Five Candidates Can't Carry All Our Diaper Bags

By Allison Stevens

WeNews correspondent

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

When mothers of young children got elected to Congress a nursing room and day-care center opened on Capitol grounds. That's the kind of representation and advocacy that parents with young children need out here in the real world.

Allison Stevens (WOMENSENEWS)--Aside from all being women, what do the following 2010 U.S. congressional candidates have in common?

Krystal Ball, Democrat, Virginia's 1st District

Heather Beaven, Democrat, Florida's 7th District

Julie Lassa, Democrat, Wisconsin's 7th District

Jaime Herrera, Republican, Washington's 3rd District

Martha Roby, Republican, Alabama's 2nd District

The answer: unusual youth.

All five are endorsed by the Women-Under-Forty Political Action Committee, known as WUFPAC, which formed in 1999 in Washington, D.C., to support all younger women running for Congress.

"Women aged 40 and younger are nearly absent from elected office and we need their voices to help shape policy and lead our country," the Political Action Committee's site says. "Their perspectives as working professionals, mothers, caretakers and community activists are critical to the political conversation."

To my under-40 mom-of-two-young-sons' ears that sounds good. Especially the two key words: "mothers" and "caretakers."

WUFPAC doesn't require its candidates to have young children. But under-40s are the people most personally sensitive--through their own brood or those of friends and contemporaries--to issues such as paid parental leave, incentives for telecommuting, protection of reproductive rights and subsidies for the exorbitant cost of child care.

A Unique Set of Needs

The millions and millions of moms with young children in this country have a unique set of needs that--not surprisingly--are nowhere near the top of the nation's policy agenda.

You've got to blame that on:

Women's 17 percent minority status in Congress

Younger women's particular scarcity

The political invisibility of female lawmakers with young children.

Among the hundreds of caucuses in Congress--some revolving around issues as narrow as bourbon and the Value Added Tax--I could not find a single one for mothers or fathers.

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