Representative Brittany Pettersen, a second-term Colorado Democrat, was not planning to have a second child at the age of 43.
“As if our life wasn’t complicated enough!” she said with a laugh as she arranged herself on a couch in her office on Capitol Hill earlier this week, staring down at her pregnant belly just weeks from her due date. She blamed the “mistake” on the confusion of working in two time zones. “It can make things hard with consistent birth control,” she said. “It was not part of the plan.”
Congress has existed for 236 years, but somehow Ms. Pettersen is about to become only the 13th voting member to give birth while in office, and the first from her home state. As Ms. Pettersen tries to plan the next phase of her life, the reality is setting in that this job was not created with someone like her in mind.
There is no maternity leave for members of Congress. While they can take time away from the office without sacrificing their pay, they cannot vote if they are not present at the Capitol. So Ms. Pettersen has taken a lead role in a new push by a bipartisan group of younger lawmakers and new parents in Congress to change the rules to allow them to vote remotely while they take up to 12 weeks of parental leave.
“This job is not made for young women, for working families, and it’s definitely not made for regular people,” said Ms. Pettersen. “It’s historically been wealthy individuals who are not of childbearing age who do this work.”
