Vance considers majority of US families abnormal

As JD Vance’s misogynistic comments about Kamala Harris and many other accomplished women — “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives” — have recently resurfaced, they’ve once again drawn ire. During a 2021 appearance on Fox News, Vance disparaged “people without children” as those “who don’t really have a direct stake” in the nation. Never mind that Harris is stepmother to two young adults who fondly call her “Momala.” Vance included in his tirade against those who have “no physical commitment to the future of this country” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who has two children with his husband.

Yet, Vance’s point of view may be even worse than those remarks suggest. Yes, the Republican vice presidential nominee wants to restore a repressive patriarchy reminiscent of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” but he is also a natalist allied with those who want to usher in higher birth rates among white women and not among women of color. After all, Vance associates with racists who believe in “the great replacement theory,” which insists that liberal policymakers are deliberately trying to replace Americans of European heritage with Jews and non-Europeans.

When he is challenged about that, Vance invokes his Indian-American wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, to try to insulate himself, as he did during a 2022 debate with Ohio’s Democratic Senate nominee, Tim Ryan. When Ryan noted Vance’s association with the racists who tout the replacement theory, Vance was incensed. He replied that Ryan had accused him, “the father of three beautiful biracial babies, of engaging in racism.” He said the conspiracy theory was “disgusting, and I’ve never endorsed it.”

Even so, racism is certainly one of the tools in Vance’s arsenal, whether his personal outlook is genuinely racist or not. (Given that Vance once denounced Donald Trump as “America’s Hitler,” it’s hard to know just what he believes.) He doesn’t have to publicly endorse replacement theory. His admiration for Hungary’s Viktor Orban is troubling enough.

Orban, who has become an icon on the American right, is more explicit in his racism. In July 2022, he gave a speech in which he declared that “we do not want to become peoples of mixed-race.” He went on: “Whether we like it or not, the peoples of the world can be divided into two groups: those that are capable of biologically maintaining their numbers, and those that are not, which is the group that we belong to… Migration has split … the West in two. One half is a world where European and non-European peoples live together. These countries are no longer nations: They are nothing more than a conglomeration of peoples.”

Vance has since promoted some of Orban’s proposals aimed at increasing rates of marriage and childbearing. Vance has been particularly enthusiastic about Orban’s policy offering subsidized loans to couples who married before the bride’s forty-first birthday, according to The New Yorker. “If the couple has two children, a third of the loan is forgiven; if they have three kids, the loan is zapped entirely,” the magazine noted.

Vance is also harshly opposed to migrants from south of the border. He has blamed undocumented immigrants for everything from higher taxes to long waits in emergency rooms and, mimicking MAGA rhetoric, has said that “the solution is to deport every single illegal alien who came to this country under Joe Biden’s regime.” Those, then, are clearly not the children he wants to see more of.
Like so many other ultraconservatives, Vance extols marriage (except same-sex marriage) as the solution to virtually every social woe. Unlike most of them, Vance is not ashamed to state explicitly that women should not work outside the home. During his Senate campaign, he tweeted, “’Universal day care’ is class war against normal people.”

According to Pew Research, 70% of white mothers and about 75% of Black mothers work outside the home. Fewer Asian American mothers (64%) and Hispanic mothers (62%) Thu. (Pew says that’s because many of the Hispanic and Asian American mothers are foreign-born and, because of either preference or circumstance, take care of their children at home.) Although these families are a majority, Vance and his allies consider them abnormal. They are not the kind of parents white nationalists want having a “direct stake” in the nation.

Cynthia Tucker won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2007. She can be reached at [email protected].