Former president Donald Trump walked out onto the floor at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night with a raised fist and a still-bandaged ear, a reminder of the assassination attempt he survived last week.
As he drew a standing ovation from the nearly 2,500 GOP delegates, a rendition of the hit-song “It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World” reverberated through Fiserv Forum arena.
Man thinks about our little bitty baby girls and our baby boys
Man made them happy, ’cause man made them toys
And after man make everything, everything he can
You know that man makes money, to buy from other man
This is a man’s world
But it wouldn’t be nothing, nothing, not one little thing, without a woman or a girl.
It wasn’t just a catchy tune. Throughout four 14-plus hour days reporting at the Republican confab in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the music’s lyrics underscored the prevailing attitude on gender norms among the scores of GOP convention-goers I interviewed, the litany of speeches I tuned into, and the half a dozen issue-focused meetings I attended as a member of the media.
From the UNC fraternity brothers who were honored on Wednesday for preventing, in their words, “a mob” of pro-Palestinian protesters from toppling an American flag on the Chapel Hill campus to famous wrestler Hulk Hogan ripping the shirt from his chest to reveal a TRUMP-VANCE logo in a striking display of machismo, it was men—and ideas on family structure that benefit them—that took center stage.
Take, as prime example, Trump’s choice of a vice presidential running mate. The week before the convention, his shortlist consisted entirely of people with XY chromosomes: Florida Senator Marco Rubio, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, and Ohio Senator J.D. Vance.
On Monday, Trump selected Vance: a graduate of Yale Law School, the author of Hillbilly Elegy, a former Never-Trumper, and arguably the most socially conservative of the bunch.
A 39-year-old father of three kids under the age of 8, Vance’s deepest convictions seem to center around abortion, marriage, and women in the workplace.
On reproductive rights, Vance has previously called for a federal limit on abortion and has described himself as “100 percent pro-life.” He opposes abortion access even in cases of rape or incest, saying in 2021 that “two wrongs don’t make a right.” He continued: “What kind of society do we want to have? A society that looks at unborn babies as inconveniences to be discarded?”
On marriage, Vance has suggested even domestic violence between a husband and wife shouldn’t necessarily elicit divorce. In a 2021 speech to a Christian high school, Vance said that a “sexual revolution” has incentivized couples who are “unhappy” or “maybe even violent” t0 “shift spouses like they change their underwear.”
On women in the workplace, the new nominee said in 2022: “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.”
Vance’s views on family policy are particularly admired by young Republicans, especially delegates and conservative guests at the convention with whom I spoke.
“[Vance] may win over a lot of disaffected young males, a lot of people who maybe casually supported Trump, but who weren’t planning to actually get out and vote for him. They may be excited by that,” said Chris Phillips, a Republican at an RNC event for young voters hosted by the nonpartisan Institute of Politics of the University of Chicago.
“A woman should absolutely have the capacity—and if she doesn’t, we should make it so—to raise her kids at home and to be with her kids, especially for the first few years of those kids’ lives. It’s something that the Republican Party, I think, needs to focus on promoting,” said Phillips, 21. “Women or mothers probably have a little bit more of a natural inclination to do that sort of thing. Men probably have a natural inclination to be a little bit more absent and instead go out and be the breadwinners.” (Phillips added that his beliefs are his own. He’s “not in the business” of telling other people “how to arrange their partnerships and child-rearing agendas.”)
Trump conveys a similar message on his 2024 campaign website, saying he would promote “positive education” about “the roles of mothers and fathers, and celebrating rather than erasing the things that make men and women different and unique” if reelected.
Convention-goers yearned for a time when this sort of family dynamic was more prevalent.
Concerned Women for America had a bright pink bus with messages opposing trans girls’ participation in women’s sports at the RNC in Milwaukee, Wisconsin from July 15-19, 2024. Sam Van Pykeren/Mother Jones
Annabelle Rutledge, the executive vice president of the group Concerned Women For America spoke fondly of her experience being raised and homeschooled by her mother in Carmichael, California. “We traveled the country when other people were sitting in their classrooms,” she told me in front of her organization’s Pepto Bismol pink bus. “It gave us not only a love for learning, but a love for our country as well.”
According to Garrett Weldin, one of the best periods in American history was during the Cold War, when Americans were unified “against the Soviet Union and communism” rather than against one another; it was also a period when families had more children and women had a lower participation rate in the workforce. Weldin, a 22-year-old alternate delegate from Delaware, says he’d personally love to have three or four children, finances permitting.
Twice, Weldin called for a future Trump-Vance Administration to enact a “paid maternity leave” policy—distinct from the paid parental leave policies that 13 US states have instituted for both mothers and fathers. “I think that that’s something that we should encourage as the Republican Party, because we’re supposed to be this party of family values.”
A 20-year-old intern at the young voters event expressed concern about an increasing traditionalist worldview among conservatives in her age cohort. “I don’t think we live in a time where women are supposed to stay at home and men are expected to be the breadwinners and work outside the home,” said Simone Nelson, who identifies as a Democrat. “As a society, I think we have moved beyond that.”
But the alternative to a parent or other family member raising kids is typically paid childcare. Of the dozens of Republicans I interviewed, none mentioned a desire for the government to make childcare programs more accessible. Vance has explicitly opposed the concept: “Normal Americans care more about their families than their jobs, and want a family policy that doesn’t shunt their kids into crap daycare so they can enjoy more ‘freedom’ in the paid labor force,” he once wrote.
He has instead offered support for other pro-natalist policy ideas, such as making the healthcare expenses related to childbirth free for parents and protecting those who decide to quit their jobs after childbirth from being hit with penalties from their work-sponsored health insurance.
“A country that has children is a healthy country that’s worth living in,” Vance said in a 2022 speech.
During his primetime slot on Wednesday night, Vance didn’t specify which parent he thinks should take care of all those children, but he did signal what he considers the most important role of his wife—a fellow Yale Law School graduate and former clerk to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts—to be.
“Tonight, I’m joined by my beautiful wife Usha,” he said. “An incredible lawyer, and a better mom.” Two days prior, Usha resigned from her job as a corporate litigator in order to, in her words, “focus on caring for our family.” (In his speech, Vance also said his “most important American dream was becoming a good husband and a good dad,” though he isn’t leaving a strenuous job and instead is seeking an even more demanding one.)
The 2024 RNC was indeed a man’s world: One that many asserted would be nothing without women dutifully supporting them.