Highlights
A successful, Ivy-league educated dad reflected that when his first son was born, he realized something surprising that terrified him: “I knew exactly how to help my kid get into a good college but was woefully underprepared to make him a good man.” His own family background was dysfunctional to an extreme, which contributed to his malaise. Just what is it that makes someone a good father? This was a question this man found himself mulling over at length. He knew he needed help, but not the sort that a professional could offer. But where to find it?
There are perhaps a number of men whose story the above paragraph might describe. But, of course, the man I am describing here is the current Vice President of the United States, J.D. Vance. Coming from a broken, dysfunctional, and poor home, he defied a lot of statistics by getting through college and then Yale Law School. And yet, he wonders repeatedly in both his first and now second book, can people from broken families ever truly leave their family baggage behind? Both of his memoirs—Hillbilly Elegy, published in 2016, and Communion, out this summer—deal in no small part with the important role fathers play in the lives of children, both through their absence and their presence. Except, in his own childhood, Vance was much more familiar with the sting of a father’s absence in a boy's life than the difference that a father’s presence makes.
He grew up without his biological father, whose relationship with his mother didn’t last. For a brief time, one of his mother’s subsequent husbands adopted him, but since that marriage too rapidly ended in divorce, Vance soon found himself awkwardly legally adopted by a man to whom he had no blood ties nor any other connections. While he reconnected with his biological father in his teens, his most meaningful father figure was his maternal grandfather, who had his own demons to fight—and who was also haunted in later life by the conviction that he himself had failed his children. No wonder, then, that Vance’s main emotion in preparation for fatherhood was sheer terror—especially of failing his soon-to-be-born son, the way he had been failed too many times.
Writers who have commented on Communion so far have largely focused on the obvious political significance of the Vice President penning a memoir while in office. But in reading Vance’s book, I could see so many studies and trends that we often read about on these pages come to life in one man’s experience. It is one thing to consider numbers and graphs; it is another to see these numbers play out in real people’s lives. Whatever one may think of the current Vice President’s politics, vice presidents are people too—people with families and family histories and family baggage to boot. And in a country that has been growing increasingly more Family Unfriendly over the course of decades, it is important to examine the trends that have made it that way.
In the Church, the fatherless find father-figures and role models among other men, and they learn about the love of God the Father for us all.
So, what do we make of Vance’s family story and the contemporary trends it reflects?
Studies confirm that American fatherhood is in a state of crisis right now—but the greatest crisis of all is men who choose to never become fathers, Grant Bailey and Brad Wilcox note in a recent essay. The facts they present are alarming: “The number of men ages 25-45 who are childless has risen from 10 million in 1980 to 23 million in 2024, a record high.” At the same time, they note, men who do become fathers also invest more time and energy than ever in their children. While reasons for the rise of childless men certainly vary, at least part of this overall story involves self-selectivity: Men who experienced good family dynamics themselves decide to become fathers—and make sure to be even better fathers than their own fathers were. On the other hand, men who experienced adverse family situations when growing up often feel that they have no idea how to be a good father and decide that it may be best to bypass family life.
Left to his own devices, Vance might have done the latter himself. Except that a few key factors brought him to fatherhood and equipped him to be the kind of father he never knew himself—hands-on, loving, and attentive to his children’s needs. First, he met Usha, whose solid and functional family showed him the possibility of healthy family dynamics. Describing his first visit with her family one Thanksgiving, he was surprised at the lack of yelling in the home.
An additional related factor that Vance acknowledges briefly and that no doubt plays an integral role in his ability to be a successful father despite growing up without the consistent present of his own: the well-documented link between marriage and good fatherhood. Studies show that marriage itself facilitates better fatherhood. This is especially important for boys. In explaining why “Married Fathers Matter,” Wilcox notes that
boys who reside with their married fathers are much more likely to flourish, and boys who live apart from an intact, married family are much more likely to flounder. In fact, a new study finds that boys who don’t reside with their married fathers are, amazingly, more likely to go to prison than graduate from college, whereas boys from intact, married families are markedly more likely to graduate from college than spend time in jail.
These statistics describe many of Vance’s high school classmates, as he himself notes in Hillbilly Elegy. Vance was very much the anomaly, an exception to the rule. But it also explains how being happily married to the mother of his children enables Vance to be the father he never had.
Finally, Vance began thinking about church again, after about a decade of atheism. His son’s impending arrival made him realize that to be a good father, he needed to raise his children in church. Strikingly, while Usha Vance grew up in a Hindu home and is not a Christian, she has recognized the positive impact of church on her husband and has encouraged him to attend. She herself, as he notes, attends with their children.
In another essay for IFS, I reflected on the importance of church for creating the hands-on village that families so desperately need for raising children. Parents often feel isolated and unmoored, overwhelmed by the extreme demands especially of infants. While it is possible to find such a village among one’s friends and neighbors, often it is the church that most organically offers it—because such structures as small groups, prayer groups, and meal trains for new families are something that churches simply do unasked. In other words, the church today still does something it has been doing for the followers of Jesus since the first century AD: offering a radically loving and kind family of fellow believers. In church, ideally, the fatherless find father-figures and role models among other men, and they learn about the love of God the Father for us all.
We all need this kind of community, whether we are vice presidents, schoolteachers, overworked doctors, or overworked stay-at-home moms. Indeed, it is not a political statement to say that America needs more dads—in particular fathers who are bonded to their children through marriage and who have supportive communities to support better fathering. After all, every nation is built of households—the oikos, as the ancient Greek political thinkers dubbed it—and the well-being of these individual households adds up to the flourishing of a nation. On a related note, American dads (and moms) need the practical and spiritual encouragement and support that most local churches offer to all who ask.
Nadya Williams is a homeschooling mother, Books Editor for Mere Orthodoxy, and the author of Cultural Christians in the Early Church, and Mothers, Children, and the Body Politic.
*Photo credit: Shutterstock
