Make American families great again

Less than a week into the second Trump administration, Vice President JD Vance put his pro-family priorities front and center.

Vance spoke Friday at the March for Life, the annual Washington, DC, rally that for decades each year mourned Roe v. Wade and continues in support of the pro-life cause more generally.

His speech, however, wasn’t fixated on abortion. It was instead a ringing manifesto on the critical role of family in American culture, prosperity and happiness.

“Let me say very simply: I want more babies in the United States of America,” he told the assembled crowd.

“I want more happy children in our country, and I want beautiful young men and women who are eager to welcome them into the world and eager to raise them.” 

Vance wasn’t just paying lip service to these ideas, but laying out concretely what President Trump did to encourage family well-being in his first term (“doubling the child tax credit”) and promising to do “so much more” in the next four years.

He has become the champion of traditional family life that most Americans didn’t know we needed.

During the inauguration and the months on the campaign trail, Vance lived his pro-family values in front of the cameras.

Despite the ready availability of child-care from hired help or staff, Vance’s three small children — ages 7, 5 and 2 — were regularly visible.

They were seen and heard, not used as props (though they added to his likeability quotient considerably), because Vance has been vocal about being the present father he didn’t have growing up. 

It’s long overdue for Washington to act on policy proposals that would make it easier to be a parent in this country, but what Vance represents is something far deeper: hope and inspiration. 

In his March for Life speech, Vance explained the problem as he sees it with American society: “A culture of radical individualism took root, one where the responsibilities and joys of family life were seen as obstacles to overcome, not as personal fulfillment or personal blessings.” 

Young Americans are adrift. The biggest social issue facing our country is our younger generations’ refusal to connect with what’s meaningful in life.

By every metric, millions of our young people are making fewer social connections, becoming involved less frequently in romantic relationships, entering marriage later or not at all, disconnecting from faith and family — and those failures are manifesting in record low rates of birth. 

The “birth dearth” will carry serious societal consequences that are already plaguing Asian countries like South Korea and Japan.

Fewer workers, fewer taxpayers and an aging society are not engines for economic growth. 

But Vance’s speech hit on a concern for America’s future that’s far more profound than economic stagnation — and what a reinvigoration of traditional families might mean under the second Trump administration.

“We need a culture that celebrates life at all stages,” he declared. “One that recognizes and truly believes that the benchmark of national success is not our GDP number or our stock market, but whether people feel that they can raise thriving and healthy families in our country.” 

In many ways, Vance’s life story is the inspiration America needs.

Its beginning rings familiar for millions: Coming from a broken home and raised largely by his grandmother, Vance faced poverty and hardships from early childhood.

Dramatically, he overcame them, becoming a best-selling author, a US senator and now the vice president of the United States. 

Vance broke a cycle not just of poverty, but of rootlessness.

Now he is the image of the American Dream, making sure to include in that picture a devoted wife and three beautiful children alongside his professional successes. 

Vance has made clear that the worldly achievements he has obtained are incomplete without his wife and his children.

Which is why, when he was sworn in, we didn’t see Vance alone taking the oath of office.

There to share the moment was his adoring wife Usha, beaming as she held 2-year-old Mirabel, sucking her thumb with brightly colored bandages on every fingertip. 

Despite all the pomp of inaugurations of the past, that endearing image was one of the most memorable I’ve seen.

Vance and his wife and their children are real; the adorable photos we saw of Vance’s kids all dressed up under the Capitol dome and acting up during the inauguration parade were relatable, aspirational, even enviable.

I hope the latter is what they will become for America’s rising generation.

Bethany Mandel is co-author of “Stolen Youth” and a homeschooling mother of six in greater Washington, DC.