6.8%
MOMS (KIDS <18) IN THE 118TH CONGRESS
1.1%
MOMS (KIDS <6) IN THE 118TH CONGRESS
59
MOMS OF MINOR CHILDREN NEEDED TO ACHIEVE PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION
There is a baby boom in Congress, but not for women.
11 congressmen welcomed newborns in the last year alone, but only 11 women have ever given birth while serving in Congress.
Men outnumber women in the 118th Congress at about 2.5 to 1. This ratio is fairly consistent across groups of congressmen and congresswomen by parental status; however, we see considerable differences in two groups:
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For members of Congress who do not have children, the gender gap is much narrower—less than a quarter of that among men and women overall.
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For parents of children under the age of 6, dads outnumber moms nearly 9 to 1.
Politics of Parenthood
Reaching Proportional Representation:
118th Congress
Mothers of minor children are grossly underrepresented in Congress. Only 6.8% of all congressmembers are moms with minor children, and just 1.1% of congressmembers are moms with children under 6.
11 congressmen welcomed newborns in the last year alone, but only 11 women have ever given birth while serving in Congress.
Men outnumber women in the 118th Congress at about 2.5 to 1. This ratio is fairly consistent across groups of congressmen and congresswomen by parental status; however, we see considerable differences in two groups:
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For members of Congress who do not have children, the gender gap is much narrower—less than a quarter of that among men and women overall.
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For parents of children under the age of 6, dads outnumber moms nearly 9:1.
THERE IS A BABY BOOM IN CONGRESS—BUT NOT FOR WOMEN.
While 24.2% of all members of Congress are dads of minor children, only 6.8% are moms of minor children. Among all congressmembers, moms of minors are underrepresented at about one third of the rate they appear in the population (17.8%), while dads of minors are overrepresented at more than one and a half times the rate in the population (15.1%).
Key Findings
The research presented here is long overdue, but it is just the beginning of our collective understanding of the experience of being both a legislator and a caretaker. While Vote Mama Foundation’s analysis focuses on the intersection of motherhood and political participation, it is our intention for this data to benefit all those working toward an equitable and accountable political system.
Politics of Parenthood is a dataset of robust demographics for state and federal legislators. Our aim is to provide nuanced and accessible data suited for both research and public communication.
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Legislators include: all state legislators who use she/her or they/them pronouns in office as of August 2022 and all members of the 118th Congress as of April 2023
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Variables include: date elected to current office, education, previous occupation, age, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, religion, marital status, ability status, parental status, number of children, age of youngest child, and caregiving status.
Data are collected through extensive monitoring of news and social media and build on the work of other organizations. Because the data relies on publicly available information, it is not infallible or exhaustive. However, to the knowledge of Vote Mama Foundation, it is the largest and most complete demographic dataset of legislators in the U.S.
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Mamas are cis and trans women with biological children, foster children, step-children, and formally or informally adopted children under the age of 18. We also refer to mamas interchangeably as moms of minor kids or mothers of minor children. Though our research focus is on the political participation of mamas, the dataset includes parental status for all included legislators, regardless of their gender or the age of their youngest child.
We evaluate representativeness in terms of the population. We consider equitable representation to be achieved when the share of a demographic in a legislature is similar to that of the adult population in the United States. Unless specifically noted otherwise, all population-level statistics are derived from 2020 American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year Estimate Public Use Microdata.
It is important to note that this definition is not intended to be a measure of ideal representation—it may not be enough to adequately center the needs of vulnerable populations or It is important to note that this definition is not intended to be a measure of ideal representation—it may not be enough to adequately center the needs of vulnerable populations or even provide protection from outright harms. Proportional representation should be our baseline, but it does not have to be our end goal. provide protection from outright harms. Proportional representation should be our baseline, but it does not have to be our end goal.
The 118th Congress is the most racially and ethnically diverse in history. There are more women serving in Congress than ever before, including a record number of women of color. This Congress has also broken records for lesbian, gay, and bisexual representation.
Despite this, white men alone hold the majority of seats. Women hold only 28.7% of congressional seats. There are only 13 openly lesbian, gay, or bisexual members of Congress. Only 6.8% are moms of minor children.
Key Findings: Mothers of minor children are grossly underrepresented in Congress. Only 37 members of congress are moms with minor children, and just 6 are moms with children under the age of 6.
Figure: Number of parents in the 118th U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate by parental status and age of youngest child.
Among the 541 members of the 118th U.S. Congress (including non-voting members), just 37 are moms with children under the age of 18. Only 3 of these moms are serving in the Senate, where they are outnumbered by dads of minors 7 to 1.
From the start of 2022 to early 2023, 6 Republican and 5 Democratic congressmen have welcomed newborns, but not a single congresswoman has given birth or adopted a child. While there are only 6 congresswomen with kids under the age of 6, there are nearly 9 times as many congressmen with kids under 6.
Figure: Marital status as a percent of parents of minors by gender. For example, 86% of moms of minors are married, and 96% of dads of minors are married.
Even though there are considerably more dads of minors than moms of minors in the 118th Congress, there is one more single mom than there are single dads (5 vs. 4). The only single parent of minors in the Senate is a dad.
Adopted/Foster children
total
moms
dads
total
democrats
D
republicans
R
10
1
9
2
0
2
8
1
7
Stepchildren
total
moms
dads
total
democrats
D
republicans
R
24
13
11
17
12
5
7
1
6
Almost 8% of all parents in Congress have step, adopted, or foster children (of any current age). More than twice as many Democrats have stepchildren compared to Republicans. All 7 Republican stepparents are Representatives, and 5 of the 17 Democratic stepparents are Senators. There are 4 times as many Republicans in Congress who have fostered and formally or informally adopted children (of any current age) than Democrats. 9 of the 10 adoptive parents are dads.
Figure: Democrats (left) and Republicans (right) in the 18th Congress by gender, parental status, and age of youngest child.
9.4% of Democrats in Congress are moms of minor children, but only 4.4% of Republicans in Congress are moms of minor children.
Key Findings: There are twice as many Democratic moms of minor children in the 118th Congress than there are Republican moms of minor children.
Figure: Political affiliation of men, women, moms of minors, and dads of minors.
In Congress, a distinct majority of women are Democrats (71.0%), while a distinct majority of men are Republicans (59.6%). This holds true for parents of minor children—67.7% of moms with minor children are Democrats while 60.3% of dads with minor children are Republicans.
Figure: Number of moms of minors in the 118th Congress by race and ethnicity. Moms of minors as a percent of the 118th Congress overall. Moms of minors as a percent of the total adult population of the United States, i.e. there are 3 Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) moms of minors in the 118th Congress, which is 0.6% of Congress. AAPI moms of minors are 1.4% of the adult population in the United States.
While only 28.6% of congressmembers are women, 43.4% of all congressmembers of color are women. Women without children are the only group that is not majority white when congressmembers are grouped by gender and parental status.
Despite women and moms in Congress being more racially diverse than men and dads, there are still only 16 moms of color with minor children in Congress. Women disproportionately account for the racial and ethnic diversity in Congress.
Dads of minors in Congress are not representative of the diversity of fathers in the United States population. 73.3% of fathers of minors in Congress are white, but only 54.7% of fathers in the population are white.
Key Findings: Women—including moms of minors—serving in Congress are racially diverse, but moms of color with minor children still only make up 3.0% of Congress.
% of american adults
% of congress members
# of moms of minors in congress
white/ euro
latinx/ hispanic
black/aa
11.7%
4.1%
2.8%
4.1%
0.7%
1.3%
22
4
7
aapi
multiracial
indigenous
jewish
mena
1.4%
0.6%
3
0.4%
2
0.4%
0.4%
1
0.2%
—
0.4%
2
—
0.2%
1
Figure: Proportion and number of congress members by gender and parental status among each racial/ethnic group, i.e. 7 Black moms with minor children make up 10.9% of all Black congress members, and 11 Black dads with minor children make up 17.2% of all Black congress members.
Congressmembers of color are more representative in terms of gender and parenthood than white congressmembers. All other racial and ethnic groups are closer to gender parity than white congressmembers—only AAPI and Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) congressmembers have reached gender parity. Of all racial and ethnic groups, white congressmembers have the lowest percentage (4.7%) of moms of minor children.
Over 8% of the adult population in the United States is LGBT,* according to the 2021 Household Pulse Survey, but only 2.4% of Congress is openly lesbian, gay, or bisexual. LGB representation has tripled in the past 10 years to a record level in the 118th Congress —but there are still only 13 members. There has never been an openly trans or nonbinary person elected to Congress.
Using 2014–2016 ACS data, UCLA’s Williams Institute found 16.2% of same-assigned-sex couples were parents of minor children, but only 7.7% of LGB Congressmembers are parents of minor children. Of the 13 LGB Congressmembers, just 1 is a mom of a minor child. There are no bisexual parents or gay fathers.
LGBTQIA+ people, particularly trans children, are in an extremely precarious position in the current policy environment. We cannot be certain what percentage of the United States population are trans or nonbinary parents or what percentage of parents have trans or nonbinary children. The 2021 Household Pulse Survey was the first time in history that the Census Bureau attempted to count the number of LGBT people in the United States, but the ACS and the U.S. Census, which we and many other researchers rely on for population-level statistics, still do not collect data on gender identity or sexual orientation of respondents or their children. Instead, the two largest surveys administered by the Census Bureau rely only on sex assigned at birth. Though we cannot draw comparisons to the population at large, we found that of the 467 parents of both minor and adult children in Congress, just 2 (0.4%) have shared that their children identify as transgender or nonbinary.
Key Findings: There is only 1 openly LGBTQIA+ parent of minor children in Congress.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 26% of adults in the United States have disabilities they report cause them "serious difficulty." Despite broader inclusion criteria, we found that only 3.9% of the 118th Congress have spoken publicly about their own disabilities or chronic health issues. In part because of the lack of positive emphasis on disclosing disability status, we cannot be certain that we have included all members of Congress with disabilities or that the legislators we have included do in fact identify as disabled. However, we can be certain that people with disabilities are not fully represented.
People with disabilities are often caregivers not only for themselves but for others. According to ACS data, 17.4% of U.S. adults with disabilities are parents of minor children, and the CDC has found that 33% of all caregivers also report having a disability themselves. Of the congressmembers with disabilities, nearly half are also parents of minor children and 1 is a caregiver for their spouse.
Several legislators only disclosed their disability or caregiver status to defend themselves politically. For others, their disability or caregiver status is an integral part of their public identity. By including caregiver and disability status as necessary demographics in assessing the representativeness of our legislative bodies, we hope that they will be taken as strengths rather than coerced justifications.
Key Findings: We know of only 3.9% of the 118th Congress who have disabilities. Nearly half of congressmembers with disabilities are also parents of minor children.
In their 2020 report Caregiving in the U.S., AARP found that a total of 19.2% of adults were caregivers of one or more adults. According to the National Alliance for Caregiving, more than a quarter of unpaid adult caregivers are in the sandwich generation (i.e. people who are providing unpaid care for an older adult while simultaneously parenting a minor child). We were only able to find 51 (9.4%) members of the 118th Congress who have shared that they have been caregivers of other adults at any point in their lives. Of these congressional caregivers:
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8 were caregivers of their parents when they themselves were minors or young adults, and 3 cared for their younger siblings at the same time.
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9 are currently providing care to: 2 spouses, 5 adult children, 2 parents, and 1 sister. 4 of them are also parents to minor children without known disabilities.
AARP reported that in 2020, 5.7% of adults in the U.S. population cared for minors with disabilities. 3.9% (21) of congressmembers have spoken about their children who have or had disabilities or major health events that required additional medical or educational support. In the 118th Congress, there are twice as many dads of children with disabilities than moms of children with disabilities, but the rate among moms is higher: 5.8% of all moms and 4.0% of all dads.
This is the first time this data has been collected on members of Congress—presumably because of our culture of silence around caregiving, disability, and end of life. It is likely that there are caregivers on whom public data was not available. However, we have attempted to be as inclusive as possible with our criteria.
Key Findings: We know of only 9 congressmembers (1.7%) providing care for one or more adults and 4 congressmembers (0.7%) currently providing care to minors with disabilities in 2023.
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Politics of Parenthood
