JD Vance Agrees “the Postmenopausal Female” Exists to Raise Grandchildren

By now you’ve likely heard JD Vance’s thoughts on Americans who do not have children, a segment of the population he has termed “childless cat ladies” who, he says, don’t have a stake in the future of the country and are more likely to be mentally unstable sociopaths. While the Ohio senator and VP hopeful does not discriminate in his take—he has criticized child-free women and men—he clearly appears to believe that the most important thing a woman can and must do with her life is have kids. Of course, that 1950s point of view only applies to ladies of child-bearing age—but don’t worry, Vance has got thoughts on what “postmenopausal” women should be doing with their lives too.

In a 2020 podcast interview discussing the benefits of grandparents in children’s lives, Vance agrees when the host says, “That’s the whole purpose of the postmenopausal female.” But wait, the incredibly creepy takes don’t stop there! Later, while recounting that his wife’s mother lived with them for a year after the birth of their first son, Vance does not object to the host declaring that that is “this weird, unadvertised feature of marrying an Indian woman.” (Vance’s wife, Usha Vance, is of Indian descent.)

Noting that his mother-in-law is a biology professor and took a yearlong sabbatical to help out, Vance says, “it’s just one of these things that…this is what you do.”

Is it great that Vance’s children get to spend quality time with their grandparents? Of course! Is being an active part of a grandchild’s life incredibly rewarding for many people? Sure is! Yet Vance’s notion that a grandmother’s entire purpose in life is to care for her grandchild—and in his family’s case, temporarily give up a job in order to do so—is just yet another one of his stomach-churning beliefs.

Vance himself was famously raised by his mother’s parents when she was unable to care for him. That upbringing unsurprisingly informed his worldview, and not necessarily in a good way. In 2022, while running for Senate, Vance suggested that people should stay in violent marriages for the sake of their children, saying, “My grandparents had an incredibly chaotic marriage in a lot of ways. But they never got divorced. They were together to the end, till death do us part—that was a really important thing to my grandmother and my grandfather.” In his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, Vance writes that his grandfather was a “violent drunk” and his grandmother a “violent non-drunk.” In one anecdote, he informs readers that his grandmother once tried to kill his grandfather by pouring gasoline all over him when he was sleeping and dropping a lit match on his chest. So, yeah, maybe take this guy’s opinions on how people should live their lives with several tons of salt.