A quiet conversation inside the US Vice President’s residence gave a glimpse into the personal faith and family life of US Vice President JD Vance and his wife, Second Lady Usha Vance, as they opened up about religion, marriage and raising a young family in Washington.Speaking in an interview with Sunday Morning national correspondent Robert Costa, the couple talked about their life at the VP residence, where they are raising three children, aged four, six and nine, with a fourth child due to arrive soon.Vance joked about the unusual setting, saying that even the President teases him about it.“The president will actually criticize me sometimes, because he’ll say, ‘You have a nicer house than me,'” she said.The interview also focuses on Vance’s recent book ‘Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith’, which details his 2019 conversion to Catholicism and how it has shaped his politics, marriage and personal life.Usha Vance opened up about how her husband’s faith journey has affected their relationship, including his past comments about therapy and church.Usha once told her husband, “Therapy didn’t work for you; the church did.”He added to that thought during the interview.“And it’s not that therapy doesn’t work for other people,” Usha said, “but JD didn’t have the right kind of trust in that process. He didn’t feel at home in it, he was really exploring some of his feelings and trying to figure out how to become the person he’s wanted to be his whole life.”In his book, Vance describes his search for stability after a turbulent childhood. He said that growing up in the changing environment of his home, he often felt uneasy.“I grew up in some ways in a very non-traditional home, you know? A revolving door of people coming in, people coming out, raised at some points by my grandparents, at some points by my parents, my mother, my father. So, there was a certain hustle and bustle and chaos in my youth. And I think I was searching for something that again felt a little more rooted and a little more stable. Feel it.
Did Vance force Usha to convert?
Usha was raised in a Hindu family in California. He said that there are often misunderstandings and differences of faith in their relationship.The second woman cleared up all misunderstandings, saying: “I think people actually got the idea at one point that JD was interested in my religious conversion. And I think the root cause is that he’s Catholic, he felt misunderstood; part of his faith is wanting to spread his faith. But it is not that he is getting me to convert every day.”She also talked about how she often acts as a sounding board for her husband’s political comments.“Well, she just texts me or calls me, or if we’re sitting at home together, she’ll let me know,” Vance said. “Usha is very outspoken. This is one of the things I have loved about Usha from the beginning.”Interviewees also described how personal interactions have influenced their family decisions. Usha said the discussion following the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk helped shape her thinking about having a fourth child.“I think it really heightened JD’s feeling that he had been talking about this for a while, this feeling that there was a possibility of having another child that he could love as much as we had three children,” she said.She added, “And it really made it clear (to them) that if you can have that second child, you have nothing to regret. And if we can’t have that second child, we were very happy with the children that we had.”