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JD Vance on Families & Children |
TW: You can't expect the most important people in our lives to take care of our children or our parents, to get paid the least amount of money. And we have to make it easier for folks to be able to get into that business and then to make sure that folks are able to pay for that. A Federal program of paid family medical leave and help with this will enhance our workforce, enhance our families, and make it easier to have the children that you want.
Are school shootings a "fact of life" everywhere? No, according to WorldPopulationReview.com--the United States leads the world by far, with 288 school shootings in the period 2009-2018. All other countries totaled 40 school shootings in that decade, meaning that the U.S. averaged one school shooting every two weeks, and all other countries, all combined, averaged one school shooting every three months for the entire rest of the world. Only 17 other countries had any school shootings at all, with Mexico's 8 school shootings a distant second to America's 288. In summary, school shootings ARE a fact of life in America, but not anywhere else in the world.
Asked what can be done to stop school shootings, he said further restricting access to guns, as many Democrats advocate, won't end them, noting they happen in states with both lax and strict gun laws. He touted efforts in Congress to give schools more money for security.
"I don't like that this is a fact of life," Vance said. "But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we have got to bolster security at our schools."
He called the shooting in Georgia an "awful tragedy," and said the families need prayers and sympathy.
The "childless cat lady" comments sparked a widespread backlash against Vance when they resurfaced on social media following his nomination to the Republican presidential ticket.
Vance later tried to clean up his comments on Megyn Kelly's podcast last week. "Obviously, it was a sarcastic comment. I've got nothing against cats," said Vance, adding that his remarks were not about criticizing people without children, but rather focused on policy and claimed the Democratic Party has become "anti-family" and "anti-child."
"I care about declining fertility because I've seen the role of fatherhood, the positive role that it can play in the lives of my friends and in my community," he said. "I've seen young men who were relatively driftless but became rooted and grounded when they had children."
"I've seen people who become more attached to their communities, to their families, to their country because they have children," he added. "And in my own life, I felt the demons that come from a traumatic childhood melt away in the laughter and the love of my own son. So, I would say that we should care about declining fertility, not just because it's bad for our economy, but because we think babies are good."
Though he generally didn't specify the gender of the childless people he was criticizing, the context of his remarks made it seem he was primarily speaking to women. Citing a conversation that had recently unfolded on Twitter, Vance described a "ridiculous effort by millennial feminist writers" to talk about why there are good reasons not to have children and how some of them were glad they didn't have kids and even to encourage "people who had had children to talk about why they regretted having children."
Vance went on to say that people who have had children "have actually built something more meaningful with their lives," and that is why "we have to go to war against that ideology and the people behind it."
GLAAD wrote in its post about Vance's record: "There is no evidence that discussing LGBTQ people 'sexualizes' anyone. Experts say false rhetoric about grooming diminishes understanding about actual abuse."
Vance also spoke about bills that would censor discussions of LGBTQ issues on Fox News' "Tucker Carlson Tonight" in April 2022, arguing that teachers were also hiding their efforts to teach children about sexual orientation or gender identity. "So, one of the things we're learning, Tucker, is that this is being forced by some of these really radical teachers, and they're hiding it from the parents," he said. "'That's maybe the most pernicious part."
When asked in 2022 whether he thought it would be better for couples in violent relationships to stay married for the sake of their children, Vance said through a spokesperson that he rejected the premise of the "bogus question."
Vance said his reference to "one of the great tricks" of the sexual revolution was the contention that "domestic violence would somehow go down if progressives got what they want, when in fact modern society's war on families has made our domestic violence situation much worse. Any fair person would recognize I was criticizing the progressive frame on this issue, not embracing it."
The reported rate of domestic violence in the U.S. has declined over Vance's lifetime.
His grandfather, whom he called Papaw, was "a violent drunk," Vance wrote in the book, and his grandmother, whom he called Mamaw, was a "violent nondrunk." One night, he said, Mamaw threatened to kill Papaw if he came home drunk again. A week later, Papaw came home drunk and fell asleep on the couch.
"Mamaw, never one to tell a lie, calmly retrieved a gasoline canister from the garage, poured it all over her husband, lit a match, and dropped it on his chest," Vance wrote. He said his grandfather burst into flames that were extinguished by his 11-year-old daughter.
Vance's grandparents were separated for many years, but did not divorce, he wrote. They were "together until the end, 'til death do us part," Vance said [recently]. "That was a really important thing to my grandmother and my grandfather. That was clearly not true by the '70s or '80s."
In the recorded video, Vance suggested that the "sexual revolution" was to blame for people being too quick to leave their marriages. He further stated that a person shouldn't necessarily seek a divorce due to a violent spouse, and said that the victim of the violence should try to make things work to ensure their child's happiness and well-being in the long term. His comments contradict what experts say is best for adults and children in those situations.
"Maybe it worked out for the moms and dads, though I'm skeptical. But it really didn't work out for the kids of those marriages," he claimed. "And that's what I think all of us should be honest about, is we've run this experiment in real time. And what we have is a lot of very, very real family dysfunction that's making our kids unhappy."
Decades of research back up say that "staying together for the kids" is not always the best option for couples.
In an HBO documentary about eastern Kentucky hill people, the patriarch of a large Appalachian family introduces himself by drawing strict lines between work acceptable for men and work acceptable for women. While it's obvious what he considers "women's work," it's not at all clear what work, if any, is acceptable for him. Apparently not paid employment, since the man has never worked a paying job in his life. Ultimately, the verdict of his own son is damning; "Daddy says he's worked in his life. Why not be straight about it. Pa? Daddy was an alcoholic. He would stay drunk, he didn't bring food home. Mommy supported her young'uns. If it hadn't been for Mommy, we'd have been dead."
Let's just think about what culture really means, to borrow an example from my life. One of the things I mention in the book is that domestic strife and family violence are cultural traits--they're just there, and everyone experiences them in one form or another. But to speak "culture" and then move on is a total copout, and there are public policy solutions to draw from experiences like this: how could my school have better prepared me for domestic life? how could child welfare services have [avoided] threatening me--as they did--with the promise of foster care? These are tough problems, but they're not totally immune to policy interventions. Neither are they entirely addressable by government.
That's just one small example, obviously, and there are many more in the book. But I think this unwillingness to deal with tough issues--or worse, to pretend they'll all go away if we can hit 4 percent growth targets--is a significant failure of modern conservative politics.