The last time a sitting US Vice President had a baby was in 1870; JD Vance's fourth child ends a 150-year wait

US Vice President JD Vance has announced the birth of his fourth child with his wife, Usha Vance, marking the first time in more than 150 years that a sitting US vice president has welcomed a baby while in office. The couple's son, Alec Neel Vance, was born on Sunday morning, July 19, Vance said in a statement shared on X.

“Usha and the baby are happy and healthy, and our kids are overjoyed to meet their little brother,” he said, thanking the military doctors and staff at Walter Reed Medical Center for their care.



The couple, who announced the pregnancy in January, had said Usha Vance was due in late July. Alec joins the Vances' three older children, Ewan, 9, Vivek, 6, and four-year-old Mirabel.

According to the Associated Press, Alec Neel Vance's birth is historically significant because it is the first time in more than 150 years that a sitting US vice president has had a child while serving in office.

The previous known instance dates back to 1870, according to Time magazine, when Ellen Colfax, the wife of Vice President Schuyler Colfax during President Ulysses S. Grant's administration, gave birth to their son, Schuyler Colfax III. He later went on to serve as the mayor of South Bend, Indiana. The magazine noted that records of births involving vice presidential spouses before that period remain unclear.

Usha Vance was born and raised in the working-class suburbs of San Diego, California, to parents who immigrated to the United States from India. Her father is a mechanical engineer, and her mother is a molecular biologist.

She met JD Vance at Yale Law School in 2010. JD Vance has been one of the Trump administration's strongest advocates for higher birth rates in the United States. In his recently published book, he wrote that Usha had initially been reluctant to have another child but later changed her mind after conservative influencer Charlie Kirk was killed last year.