At age 43, second-term Colorado Democratic Rep. Brittany Pettersen wasn't planning on having a second child.
“As if our lives weren't that complicated!” she laughed as she sat on a couch in her office in Parliament House earlier this week, staring at her pregnant belly, just weeks away from her due date. spoke. She blamed the “mistake” on the confusion of working in two time zones. “Consistent birth control can make things difficult,” she says. “That wasn't part of the plan.”
Somehow, in the 236 years that Congress has existed, Pettersen is about to become the 13th elected official to give birth while in office, and the first elected official from her home state. As Pettersen tries to plan the next phase of her life, the reality is emerging that this job was not created with people like her in mind.
There is no maternity leave for members of parliament. They can take time off from official duties without sacrificing pay, but they cannot vote unless they attend the Capitol. So Pettersen is taking a lead role in a new push by a bipartisan group of junior members of Congress and new parents to allow remote voting while taking up to 12 weeks of parental leave. He called for a change in the rules.
“This job was not created for young women or working families, and it certainly wasn't created for the average person,” Pettersen said. “Historically, this work was done by wealthy people who were not of childbearing age.”
Before boarding a plane Thursday to return to Lakewood, Colorado, where she planned to stay until after giving birth, Pettersen introduced “proxy voting for new parent resolutions.” It would change House rules to allow new mothers and fathers in Congress to leave Washington immediately after the birth of their children and nominate a colleague to vote in their place.
“It's really heartbreaking,” Pettersen said. At that time. “
The solution is “common sense. It's about modernizing Congress.”
The idea has been percolating on Capitol Hill for some time, but with the House now narrowly divided and Republicans holding a one-vote majority, calls for a new Congress are growing louder. argue its supporters.
Republicans slammed former Speaker Nancy Pelosi for breaking centuries of history and House rules by introducing proxy voting during the coronavirus pandemic. Former Rep. Kevin McCarthy filed the lawsuit as minority leader, arguing that it is unconstitutional to allow members to vote by proxy in the absence of their colleagues.
House Republicans also argued that allowing proxy voting would harm the “collegiality” of members. Luna's decision was never voted on in the chamber.
Now, a bipartisan group is trying again. Ms. Pettersen's resolution was one of the first to be introduced at the beginning of the 119th Congress. This is slightly broader than Luna's original proposal and is written to include proxy voting for new fathers.
“I don't support proxy voting. I think it's very rare,” said Rep. Mike Lawler, a New York Republican who gave birth to his second child eight days before the election. “But I don't think becoming a parent should prevent a member from being elected and doing the job.”
Lawler, the leader of the new initiative and mother of a two-month-old baby, cannot leave Parliament House while his party holds a one-seat majority.
“We understand the impact when you have to choose between staying home or coming to your home to work,” he says. “That's not a good choice.”
Lawler dismissed House leadership's concerns about setting a bad precedent, saying existing protocols are no longer compatible with modern Congresses.
“Young people are being elected to public office at a much higher rate than when these rules were established,” he said. “If we talk about parenthood, we need to at least recognize that having children or being a parent shouldn't get in the way of work.”
Pettersen said she considered giving birth in Washington to continue voting, but ultimately decided against it.
“It's not fair to my family and it's not fair to my newborn that we're not at home with all the support and doctors and support systems,” she said.
Pettersen is still relatively new to Washington and motherhood, with her son still in kindergarten, but since she was pregnant with her first child and on the job, she has learned about her situation and elected officials. It was painfully clear that there was a disconnect between him and his work. In the Colorado State Legislature.
At the time, she was the first member of the organization to go on maternity leave. The only way to receive pay while on leave was to classify her situation as a “chronic illness.”
Since her return, Pettersson has successfully pushed for a law change that would allow future state legislators up to 12 weeks of paid parental leave.
Even before she walked the halls of Congress as an unusually pregnant lawmaker, Pettersen said she felt strangely unfit for the Capitol.
When she was 6 years old, her mother was prescribed opioids for a back injury and became addicted to heroin and then fentanyl. She overdosed more than 20 times. Pettersen said that as a child, no one kept track of whether she came home at night.
“When I was 12 years old, I saw a fishing show in Kansas and elsewhere,” she said. “I still got straight A’s.”
(Her mother recently celebrated her 70th birthday and it took her seven years to recover.)
Because her parents were behind on their taxes, she didn't qualify for student loans, so Pettersen paid for school in cash, waited tables, cleaned houses and did a variety of other odd jobs. She was the first in her family to graduate from high school or college.
Overcoming the challenges has made Pettersen even more determined to change her current workplace and make it more accessible to more people like her.
“When you're pregnant and you're a member of Congress, people ask, 'How are you doing with your family?'” I know that all of these questions are incomprehensible to my male colleagues. ” she said. “That’s such a double standard.”
