On July 25, former President Donald Trump named Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) as his running mate. Vance has only been a U.S. Senator since 2023, and his rapid ascension to the Republican Vice Presidential nominee has prompted renewed scrutiny of his record, particularly his views on women and children. 

Notoriously, Vance described Vice President Kamala Harris, now the presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee, as a "childless cat lady" in a July 29, 2001 appearance on Tucker Carlson's Fox News show. Because Harris does not have children, Vance said, she "doesn't really have a stake" in the country.

[W]e're effectively run in this country… by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.

And it's just a basic fact. You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children, and how does it make any sense that we've turned our country over to people who don't really have a direct stake in it?

Vance went on to say that people with kids are "happier," "healthier," and "better prepared to actually lead this country." In an October 21, 2021 appearance on the Breitbart News Daily, Vance said that Democrats "next generation of leaders," including "the Kamala Harrises," "don't have kids." As a result, Harris and others "want to take our kids and brainwash them so that their ideas continue to exist in the next generation." 

In a July 24, 2021, speech to the Future of American Political Economy Conference, Vance said Harris and other Democratic leaders where members of the "childless left" who have "no physical commitment to the future of this country." Vance suggested that anyone without children should be excluded from leadership positions. “Why is this just a normal fact of …  life, for the leaders of our country to be people who don’t have a personal and direct stake in it via their own offspring?” Vance asked. 

Vance's description of Harris is inaccurate. She has two step children that she has helped raise since they were teens. Their biological mother, Kerstin Emhoff described Harris as a "co-parent" who is "loving, nurturing, fiercely protective and always present." 

But Vance's comments do appear to accurately reflect his views of Americans who do not have kids. 

In a little-noticed March 21, 2021 tweet, Vance said that the decision not to have children has made many Americans "insane" and turned them into "sociopaths." 

Appearing on the Moment of Truth podcast on September 20, 2021, Vance described journalists as "a group of people who are dealing with their own…psychotic breaks." Journalists, Vance claimed, were told "it's very easy to start a family when you're 45," but, "God says otherwise." Now, journalists in their "late thirties or early forties" have "reached this point where I think they recognize that their lives are miserable and unhappy, but they all feel like they've reached the point of no return." Vance made a similar point in his speech to the Future of American Political Economy Conference, saying many journalists were "unhappy," "miserable," and "angry" because they were "childless adults." 

Trump's campaign claims that Vance's remarks are being "taken out of context." Appearing on a podcast on Friday with conservative pundit Megyn Kelly, Vance implausibly claimed that he was not criticizing "people who don't have children." Vance did not apologize for his description of Harris as a "childless cat lady," saying only that it was a "sarcastic comment" and clarifying that he had "nothing against cats." Vance, however, insisted that the substance of his criticism of Harris is "true."    

Vance suggested women should stay in violent marriages 

In September 2021, during remarks at Pacifica Christian High School, Vance argued that it was a mistake for women to leave violent marriages. 

This is one of the great tricks that I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace, which is the idea that like, "well, OK, these marriages were fundamentally, you know, they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy. And so getting rid of them and making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear, that’s going to make people happier in the long term." And 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.

In response to questions from VICE in 2022, Vance said that "domestic violence" is "much higher among non-married couples." Vance, himself a victim of domestic violence, refused the answer a direct question about whether he thought women should stay in violent marriages, saying it was a "loaded and baseless question."

Vance says parents should get extra votes

In his speech at the Future of American Political Economy Conference, Vance said parents "should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our democratic republic than people who don’t have kids." Vance said Americans without kids "don’t have as much of an investment in the future of this country" and therefore "shouldn’t get nearly the same voice" as parents. His solution is to "give votes to all children in this country" but "give control over those votes to the parents of those children."

Vance made similar comments during an August 8, 2021 appearance on Fox News, suggesting that adults with children should get extra votes in elections. Vance said that if "you're a family with five children" you should "have the right to represent those children at the ballot box." The purpose of the proposal is to give adults with children a greater say than "a single person living in New York City or San Francisco." 

Vance bashes efforts to make daycare more affordable

Despite his purported support for families, Vance has harshly criticized efforts to make daycare more affordable. He called the concept of universal daycare "class war against normal people." Vance said that "normal Americans" do not want to "shunt their kids into crap daycare so they can enjoy more 'freedom' in the paid labor force." He suggested that parents who send their children to daycare value their jobs more than their children. 

In the United States, the cost of childcare is a barrier to many couples starting a family. One recent study found that the average cost of childcare is $1,984 per month, higher than the cost of a typical mortgage. 

Vance wants law enforcement to have access to women's medical records to enforce abortion bans

In the wake of the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) proposed a new rule that would prevent state law enforcement from using medical records to enforce abortion bans. The rule "prohibits the disclosure of a patient’s health information as it relates to reproductive health care" to state and local investigators. 

On June 16, 2023, Vance was one of just 28 members of Congress who wrote to HHS in opposition to the rule. Vance and the other members said that the records of women seeking reproductive health care should be available to law enforcement because "[a]bortion is not health care—it is a brutal act that destroys the life of an unborn child and hurts women."

States are pushing to implement laws criminalizing traveling to another state to receive abortions. Without the new rule, local police could "pull records to see who had unexplained disruptions to their menstrual cycles."

In 2022, Vance has also called for a "federal response" to prevent women from traveling out of state for abortions. Vance said it was necessary to prevent George Soros from sending "a 747 to Columbus to load up disproportionately Black women to get them to go have abortions in California."

Additional reporting by Noel Sims.