Balancing family obligations and public service is a persistent challenge for working mothers in America’s political system, family advocates told the 2024 National Press Foundation Women in Politics Fellowship. They say the system has largely failed to account for childcare and other related responsibilities.
Liuba Grechen Shirley, founder of the Vote Mama Foundation, and Virginia state Sen. Jennifer Carroll Foy said additional support is needed, especially for working mothers. The support is required to gain equal access to elective office and other forms of public service.
“So, we are trying to change the structural barriers, trying to change the way that people run, trying to change the way that people serve,” said Grechen Shirley. Her group has been a leading advocate for mothers’ full participation in the nation’s political system. “There is now a very high attrition rate for moms serving in state legislatures… That needs to change.”
While Grechen Shirley narrowly lost a bid for Congress in 2018, she was the first woman to receive approval from the Federal Election Commission to use campaign funds for childcare. That was a historic decision supported by more than two dozen members of Congress. It served as an important acknowledgment of what has long been an obstacle for women pursuing careers in public service.
Six years after that decision, $1 million in campaign funds have been used to pay for childcare.
“This is a resource that, if it’s available, people use it because it’s necessary and it sounds like a non-sexy, inside-baseball, really small structural change,” Grechen Shirley said. “It has the ability to completely transform the political landscape.”
The ground-breaking work has special meaning for Carroll Foy.
Shortly after deciding to seek public office in 2017, Carroll Foy said she learned she was pregnant with twins. It wasn’t until she shared the news with a close friend that Carroll Foy understood the new challenge facing her candidacy.
“I told my really good friend that I was pregnant, and I thought she would be ecstatic for me,” Carroll Foy said. “And the first thing that she said to me was, ‘Oh, that’s great. So, when are you going to drop out of the race?”
The campaign became more taxing when the pregnancy required her hospitalization. The twins ultimately survived premature births even as a neonatologist offered an unsettling warning to prepare for the worst.
“I can tell you that I won that race by 12 votes because of the work that my husband put in to make sure that we brought home the win,” Carroll Foy said. “And so, I would never recommend that for anyone. But it was some that was important to me because… I never want another person out there to have … to choose between my family and my profession, what I want.”
Access the full transcript here.
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