Usha Chilukuri Vance was thrust into the spotlight this week when she defended her husband, author, and Donald Trump’s surprise running mate, J.D. Vance.
What was it regarding? J.D. Vance’s recent ‘Childless Cat Lady’ comments. Since J.D. Vance’s appointment as Donald Trump’s running mate for the 2024 presidential elections, some of Vance’s historic statements have been surfacing. Most notably, a comment made in an interview with Fox News in which he described the United States as “effectively run… by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable with their own lives and the choices they’ve made.” Vance was referring to Vice President Kamala Harris, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg.
In light of Roe vsl Wade, many may wish any collection of ladies ran the United States. Still, the comments have drawn ire.
They’ve received even more attention since Friends actor Jennifer Anniston made an impassioned response on Instagram stories, alluding to the heartbreak she’s experienced trying to conceive, pointing out that not all women without children are without children by choice. She noted Vance’s decision to vote against a bill that would protect women’s rights to access IVF treatments. “All I can say… Mr. Vance, I pray your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day. I hope she will not need to turn to IVF as a second option. Because you are trying to take that away from her too.”
Usha Vance’s Response
As per CNN, Usha Vance played down her husband’s comments in an interview with Fox News that aired on Monday. She said the comment was taken “out of context” and had been a quip made “in service of making a point that he wanted to make that was substantive.” She said she wished the media would focus on more central points made in the interview rather than getting caught up in “this three-word phrase or that three-word phrase.”
Usha said what her husband was actually trying to say was that “it can be really hard to be a parent in this country, and sometimes our policies are designed in a way that make it even harder.” It has been pointed out that many of the policies J.D. Vance does not support including universal childcare and protection of IVF treatments do indeed make it harder to be a parent in the United States.
Of course, it is J.D. Vance’s job to communicate his political beliefs clearly, something his wife seems to have done better than he has. And “cat lady”-gate is not the first time his comments about women have gotten him in hot water.
Everything You Need To Know About J.D. and Usha Vance
In 2016 J.D. Vance published Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. The searingly personal memoir-come political examination of America’s disenfranchised white working class established Vance as a soft conservative explaining hard truths to a shell-shocked left following the Trump election.
He was critical of the president publishing explainers in outlets like The Guardian that compared Trump’s seduction of the American public with the opioid epidemic.
This is why many who haven’t followed Vance’s appearances on Fox News and CNN and active Twitter (now X) presence have been surprised to see him running with Donald Trump and by his virulent views on women.
What Has J.D. Vance Said About Women?
Over the last five years, J.D. Vance has had plenty to say about women and the issues affecting them, from domestic violence and childcare to abortion.
In a now-deleted post on his website, Vance declared himself “100% pro-life”; explaining that society shouldn’t view a pregnancy or birth as “inconvenient” just because it was the result of sexual assault or incest.
He has also suggested women stay in violent marriages, criticising couples for “shifting spouses like they change their underwear”.
Vance has tweeted that universal daycare, a policy proposal that supports working mothers, is “a war against normal people.” According to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, in Australia, 54 per cent of families rely on mothers performing the majority of childcare, and the picture is similar in America.
It’s safe to assume these comments were aimed squarely at working mothers, not fathers.
He doubled down on this rhetoric, again on Twitter: “If your worldview tells you that it’s bad for women to become mothers but liberating for them to work 90 hours a week in a cubicle at the New York Times or Goldman Sachs, you’ve been had.”
So, Who Is J.D. Vance’s Wife, Usha Vance?
So, who is J.D. Vance’s wife and current knight in shining armour Usha Chilukuri Vance? Those who are familiar with the woman married to J.D. Vance might be bemused by his line on working mothers.
According to Voice of America Usha’s parents emigrated from Andhra Pradesh, and she was born in San Diego. Her mother is a biologist, and her father is a professor of engineering.
Reuters reported that she attended Yale and earned a master’s of Philosophy at Cambridge on scholarship. The pair have a geeky and sweet love story; they met at Yale where Usha Vance was an editor of Yale Law Journal and managing editor of the Yale Journal of Law & Technology. Vance wrote in Hillbilly Elegy that he “fell hard” for her when they were partnered on a class assignment. The couple married in 2014 and have three children. Vance has since attributed much of his success to her, Usha, meanwhile has enjoyed an illustrious legal career.
Since then, she has clerked for high-profile conservative Justices like Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts. Until his announcement, she was working as a trial lawyer for the firm Munger, Tolles & Olsen. It’s not Goldman Sachs, but it’s a living. In her spare time, Chilukuri Vance has served on the Cincinnati Symphony Board of Directors.
While it seems that J.D. Vance sees women at work as a threat to the family structure of modern Americans, he and his children have benefitted from the presumably comfortable dual income Usha Chilukuri Vance’s work has brought in.
What does this prove? Vance won’t sign up for the “family values” he believes support the American public – because they come at a fiscal cost.
It feels like, as with Trump, there’s one rule for Vance, one rule for everyone else.
This article originally appeared on Marie Claire Australia and is republished here with permission.
