Vance really tries to make sense of his family. He loves them, but of course he's frustrated with where they are and what he and his sisters had to experience. Ultimately, where does Vance think the responsibility lies? With his people or the larger forces that have created certain social and economic disadvantages?

In his memoir Hillbilly Elegy, J. D. Vance presents his life and experience as a way for readers to encounter issues facing working class whites from impoverished regions in the United States. His own family has roots in Appalachia, although he himself grew up in the industrial Midwestern town of Middletown, Ohio.
The book recounts his journey from humble beginnings to acceptance at Yale, but much of the memoir engages with family dynamics. There's a particular focus on the relationships he has with his mother and grandmother (known as "Mamaw"). His mother specifically represents some of the more challenging impulses found among, in his words, "hill people": she was a teenage mother, was occasionally violent with her children, and stole medical supplies from work (she was a nurse), eventually becoming an addict. Recalling various members of his family, Vance asks himself what went wrong and what forces must be engaged with to create a better future.
He does question the amount of personal responsibility that can be attributed to members of his family (particularly his mother) and writes passages that can be interpreted as the beginnings of a criticism of systemic cultural issues:

"How much of our lives, good and bad, should we credit to our personal decisions, and how much is just the inheritance of our culture, our families, and our parents who have failed their children? How much is Mom’s life her own fault? Where does blame stop and sympathy begin?"

But all the same, he rejects the notion that change must come from the government or from social institutions:

"Public policy can help, but there is no government that can fix these problems for us.... Mamaw refused to purchase bicycles for her grandchildren because they kept disappearing—even when locked up—from her front porch. She feared answering her door toward the end of her life because an able-bodied woman who lived next door would not stop bothering her for cash—money, we later learned, for drugs. These problems were not created by governments or corporations or anyone else. We created them, and only we can fix them."

While some critics, such as Alec MacGillis in his much-shared article at The Atlantic, challenge this assumption and consider the ways the government failed working-class whites from regions like Appalachia, Vance saw the act of taking personal responsibilty as one of empowerment. After all, as mentioned above, if they were the ones who created these issues, then they might have the power to solve them.