What we can VERIFY about claims that JD Vance said women should stay in violent marriages

Ohio Sen. JD Vance, who is Donald Trump’s pick for vice president, has come under fire online in recent weeks over claims that he said women should remain in violent marriages instead of leaving a domestic violence situation. 

“JD Vance says women should stay in violent marriages ‘for the sake of their kids,’” Kamala Harris’ official campaign account on X posted on July 15. The post, which has more than 8 million views, also includes a 30-second video clip of Vance talking about the effects of people leaving unhappy and potentially violent marriages. 

Other people on social media media have shared similar claims about Vance’s views on domestic violence. A viral TikTok video shared by MeidasTouch on July 15 is captioned, “Trump VP pick said that women should stay in violent marriages for the sake of the family.”

Multiple readers asked us if Vance actually said women should stay in violent marriages. Here’s what we can VERIFY. 

THE SOURCES

• Video published by VICE News of Vance speaking at a California Christian high school in 2021
• VICE News story published in July 2022
• Vance strategist’s comments in an Ohio Capital Journal report published in July 2022
• Fox News host Sean Hannity’s interview with Vance in July 2024
• Opinion piece published by the Washington Post in 2020

WHAT WE FOUND

Vance did not explicitly say that women should stay in violent marriages, as the online posts claim. But he did say in 2021 that children suffer when parents get divorced, even if the marriages are unhappy or potentially violent. 

Vance and his campaign staff have repeatedly rejected the idea that he was defending abuse.

The claims about Vance’s stance on violent marriages stem from his remarks during a September 2021 event at Pacifica Christian High School in Southern California. VICE News posted a video of a conservation with Vance from that event to its YouTube page in July 2022.

VICE also published a report about Vance’s comments with the headline, “JD Vance suggests people in ‘violent’ marriages shouldn’t get divorced.” 

Vance’s grandparents raised him amid his mother’s struggles with drug addiction, which he writes about in his 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.”

During the 2021 event, Vance said his grandparents had an “incredibly chaotic marriage in a lot of ways,” but they never got divorced. He added that children who grew up in his generation “suffered from the fact that a lot of moms and dads saw marriage as a basic contract…like any other business deal.”

Shortly after, Vance made the comments that spurred the viral claims:

“This is one of the great tricks that I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace, which is this idea that, ‘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 dad, though I’m skeptical. But it really didn’t work out for the kids of those marriages.”

MORE FROM VERIFY: VERIFYING claims from Trump VP pick JD Vance’s RNC speech

Vance and campaign staffers respond to claims about violent marriages

Since VICE News published its report, Vance and his campaign staff have rejected claims that his comments suggest women or parents in general should stay in violent marriages. 

In its 2022 report, VICE News said it asked Vance’s senatorial campaign why he thought “it would be better for children if their parents stayed in violent marriages than if they divorced.”

Vance sent the following statement to VICE in response:

“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.”

There is evidence that domestic violence incidents have increased in recent years, but that has been attributed primarily to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, one report published by the Council on Criminal Justice found that domestic violence incidents increased 8.1% after jurisdictions imposed pandemic-related lockdown orders. The report was based on a review of 12 U.S. studies, most of which included data from multiple cities. 

Vance’s campaign declined to make him available for an interview to clarify his comments, VICE reported. When VICE asked a follow-up question about whether “he thinks people in violent marriages should generally stay together or get divorced,” a Vance spokesperson said they felt Vance’s statement already answered this question.

The Ohio Capital Journal also published a story in July 2022 in response to the VICE News report. A strategist for Vance told the Ohio news outlet that the media has “purposely” been “missing the fundamental point Vance was trying to make,” but reiterated that Vance believes it is important for couples to stay together for the sake of their children.

“This is a comment that he made where he’s talking about how it’s important that couples stay together for the kids, that we actually have good kids first,” the strategist said. “All he is saying is that it is far too often the case where couples get divorced, they split up and they don’t take the kids’ needs into consideration.”

It is “preposterous” to say that Vance supports individuals staying in relationships that are abusive, he added, especially because the candidate was “the victim of domestic abuse when he was a kid.”

During an interview on July 16, 2024, Fox News host Sean Hannity asked Vance about claims that he said women should stay in violent marriages for the benefit of their children. In response, Vance said Democrats have “completely twisted” his words. 

“And, as you know, both me and my mom were actually 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’s what I believe. It’s not what I believe. It’s not what I said,” Vance said. 

Vance recounted his own experiences with domestic violence in “Hillbilly Elegy,” including details of his grandparents’ sometimes “violent marriage,” VICE reported. He described his grandfather as a “violent drunk” before he got sober and his grandmother as a “violent nondrunk.”

But their relationship improved by the time Vance was living with them as a child, offering a refuge from his mother, according to VICE.

Vance wrote in his memoir that when he was 12 years old, his mother pulled the car over “to beat the sh** out of” him and he ran to a stranger’s house. His mother broke down the door and physically dragged him out, leading the police to charge her with domestic violence, VICE reported. Vance reportedly lied to a judge and said his mom hadn’t threatened him to keep her out of jail. 

He also wrote that fights between his mother and one of her partners taught him to “never speak at a reasonable volume when screaming will do; if the fight gets a little too intense; it’s okay to slap and punch, so long as the man doesn’t hit first; always express your feelings in a way that’s insulting to your partner,” a columnist for the Washington Post reported in 2020.

This story is also available in Spanish / Lee este artículo también en español: Lo que podemos verificar sobre lo que dijo JD Vance acerca de que las mujeres deben quedarse en matrimonios violentos