Fact Check: JD Vance Said Women Should Stay in Violent Marriages?

Claim:

Republican Sen. JD Vance said women in violent marriages should not get divorced.

Rating:

Mostly False ( About this rating? )

What's True:

In interviews, Vance has said that divorce generally, even if it stems from a violent marriage, is harmful to children. In that vein, he has consistently argued against the idea that divorce is a satisfactory solution to unhappy marriages.

What's False:

However, Vance did not explicitly call for women to stay in violent marriages instead of divorcing.

In July 2024, as former U.S. President Donald Trump picked Ohio Sen. JD Vance as his vice presidential running mate for the 2024 elections, many on social media brought up Vance's past controversial opinions. Some posts claimed that Vance had once stated that women should stay in violent marriages.

A number of our readers asked us whether Vance had specifically said women in abusive marriages shouldn't seek a divorce. Numerous memes and posts on X made that claim, alongside clips of Vance from a years-old interview where he addressed the issue.

(Facebook user "Feminist News")

While the above posts shared excerpts from a real interview with Vance, he did not explicitly state that women should stay in abusive marriages. He did, however, detail his grandparents' violent relationship and commended them for staying together in spite of it. Vance also said ending marriages and encouraging divorce, even when domestic violence was involved, is not necessarily good for the children in those families. Below, we detail the full context in which he shared these opinions, as well as the subsequent clarifications he issued afterward.

In 2021, Vance participated in an event at Pacifica Christian High School in California to talk about his memoir "Hillbilly Elegy." The memoir focused on his chaotic family life, and his experience being raised by his grandparents due to his mother's struggles with drug addiction. At one point in the memoir, he described how his grandmother threatened to kill his grandfather if he came home drunk again, and even poured lighter fluid on him and lit a match, leaving their children to put out the fire. However, he wrote that his grandparents' relationship improved by the time he was a child and it became a stable foundation for him growing up, which his mother was unable to provide.

The moderator brought up Vance's life with his grandparents and asked him: "They preserved their relationship through some hard times. In their generation they weren't going to give up, but in their children's generation it was kind of lost. … What's causing one generation to give up on fatherhood when the other one was so doggedly determined to stick it out, even in tough times?"

Vance began by talking about the economic struggles faced by men:

This is really complicated, I could probably spend the whole evening talking about this particular issue. … We're really uncomfortable admitting to ourselves in our society that's very focused on gender equity and equality, that men and women really are different and the decline of manufacturing hit male employment much harder than it hit female employment. … The fact that we lost a lot of stable male employment was a catastrophe for the American family, more than the economic consequences, more than the fact that jobs disappeared and the good wages disappeared, a lot of families suffered and struggled in ways that if you're just looking at men and women as interchangeable you would not appreciate but if you recognize that moms and dads really are different, that men and women need different things, you recognize that we've got a real problem here.

He then spoke about his grandparents' marriage and then blamed the sexual revolution of the 1960s for encouraging more divorce (emphasis ours):

Culturally, something has clearly shifted. I think it's easy but also probably true to blame the sexual revolution of the 1960s. My grandparents had an incredibly chaotic marriage in a lot of ways, but they never got divorced, right? They were together to the end, 'til death do us part. That was a really important thing to my grandmother and my grandfather. That was clearly not true by the 70s or 80s. And I think that probably, I was personally and a lot of kids in my community, who grew up in my generation, personally suffered from the fact that a lot of moms and dads saw marriage as a basic contract, right? Like any other business deal, once it becomes no longer good for one of the parties or both of the parties, you just dissolve it and go onto a new business relationship. But that recognition that marriage was sacred I think was a really powerful thing that held a lot of families together. And when it disappeared, unfortunately a lot of kids suffered.

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.

The full clip of his comments was obtained by Vice News, and can be seen below. A recording of the full event can be found here:

Vance has elaborated on those comments frequently since he first made them. He has criticized the fact that divorce has become more socially acceptable. In 2022 , Vice News asked his senatorial campaign why he thought "it would be better for children if their parents stayed in violent marriages than if they divorced." Vance responded:

I reject the premise of your bogus question. As anyone who studies these issues knows: domestic violence has skyrocketed in recent years, and is much higher among non-married couples. That's the 'trick' I reference: 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. But I can see that you are not a fair person, so rather than answer your loaded and baseless question, let me offer the following: I'm an actual victim of domestic violence. In my life, I have seen siblings, wives, daughters, and myself abused by men. It's disgusting for you to argue that I was defending those men.

At the Republican National Convention in July 2024, Fox News' Sean Hannity asked Vance to clarify his remarks on divorce and domestic violence. Vance said :

Both me and my mom actually were victims of domestic violence. So, to say 'Vance has supported women staying in violent marriages,' I think it's shameful for them to take a guy with my history and my background and say that that's what I believe. It's not what I believe. It's not what I said.

Vance did not explicitly advocate that women in violent marriages should remain married, but he did defend the institution of marriage and praised his grandparents for remaining in a tumultuous marriage that eventually stabilized. He also said leaving a marriage, even if it is a violent one, is not good for the children in those families. He later said that he was mostly criticizing the "progressive frame" on the issue, and was himself a victim of domestic violence.

We have reached out to Vance's team for more clarification on his words and will update this story if we receive a response.

Sources:

""Hillbilly Elegy" Rockets to Top of Bestseller List after JD Vance Picked as Trump's VP." CBS News. 17 July 2024, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jd-vance-hillbilly-elegy-trump-sales-bestseller-netflix-amazon/. " target="blank">https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jd-vance-hillbilly-elegy-trump-sales-bestseller-netflix-amazon/.">https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jd-vance-hillbilly-elegy-trump-sales-bestseller-netflix-amazon/. Accessed 17 July 2024.

"JD Vance Pacifica Christian Clip." 2022. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUh4ATU_V4A . Accessed 17 July 2024.

Joseph, Cameron. "JD Vance Suggests People in 'Violent' Marriages Shouldn't Get Divorced." Vice, 25 July 2022, https://www.vice.com/en/article/93abve/jd-vance-suggests-people-in-violent-marriages-shouldnt-get-divorced. " target="blank">https://www.vice.com/en/article/93abve/jd-vance-suggests-people-in-violent-marriages-shouldnt-get-divorced.">https://www.vice.com/en/article/93abve/jd-vance-suggests-people-in-violent-marriages-shouldnt-get-divorced. Accessed 17 July 2024.

"Review | J.D. Vance's 'Hillbilly Elegy,' a Plea to the White Working Class." Washington Post, 15 July 2024. www.washingtonpost.com, https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2024/07/15/hillbilly-elegy-jd-vance-review/. " target="blank">https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2024/07/15/hillbilly-elegy-jd-vance-review/.">https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2024/07/15/hillbilly-elegy-jd-vance-review/. Accessed 17 July 2024.

Uribe, Maria Ramirez. "JD Vance Says the Media Twisted His Remarks on Abortion and Domestic Violence. We Looked Closer." Poynter, 17 July 2024, https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2024/jd-vance-abortion-domestic-violence-fact-check/. " target="blank">https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2024/jd-vance-abortion-domestic-violence-fact-check/.">https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2024/jd-vance-abortion-domestic-violence-fact-check/. Accessed 17 July 2024.