S’not Me, Dad!

Vance, Musk, and the Family

Two models of family have recently been in the news. Vice-President JD Vance went to Paris and Munich with his wife and their three children. Elon Musk brought one of his sons to see President Trump in the Oval Office.

I never associated Trump with family in any conventional sense, but others have. Tom Golden has drawn attention to Stephen Baskerville’s essay, “Trump Can Reverse the Decline of America's Families — and the Main Cause of the Decline of America” (see Golden, Men Are Good, Substack).

A scholar of family life, Baskerville argues that America’s well-being depends on getting fathers back in the home and also on nudging feminists out of power. He reminds us of the importance of the family at all levels and decries the “feminist lock” on family life. Baskerville’s book, Taken into Custody (2007), details the war on fatherhood that has been waged by feminist, including government officials. They want the state to take the place of fathers as a stabilizing force in the family (pp. 16-18). Baskerville thinks that Trump could reverse this sorry trend.

The people in charge of social policy in the U. S. government want “family” to be under their control. We also see this drive among school administrators and teachers who think it is their job to shape children’s sexuality. Government control of family life is, Baskerville argues, the goal of federal officials. He looks at two powerful agencies.

One is the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), a sprawling agency that has a $49 billion budget and 60 separate programs. Have you ever heard of it? You probably have heard of USAID, however, which recently fell under Elon Musk’s thrifty eye. USAID has a budget that is about the same size as ACF. It too is largely out of the public eye, but it is large. Sixty programs? Sixty programs in one agency is what you get when administrators have too much of other people’s money to spend.

These agencies have vague goals. USAID, for example, seeks “to advance U.S. interests through the use of soft power.” The organization was supposed to offer developing nations help with education and health care. It turns out that this “help” includes transgender opera in Columbia. All the USAID programs listed by FactCheck.org support progressive social agenda. FactCheck.org itself seems curiously invested in justifying USAID funding rather than checking facts. Vague language like “soft power” and “health care” easily justify pork-barrel and patronage.

Golden & Baskerville in conversation

Baskerville also refers to the Office of Child Support Services (OCSS), which is more opaque than ACF. OCSS claims to work “with federal, state, tribal and local governments and others to promote parental responsibility so that children receive support from both parents even when they live in separate households.” OCSS claims to help agencies “in states and tribes develop, manage, and operate their programs according to federal law using effective child support enforcement tools.” In addition, OCSS “proposes and implements national policy for the child support program.” How many taxpayers are aware that we have a billion-dollar program to propose and implement “child support program policy” nationwide? Do you think it actually “implements” anything but Zoom meetings, conference calls, and PR?

Child support is supervised by states. In states with Offices of Child Support Enforcement that collect child support payments, only 65% of the support that is due is collected, according to the OCSS. If 65% of cases in those states are in arrears, OCSS oversight has failed to improve the collection rate. Where are those “enforcement tools” when you need them? The agency’s job seems to be to report that programs don’t work, not to make them work.

Baskerville regards both the OCSS and the AFC as bastions of feminism. He argues that, contrary to their pro-family claims, both units are hostile to the traditional roles that make families strong. These and other large state and federal bureaucracies (60 programs, remember, in just one of them) have swallowed parenthood and made the family a project of well-funded government initiatives that most people have never heard about.

We know that reshaping the “family” so that it is no longer a biological unit is an acknowledged and indeed celebrated progressive goal. It is driven by feminism. This goal is also enshrined in Black Lives Matter, which seeks to capitalize on rather than help to improve the weaknesses of Black family structures and to ensure the diminished role of fatherhood in Black life. Getting rid of fathers is an essential step in making mothers free, it seems.

Rather than support Black men, BLM adheres to a matriarchy that is clearly misandrist. If you type “BLM opposition to family life” into Google, IA produces this: “Black Lives Matter (BLM) has called for a disruption of the traditional nuclear family structure, and instead supports extended family structures.” “Extended” means matriarchal units that exclude fathers as family figures. AI adds that “BLM's views on the family have been controversial and have led some Black Americans to oppose the movement.” AI knows what BLM doesn’t want you to know. You won’t be surprised to learn that, in the eyes of BLM, AI itself is built on anti-Black racism.

The nuclear family model is seen in the Vance family. Vice-President JD Vance is a traditional man with an untraditional background. As his many controversial statements on childlessness indicate, he sees the family as a central social unit. One of his most provocative views is that people who do not have children should not necessarily be telling others how to raise their offspring. Makes sense to me!

The other model, BLM’s “extended” family, is seen in the Musk family. Musk, the new White House favorite, is an untraditional man with a considerable collection of partners and offspring. As their understandings of the family show, these men are also studies in contrasting forms of masculinity as it is framed by family life.

Musk and the extended family

Trump has elevated today’s tech wizards, several of whom, with Musk, appeared at his inauguration: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg; Apple CEO, Tim Cook; Google CEO, Sundar Pichai; and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. These men were seated in front of Trump’s cabinet choices. Message received. Musk has since acquired a semi-official status as head of the Department of Government Efficiency, now familiar as DOGE—just the tool that needs to be taken to ACF and OCSS.

As a family man, Musk is doing his part to counter the “birth dearth,” the fall-off in births in the Western world. In February he appeared in the Oval Office with his four-year-old son. How is one to introduce this lad? Seen in the picture with Trump at the top of this post, he is known as Lil X for short. His full name is X Æ A-Xii, which is pronounced as “Ex-Ash-Twelve.” What will his friends call him in school?

Æ (“ash”) is an Anglo-Saxon letter that disappeared after the Old English period (c. 700-1100). Æ is derived from the Anglo-Saxon fuþorc rune ᚫ (runes being a form of writing that predated Germanic use of the Latin alphabet). But the Old English language was not on the minds of Musk and the baby’s mother, Claire Elise Boucher, a Canadian musician who uses the stage name Grimes.

Both mom and dad are interested in elf lore. Æ is the Elven spelling of “AI,” which, in addition to serving as shorthand for artificial intelligence, also is said to translate as “love” in Japanese. X, we know, is Musk’s all-purpose letter, signaling that whatever is known as X will have multiple functions, some of them as yet undiscovered. Lil X is the twelfth of Musk’s known children, hence Xii. A-12 refers to the Archangel-12 plane, which was the precursor to the SR-71 aircraft, once a super-spy plane (why this matters I do not know).

X Æ A-Xii Musk has made his media debut. He is at the center of a peculiar tale recounted in The Guardian and elsewhere claiming that, when Musk visited the Oval Office on February 12, the boy sneezed, wiped some snot on the President's desk, and then ate the rest. This common childhood fascination with mucus, which is said to be prized for its salty taste (thank you, AI; who knew?) rarely plays out in public, much less in the Oval Office.

After X Æ A-Xii’s escapade, the President, who cannot have enjoyed being upstaged by Musk’s hearty banter with the press, much less the child’s snot, sent his desk out to be refinished. It is 165 years old, so that won't be cheap. Removal of the desk was reported in USA Today without reference to Musk’s offspring. Other news outlets likewise primly avoided reference to the child’s mucus habit (compare the Cross and Daniels in references below). In The Guardian, Catherine Bennett noted with disapproval that Trump is a known germophobe. (But after Covid-19, who isn’t? Does Bennett think it’s cool for kids to wipe their snot hither and yon? Evidently.)

So much for the lad. What about the dad? Musk’s mother is a Canadian model and dietitian. His father is a South African engineer, pilot, consultant, and property developer. Out of the limelight are Musk’s younger sister, blessed with the operatic name Tosca, and four half-siblings on his father’s side. Musk had a privileged childhood and was raised by high achievers who imparted international awareness and high mobility to their offspring. He was born in 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa. His family life was centrifugal, moving away from the center geographically and otherwise.

Showing up in the Oval Office, Musk looks like a man on the run. Had he slept in his hat and coat? He had worn the same clothes to his first cabinet meeting. His son was much better-dressed than Musk was. What is the message that protocol-shunning Musk sends, wearing grubby attire to the Oval Office? He is regarded as the world’s richest man. Is he thereby exempt from the deference and restraint usually shown to leaders of nations, including his own?

Vance and the nuclear family

JD Vance understands deference and restraint and can tie a tie. He recently had his own Oval Office moment, having been criticized for leading the bullying of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelinsky in a meeting with Trump. Many think that Vance would have done better to let the President take the lead.

Vance knows what it is not to have a family, or even a name, of one’s own. By the time he was 17, Vance had been known both as J. D. Bowman and as James David Hamel. He served in the Marines as Hamel (2003-2007), then went to Ohio State, where he earned his B.A., with double majors, in two years. Yale law school was next. Only later, when he was about to graduate Yale in 2013, did he change his name to Vance, his mother’s maiden name.

In the first pages of his best-selling 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, Vance seems to apologize for writing his life story at age 31. He was “not a senator, a governor, or a former cabinet secretary.” True enough, but he was anything but ordinary. At the very young age of 38, he was an Ohio senator (2022-2024) and would soon be on his way to becoming Vice-President, at 40.

Vance’s February trip to Paris was his first international appearance. He took his family. Their arrival shows that being a father and husband is an important part of his identity. (You can see the event, and the family’s arrival in Munich, on YouTube.) Leaving the plane, Vance holds daughter Mirabel (2); son Ewan (7) is on the top step; and son Vivek (4) holds the hand of his mother, Usha. She wears a boat-neck top, no coat (it must have been cold, and it was raining) and flared trousers with heels. The Vice-President, wearing, as usual, a white shirt and tie, raises his hand in greeting. Vance introduced his daughter as he greeted the dignitaries waiting on the tarmac. In the You Tube video, we see one of the diplomats smiling and reaching out to pat the child.

Treading cautiously.

Vance was in Paris to speak to an AI conference. Later, in Munich, he criticized European dependence on America’s defense words were not quite what his audience had expected to hear. The Wall Street Journal’s Gerard Baker castigated Vance for his heavy-handed comments but agreed that European elites are “stifling opposition to their hegemony.” Baker believes that in Germany, France, and elsewhere, voters, unlike their leaders, oppose “uncontrolled immigration” and “environmental eschatology” while supporting “traditional social and religious values.” Family values rank high in those two categories, as Vance knows. By bringing his family to Paris and then to Munich, he made a statement about himself as father and family man before anything else could be said. His wife and children made their impressions too.

What can we learn from the contrast between these men? As a father and as a man, Musk is about exposition and exposure—about public display of identity. For Vance, however, the family is not about exposure. It is a developing unit, therapeutic and healing. For Vance, family means closeness and supervision. The video of their arrival in Munich shows the three children at the edge of the open door to the aircraft cabin. They reminded me of bunnies finding that their cage has been opened so that they could edge their way outside. Their mother stands watchfully behind them and (in the video) seems amused at their antics.

Baskerville argues that in the 1990s feminists took over the bureaucracies in charge of family life and put the squeeze on men, legally and administratively. Nobody seemed to notice. Baskerville points out that Republicans were complicit in this takeover. Today nobody can go wrong calling for more government regulation of the family. At the same time, anybody who criticizes the results of the feminist takeover of family life and the shrinking role of fatherhood is sure to be censured.

Apart from some disapproval of Musk’s son’s behavior (and, implicitly, of Musk), I have seen no commentary on Vance’s and Musk’s approaches to fatherhood or on the role of motherhood in these families. Musk’s multiple partner-mothers would seem to be the chief stabilizers of their families. I wonder how often the children see their bed-hopping father. On a daily basis, Musk seems, in spite of himself, to have spawned three single-parent families (or more) that he visits when he can.

The Vance approach is more demanding but I think better, since it is a family with two firm foundations. The Vances started a family when they were extremely busy. Usha Vance is a litigator who clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and for Judge Brett Kavanaugh when he was with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. She has a BA from Yale University and an MA from Cambridge; her law degree is from Yale. She is a trustee of the Washington National Opera and was formerly secretary of the board of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

However different their styles are, these fathers make the same point: they are present, in a public sense, as fathers. Mrs. Vance is equally present as a mother. They lead an impressively young Second Family. (The career of Musk’s partner Grimes is summed up on Wiki.)

I began with a focus on dads and return to it. We need to see dads. Support for fathers and male mentors is on Tom Golden’s list of “10 Things You Can do to Counter Gynocentrism and Bring Fairness to Men.” Actions are laudable, but we need words to amplify their effect. Golden has amplified Baskerville’s message and I am happy to have a chance to bring forward both Baskerville’s and Golden’s thoughts.

Both men suggest that we write to government officials and encourage them to restore balance and sanity to the large federal programs affect family life. Baskerville supplies the following information.

• White House 202-456-1111

• Switchboard: 202-456-1414

• You can leave a comment here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

• You can also use email (but the consensus is that email has less effect): https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/contact/

• The best way, it seems, is to send a letter on paper:

  The White House

  1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW

  Washington, DC 20500

• This may seem to be a very old-fashioned approach, Baskerville notes, but it will do more good than clicking all the “likes” and commenting on every “influencer” in the “manosphere.”

March 2025

Sources

Baker, Gerard. “Illiberalism Is Suffocating Europe.” The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 19, 2025. A21.

Baskerville, Stephen. Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family. Nashville, TN: Cumberland House, 2007.

“Trump Can Reverse the Decline of America's Families — and the Main Cause of the Decline of America.” Stephen Baskerville’s Newsletter. https://stephenbaskerville. substack.com/p/trump-can-reverse-the-decline-of. Feb. 25, 2025.

Bennett, Catherine. “Elon Musk’s four-year-old son blended in perfectly in the Oval Office with all the other bogeymen.” The Guardian. Feb. 23, 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/ 2025/feb/23/elon-musks-four-year-old-son-blended-in-perfectly-in-the-oval-office-with-all-the-other-bogeymen

Cross, Gretta. “ Trump removes 150-year-old Resolute Desk from the Oval Office to be 'lightly refinished.'” USA Today, Feb. 21, 2025. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics /2025/02/21/trump-resolute-desk-oval-office-white-house/79439592007/

Daniels, Karu F. “Trump Picks Resolute Desk after Musk’s Son Gets Nosy with Original.” Seattle Times. Feb. 23, 2025. https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation-politics/trump-picks-temporary-resolute-desk-after-musks-son-gets-nosy-with-original/

Economic Times (India.) “Trump Replaces Resolute Desk.” Feb. 21, 2025. https://economictimes. indiatimes.com/news/international/global-trends/us-news-trump-replaces-resolute-desk-after-elon-musks-son-little-x-picked-his-nose-wiped-booger-on-it-all-about-historic-oval-office-furniture/articleshow/118477070.cms?from=mdr#google_vignette

FactCheck. Entry on USAID. https://www.factcheck.org/2025/02/sorting-out-the-facts-on-waste-and-abuse-at-usaid/

Golden, Tom. “10 Things You Can Do to Counter Gynocentrism and Bring Fairness to Men.” Men are Good (Substack).

Green, Dominick. “JD Vance’s Message at Munich.” The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 19, 2025. A21.