Donald Trump’s nominee for Vice President, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), has become infamous for criticizing miserable “childless cat ladies.” In a resurfaced statement from 2021, Vance stated that the country is run by childless women who are unhappy due to their life choices. Alongside these comments, Vance has tried to position himself as an advocate for heterosexual parents with biological children.
Vance later tried to walk back his comments, which have been described as misogynistic and insulting, saying they were taken out of context. “The left has increasingly become explicitly anti-child and anti-family," he told Fox News' Trey Gowdy in July. “This is not a criticism and never was a criticism of everybody without children — that is a lie of the left. It’s a criticism of the increasingly anti-parent and anti-child attitude of the left."
Nonetheless, as Vance has voiced his concerns about people not having enough children, yet most recently skipped the vote in Congress to pass a $78 billion tax-cut package that would have expanded the child tax credit, a bill which would have benefited an estimated 16 million children nationwide. (Republicans who voted against it expressed concerns that it would disincentivize people from working.)
In contrast is Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz, who as governor of Minnesota has been on a mission to make the state, in his words, "the best in the country to have kids." Walz enacted a law that enshrined “reproductive freedom” into Minnesota’s state constitution. He signed a paid family and medical leave law due to go into effect in 2026 that will give workers 12 weeks at 90 percent of their pay to care for a newborn or sick family member. He launched a $316 million grant program to increase pay for childcare workers and an additional $6 million to expand childcare businesses in Minnesota. In 2023, Walz expanded the state’s childcare credit to $1,750 a year, making it the highest in the country. That same year he passed a bill that made free lunch at school available to all Minnesota students.
Republicans have long branded themselves as the “pro-family” party, but for those following policies that actually benefit American families, they see a disconnect between rhetoric and action. When it comes to a VP pick who’s better for parents in the United States, experts say Walz is the more “family-friendly” candidate.
“When we look at Tim Walz's record, it's more than just rhetoric about working families — he's delivered,” Ravi Mangla, a spokesperson for the Working Families Party, told Salon in a phone interview. “As governor with a narrow one-seat majority, he passed paid family leave, expanded child tax credit, made record investments in public education — we know that he backs up his words with action.”
In contrast, when looking at Vance, Mangla said, Vance has “a very thin record to show.”
As a senator, J.D. Vance also voted against the Right to IVF Act, which would have protected the accessibility and affordability of in vitro fertilization (IVF) nationwide. For Walz, IVF is “personal,” as he’s said. Walz and his wife went through years of fertility treatments to finally have their two children. Walz is a supporter of maintaining access to IVF.
“Most of his talk about helping working families is just that: it’s talk,” Mangla said. “It's not backed up with anything that's been delivered, and when you look at his Senate votes, he's repeatedly voted against bills that would help working families, like legislation to make childbirth more affordable, or his outspoken criticism of IVF, which has allowed so many families to be able to to have children and have the families that they want.”
Daphne Delvaux, an employment attorney and founder of The Mamattorney, told Salon, Vance does not “walk the walk.”
“Parents across the nation are struggling keeping up with expenses and are living paycheck to paycheck,” Delvaux said. “The child tax credit would have lifted at least half a million children above the poverty line.”
Notably, Project 2025, the controversial right-wing political initiative pushed by the Heritage Foundation — which Vance has praised — suggests the solution to a lack of paid family leave is the “Working Families Flexibility Act.” Basically, it would serve as a way to incentivize workers in the private sector to work overtime to accumulate paid-time off that could be applied toward paid family leave.
“If an individual worked two hours of overtime every week for a year, he or she could accumulate four weeks of paid time off to use for paid family leave, vacation, or any reason,” Project 2025 states. Despite their emphasis on “restoring” the American family, there is no call for a “paid family leave” in Project 2025’s 900-page vision.
Delvaux said it’s significant that Walz positioned Minnesota "as an economic powerhouse" because it "cuts against the argument that family-supporting policies raise costs and ruin the economy,” Delvaux said. “In fact, it is precisely because he invested in families that the state is so strong; his record speaks for himself.”
The contrast between how Vance and Walz approach family-centered policies speaks to the differences between the two political parties. But despite Project 2025’s plan to restore the American family as the “centerpiece” of American life and to “protect children,” Republicans only appear to support a specific definition of a family.
“Republicans count themselves as a party of freedom, yet have such a narrow idea of what a family can be or look like, or who's included in that family,” Mangla said. “It is really at odds with one another.”
In September 2023, polling from the left-wing think tank Data for Progress found that 53 percent of women voters said they would consider cutting their work hours if they lost access to childcare. Executive director of the group, Danielle Deiseroth, told Salon the organization’s polling on policies to improve access to childcare, and lower its cost, is really popular — and not just among women, but men, too.
“Many Americans, and American women especially, are not only tasked with the cost, the time, of childcare, but many of these women are also tasked with caring for elderly relatives or other relatives, too,” Deiseroth said. “This is a huge factor to folks — finances and feelings towards these big-ticket items that impact their lives right now.”
In 2023, Republicans introduced their “Parents’ Bill of Rights,” but it mostly focused on COVID-19 school closures and book bans, which isn’t aligned with these “big-ticket” items that voters care about.
“Republicans’ ‘family-focused policies’ are trying to tell families how they should raise their kids and live their lives,” Deiseroth said, pointing to policies around restricting access to abortion, birth control, reproductive care, medical care for transgender youth and policing library books. “Versus Democrats’ plans, which are about giving you the freedom to make choices, to do what you want with your own body, to raise your kids in the way that you deem fit.”
Deiseroth added Data for Progress polled Vance’s favorability in the Rust Belt recently.
“Which you think would be JD Vance's strongest footing,” Deiseroth said. “He has an unfavorability rating that's worse than Trump in those states.”
