My common thread with JD Vance’s Mamaw make his remarks cut extra deep

In 1984, a boy was born in a small town near Cincinnati and raised amid family chaos. Addiction. Abuse. Absent father. Poverty. His grandmother swooped in to provide consistency for him and his sister. He was grateful for his Mamaw’s steady presence even as she struggled to raise two grandchildren well into her 70s.

That boy grew up to be Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance, who in his 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” credits his grandmother for his success. With a sense of guilt and empathy, he notes that she never got to realize her dream of becoming a lawyer for abused and neglected children.

“Mamaw had her dreams but never the opportunity to pursue them,” he writes. He remembers watching her walk around the house cloaked in “weariness she wore like a dark piece of clothing,” and ignoring “whispers from a lot of people to Mamaw that she just needed to take a break and enjoy her golden years.”

None of that compassion was evident, though, when Vance went on a podcast in 2020 and chewed the fat about the role that grandmothers play. The podcast host said “the whole purpose of the postmenopausal female” is to help raise grandchildren, and Vance heartily agreed.

By agreeing with that, Vance did violence to his grandmother’s memory. The same woman who struggled to raise her own children as a teen mom was called upon to take full responsibility for him and his sister when she was a senior citizen. Due in no small part to sexist gender expectations like those expressed in the podcast and scant public policies to support families, Vance’s Mamaw was trapped in a loop of intense, oppressive caregiving that demands that women take care of some loved ones from the cradle and take care of other loved ones to the grave.

Instead of offering caregiving grandmothers empty praise and sexist pigeonholes, Mr. Vance, how about some fundamental policy change?

I was a naïve wife and mother of two before I realized how difficult it is to raise kids in this family-unfriendly nation. I could have used access to safe, quality, affordable child care and to universal health care that would have made it easier to switch jobs without fear of losing health insurance. Instead, I was parenting in a world where there’d been a women’s movement, but nothing else had moved. The stress was so intense that I left my job to work part time. The decision was a no-brainer. My children were loved and very much wanted. They didn’t ask to be here, and I owed them my best.

But the sacrifice was monumental.

According to the Center for American Progress, a woman who is 26 (the average age of first-time mothers in the United States) and earns $44,000 annually will lose a cumulative $707,000 over her career if she stays out of the workforce for five years. That amount includes potential raises, benefits and pensions she forgoes by dropping out of full-time work.

Here Vance might ask me: “Where were the grandmothers to help you with your children?” Such a question would not only reflect the sexist values of a bygone era, but it would also ignore the current reality of women’s lives. I wish I could say my children’s grandmothers were knitting booties at home waiting for the chance to fulfill what Vance believes was their life’s purpose. Instead, my mother was 720 miles away, spending her post-menopausal years helping my father keep their small business afloat.

My mother-in-law lived two doors away. But she had seven children, four of whom were still in school when I gave birth to her first grandchild. She was busy raising children while managing her husband’s medical practice. It’s a rare woman in her 50s who can afford to leave her job and uproot her life for the benefit of her grandchildren, and society needs to stop assuming that they should.

At midlife, I found myself divorced after 25 years of marriage and eager to put my own dreams back on the priority list. After all, the children were launched, and I was not yet a grandmother. But in 2016, both of my parents were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. After trying to support them from afar, as the oldest child and the only girl, I was compelled to move to care for them.

According to the Family Caregiver Alliance, caregiving reduces paid work hours for middle-aged women by about 41%. If an older female caregiver steps out of the workforce, the financial impact in terms of lost wages and Social Security benefits for the rest of her life is $324,044. This doesn’t account for the psychological and physical stress caregiving exacts upon women, or the additional out-of-pocket expenses they often expend to support the sick or aging.

My dad passed away in 2020. The weekend of his funeral, my daughter moved in with her three kids to escape an abusive marriage. Four years later, the caregiving journey for my parents is over; my mother slipped away peacefully this year at age 90. But now I’m the full-time guardian of my grandchildren. When the youngest graduates from high school, I’ll be 76. But, according to Vance, at least I would have fulfilled the reason for which I was born.

I count myself as lucky to have been in the position to give my best to my children, take care of my parents until they drew their last breaths and catch my grandchildren when life dealt them a raw deal. I would have sacrificed everything to support them. In fact, I practically have. At 64, I’ll never be able to make up for the income, savings and retirement benefits I’ve forgone supporting generations of people I love.

Instead of relying upon women to provide a lifetime of free care for others, perhaps Vance can honor his Mamaw with policies that expand health insurance for family caregivers, establish a national child care system, provide broader access to mental health services and create caregiver-friendly tax and retirement policies?

Until that happens, women will continue to shoulder the cost of providing decades of free care — and, in terms of blood and treasure, paying for it dearly.