Consultant Brittany Pettersen, a second-term Colorado Democrat, was not planning to have a second baby on the age of 43.
“As if our life wasn’t complicated enough!” she stated with fun as she organized herself on a sofa in her workplace on Capitol Hill earlier this week, staring down at her pregnant stomach simply 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 stated. “It was not part of the plan.”
Congress has existed for 236 years, however someway Ms. Pettersen is about to turn into solely the thirteenth voting member to offer start whereas in workplace, and the primary from her house state. As Ms. Pettersen tries to plan the following part of her life, the truth is setting in that this job was not created with somebody like her in thoughts.
There isn’t any maternity go away for members of Congress. Whereas they’ll take time away from the workplace with out sacrificing their pay, they can not vote if they aren’t current on the Capitol. So Ms. Pettersen has taken a lead position in a brand new push by a bipartisan group of youthful lawmakers and new mother and father in Congress to vary the foundations to permit them to vote remotely whereas they take as much as 12 weeks of parental go away.
“This job is not made for young women, for working families, and it’s definitely not made for regular people,” stated Ms. Pettersen. “It’s historically been wealthy individuals who are not of childbearing age who do this work.”
