strategically oppressed populations seek entry into DEI spaces to advocate for themselves. In my years of work facilitating antiracist dialogues, men and white men, in particular, were notably absent. Especially in academia, we need men, white people and in particular, white men, to help disrupt white supremacy and patriarchy, to engage in DEI work and to discuss the reasons underpinning DEI in the classroom, exactly because of their privileged statuses. 

Understandably, under our socio-economic system which prioritizes profit over people, a lot of us are pressed. If one is struggling, it can be difficult to rally for causes that don’t include us. However, it is worker solidarity, not division, that is a renewable resource. Weaponizing DEI to advocate for identities that tend to boost career outcomes and protect against societal risk only perpetuates the very reasons these initiatives exist. 

– Megan Thiele Strong

Sociology professor at San José State University and a Public Voices Fellow at the TheOpEdProject