Electing moms is great. Here’s why it’s not enough.

And what's missing from the conversation.

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Welcome to Delightfully Difficult! My name is Allison and I write about motherhood, midlife, and everything in between. You can learn more about me and what to expect here, as well as connect with me on Instagram. Thanks for stopping by!

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If you’ve been online the last couple of years, you’ve probably noticed there’s been an increase in posts and stories about needing to elect more moms to public office. It’s not an entirely new conversation, but it has certainly become more prevalent (since the pandemic) as more organizations seek to harness the collective power of moms to tackle issues that disproportionately impact parents and families, such as the cost and accessibility of childcare and paid family leave.

It makes sense, of course. Moms do pass policies that support parents and families. According to a summary from this Marie Claire article on Vote Mama Foundation’s State of Motherhood report in 2022, “Of the 10 states with the most mothers in the legislature, five have adopted or will soon implement paid family leave (Oregon, Colorado, Washington, California, Maryland). Seven of the top 10 states guarantee workers paid sick days (Oregon, Colorado, California, Washington, Maryland, Vermont, and New Mexico). All of the top 10 offer some form of universal preschool.” (Note: I tried to find the original report but it’s no longer on Vote Mama Foundation’s website, so all of the articles linking to it are broken).

This is, overall, fantastic. I absolutely believe that we need more moms in office and should do everything we can to get them there.

But it’s also not enough because while it makes for a great headline, too often these discussions ignore the challenges moms face once they are in office and leaves them to fix it.

First, a little story time. When I was first elected to office in 2017, I didn’t have kids. If you had asked me how I felt about moms running for office, I would have shouted from the rooftops that I loved it and would do anything (anything!) I needed to support them. I praised my colleague Nicole Johnston, a single mom of three young kids, when she ran and subsequently wrote a policy allowing campaign funds to be used for childcare way back in 2019. I would have posted and tweeted and talked about how great it was to see moms running and lead. I would have said exactly what I’m reading in the news and on social media now: we need more moms in office so let’s get them there.

Then, when I got pregnant midway through my Council term, I learned that we didn’t have a parental leave policy. So, at seven months pregnant, I wrote my own. We then publicly discussed its merits and I had to ask my colleagues to vote for it on a public livestream. It was humiliating and, in hindsight, infuriating that this very basic policy wasn’t already a thing. (I wrote more about this here).

Not only was this not a thing at the local level, state legislatures also lack formal parental leave policies. While some states offer nursing rooms and have policies around excused absences, it wasn’t until 2020 that Colorado became the first state to codify a paid parental leave policy for its legislators after then-Senator Brittany Pettersen became pregnant and learned there was no formal policy. (She also called the process demeaning).

And so here’s where I start to get frustrated with the elect more moms conversation. Because I do, deep in my soul, believe that we need more moms in office.

We hear a lot about how hard it is for moms to run for office. And it is hard. It’s long hours, thousands of phone calls, countless public events, fundraising, weekends spent canvassing, etc. But being in office is also hard, and this is the part that gets lost in the conversation, despite it being the part that lasts for years.

The hours are also long and don’t coincide with school or traditional childcare centers’ hours. Meetings can run until 2 am, which means your high schooler babysitter is probably not available and besides, childcare is expensive. Not that you can afford it, anyways, (unless you’re independently wealthy) because so many state and local offices pay $40k or less for full-time work with unpredictable schedules and being on-call 24/7, making it hard to hold down a job if you work for someone else. Oh, and kids (especially younger ones) are generally unwelcome at meetings or events outside of a cute appearance. If they’re “well-behaved”, they’re neglected, but if they make themselves known, they’re a “distraction”. And if you would prefer to keep your child’s photo out of the public eye, good luck - there is very little respect for this. After all, you asked for it.

And so we expect the moms who were just elected to navigate all of the above and then also spend the next several years working on policies to address those challenges and pave the way for future moms. And they will. They do. And they do it successfully. They do this on top of everything else they care about and want to work on because moms get shit done.

But it comes at a cost, and I can tell you from personal experience that there is a large swath of people who really hate moms in office and think they should shut up and stay home with their kids (that’s almost a direct quote from an email I received). So now you have a newly elected mom trying to do all of the things while also bearing the brunt of the backlash and if she says anything, she’s told to stop complaining because again, she asked for it.

Which brings me back to the missing piece of the elect more moms conversation.

Everyone loves a pro-mom tagline (Run for office! Do hard things! Be superwoman!) but rarely in politics does that translate into systemic changes to support those same people. We need people in office now to write policies that will benefit moms once they get there, not just talk about it when they’re on the ballot. Proclaiming support for them on social media while failing to bring forward actual policies that will help them does nothing but uphold the status quo and forces moms to overcome barriers to office twice: both when they run and again when they’re elected. It’s unnecessary and entirely preventable.

I say this, of course, as someone who didn’t get it. I praised Nicole, my colleague with three kids, but I didn’t bring forward any policies that would have made her job easier. From the outside, she was doing great! She was handling things so well! But that’s the things with moms - we can rally and project strength even when we’re struggling. But we will also put in the work to make things easier for the person coming in after us, no matter the personal cost, and now that I know better, I want us to do better. (I should point out that Nicole is one of my dearest friends now and this is shared with her consent. It is partly because of my recognition of how we failed her that I’m so passionate about this now).

So yes, we need to elect more moms. But we also need to talk more about how to proactively put supports into place for them for once they get there. And we need to demand that the people in office now, who express their support for electing more moms, take the lead with some actionable policies that help them succeed after they win. Because even though moms are expected to do it all, they shouldn’t have to.

Not sure what those policies are? Here are a few off the top of my head:

• Parental leave

• Allowing campaign funds for childcare (Vote Mama Lobby is successfully working on this one)

• On-site childcare for meetings or childcare stipends, including for parents who are required to staff the meetings

• Remote participation rather than being forced to miss votes

• Flexible committee meeting times, such as during the school year vs. summer

• <Insert any number of other ideas>

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Note: I want to take a moment to acknowledge that there are, of course, people who are having this conversation and who work diligently to support moms both in office and who may want to run via policy changes. It’s also not about any one city, town, or state. This is about the conversation as a whole. To the people doing this work: thank you.

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