Who are JD Vance’s parents? About mom Beverly Aikins and dad Donald Bowman

When it comes to his early years and family life, Vice President JD Vance has been an open book — namely, “Hillbilly Elegy.”

In his 2016 memoir, Vance largely credits his grandparents, especially his beloved “Mamaw,” for shaping his life, outlook and values. But they weren’t the only ones who raised him.

For at least part of his upbringing, JD Vance’s parents — Donald Bowman and Beverly Aikins — played formative roles, too. The vice president vividly captured the impact his parents had on him both in his memoir and on the campaign trail.

Who are JD Vance’s parents? Read on to learn about Donald Bowman and Beverly Aikins.

His father ‘gave him up for adoption’ at age 6

Donald Bowman and Beverly Aikins married in 1983, and the following year, the couple welcomed their son. Still, by the time he was a toddler, their marriage was already over.

Two years after their divorce, JD Vance’s mother married a man named Bob Hamel. In his memoir, JD Vance recalled how his biological father gave up his claim to his son soon after.

“Dad gave me up for adoption when I was 6,” he wrote in his memoir. “After the adoption, he became kind of a phantom for the next six years. I had few memories of life with him. I knew that he loved Kentucky, its beautiful mountains, and its rolling green horse country. He drank RC Cola and had a clear Southern accent. He drank, but he stopped after he converted to Pentecostal Christianity. I always felt loved when I spent time with him, which was why I found it so shocking that he ‘didn’t want me anymore,’ as Mom and Mamaw told me. He had a new wife with two small children, and I’d been replaced.”

When JD Vance hit his teens, Donald Bowman reconnected with him, and over time, they renewed their relationship. Still, the fact that his father gave him up for adoption when he was so young remained a sore topic — until they finally discussed it.

“For the first time, I heard his side of the story: that the adoption had nothing to do with a desire to avoid child support and that, far from simply ‘giving me away,’ as Mom and Mamaw had said, Dad had hired multiple lawyers and done everything within reason to keep me,” Vance wrote in his book.

The adoption only happened after his dad became concerned that the “custody war was destroying” him.

Bowman died in 2023.

JD Vance was adopted by his stepfather and changed his name

JD Vance’s name changed with the adoption — and not just his last name.

“When Bob became my legal father, Mom changed my name from James Donald Bowman to James David Hamel,” he wrote in his bestseller.

“Until then, I’d borne my father’s first name as my middle name, and Mom used the adoption to erase any memory of his existence. She kept the D to preserve what had by then become a universal nickname — JD. Mom told me that I was now named after Uncle David, Mamaw’s older, pot-smoking brother. This seemed a bit of a stretch even when I was 6. Any old D name would have done, so long as it wasn’t Donald.”

When Aikins and Bob Hamel eventually parted ways, Hamel’s adopted son felt “one of the worst parts” of it was that it would complicate the already discordant names in his family.

His mother struggled with addiction

Aikins, who’d worked as a nurse, began abusing prescription medications while JD Vance was still a child, and later, he learned she also battled a heroin addiction. Throughout his childhood, her behavior toward him grew increasingly erratic.

In a 2017 interview with NBC News, he recalled a frightening interaction while riding in a car with his mother.

“I said something or some conversation topic really ignited her temper,” he explained. “Then she just sped up, and she kept on saying, ‘I’m just going to crash this car and kill us both.”

He eventually was raised by his grandparents

He escaped from the car, and Aikins was arrested. That’s when he went on to live with her parents, his grandparents, Bonnie and James Vance. In time, he took their last name.

His parents have other children, but he doesn’t know how many siblings he has

It’s hard to say how many siblings JD Vance has — even for him.

In “Hillbilly Elegy,” he stated that he “loathed” it when he was asked about brothers or sisters.

“When you’re a kid, you can’t wave your hand, say, ‘It’s complicated,’ and move on,” he wrote. “And unless you’re a particularly capable sociopath, dishonesty can only take you so far. So, for a time, I dutifully answered, walking people through the tangled web of familial relationships that I’d grown accustomed to. I had a biological half-brother and half-sister whom I never saw because my biological father had given me up for adoption. I had many stepbrothers and stepsisters by one measure, but only two if you limited the tally to the offspring of Mom’s husband of the moment. Then there was my biological dad’s wife, and she had at least one kid, so maybe I should count him, too. Sometimes, I’d wax philosophical about the meaning of the word ‘sibling’: Are the children of your mom’s previous husbands still related to you? If so, what about the future children of your mom’s previous husbands? By some metrics, I probably had about a dozen stepsiblings.”

He was raised with his older half sister Lindsay Ratliff, though he didn’t know about the “half” part in his youth, writing, “If any adjective ever preceded her introduction, it was always one of pride: ‘my full sister, Lindsay;’ ‘my whole sister, Lindsay;’ ‘my big sister, Lindsay.’ Lindsay was (and remains) the person I was proudest to know.”

Beverly Aikins has responded to ‘Hillbilly Elegy’

Although JD Vance’s turbulent upbringing and strained relationship with his mother was a major component of “Hillbilly Elegy,” both the book and the 2020 film adaptation, he didn’t consult her as he wrote it. Instead, he spoke to other relatives, as he and she weren’t speaking to each other at the time.

After the book’s publication, and after Aikins and JD Vance healed their rift, she said that he got their story right — from his perspective.

“I think 100 percent of it is accurate and true from a child’s standpoint,” she told The Movie Times in 2020. “You know, I didn’t think I was that bad of a mother. I do know that I was a drug addict. But I always knew that I had my parents, and I thought I was doing good by sending them to my mom’s all the time. I guess in hindsight, I should have been there more.”

Beverly Aikins has been sober for a decade

In a sign of their mended relationship, Aikins attended the Republican National Convention in July, and she looked on as her son introduced her and told those in attendance that she was “10 years clean and sober.”

Beverly Aikins attended Donald Trump and her son’s inauguration

Aikins was front and center for Donald Trump and her son’s inauguration ceremony at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 20, 2025.

Dressed in red, Aikins stood beside Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh to watch as her son was sworn in as vice president of the United States.

This article was originally published on TODAY.com

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