The Indiana Statehouse is pictured on Monday, July 8, 2024, in Indianapolis, Indiana. (Noah Crenshaw | Daily Journal)
The number of Indiana lawmakers who are also moms of minor-aged children has boosted significantly since 2022, but family and women’s advocates maintain there’s still plenty of room for improvement.
That’s according to the second annual Politics of Parenthood: Representation in State Legislatures report published last month by the Vote Mama Foundation, a national nonprofit that tracks data on representation of moms in politics.
The first report was published in 2022 and indicated less than 1% of Hoosier state legislators were moms with children under 18 years old. At the time, Indiana was ranked 49th in the nation.
As of February, 6.67% of Indiana’s state lawmakers were moms of minors, according to the new report.
Indiana now ranks 33rd in the nation for its concentration of moms of minors in the latest Vote Mama analysis. Currently, 10 serve in the General Assembly.
Even so, Indiana would need 18 more moms of minors to become lawmakers to reach proportional representation to the moms those lawmakers represent.
“Despite encouraging growth in the representation of mothers in our state legislatures, we are still missing the voices of moms at the decision-making table,” Vote Mama Foundation Founder and CEO Liuba Grechen Shirley said in a statement. “Not having enough mothers in office means legislative bodies that are disconnected from issues so many American families face. Our legislatures were simply not designed with caregivers in mind. We must identify, analyze, and dismantle the barriers that prevent mothers from campaigning and sustainably serving.”
What keeps moms out of office?
Across both chambers, Indiana’s 41 women officeholders account for about 27% of the legislature, according to the Center for American Women and Politics.
In a multi-state series published earlier this year by States Newsroom, the Indiana Capital Chronicle and other network outlets looked at the unique challenges mom lawmakers face.
The Capital Chronicle found that while thousands of lawmakers have cycled through the Indiana General Assembly in the last two centuries, only a fraction have been women — and even fewer among them, moms.
More Hoosier women are serving in public office than ever before, bringing with them different perspectives on writing laws and governing.
But barriers remain for women — and moms, especially — to make it into the Statehouse. Legislators who spoke to the Capital Chronicle in May repeatedly pointed to inadequate access to child care as a top deterrent.
They said, too, that balancing a public and private life can also be more challenging than for their male counterparts.
Several Democrat Hoosier women lawmakers said increased child care, including for lawmakers, would help more moms seek seats in the Legislature. They emphasized that getting those initiatives across the finish line is complicated by a male-dominated Republican supermajority, though.
Nationwide numbers
Of the 7,386 elected lawmakers in state legislatures around the country, 582 — about 7% — are moms with children under the age of 18, Vote Mama found in its report.
Though the number of moms elected to legislative offices nationwide jumped 48.6% from 2022 to 2024, representatives from the nonprofit said there is still work that needs to be done if moms are to achieve representational equality.
About 86% of women in the U.S. will give birth and become moms by age 44, not including women who become mothers through adoption or other means, according to the Pew Research Center. Vote Mama noted that 763 more moms of minors would have to be elected to state legislatures to achieve proportional representation.
Indiana’s neighbor to the north is leading the nation with one of the largest jumps of mothers serving in its legislature. Michigan doubled from about 6% in 2022 to more than 13% in 2024, according to Vote Mama.
To the east, Ohio ranked 37th — a drop from its previous 34th placement — with 6.06% of the state’s lawmakers being moms of minors.
Kentucky was 34th with 8.7%, and Illinois ranked 13th with 10.17%.
In the latest report, no state had proportional representation of lawmaker moms of children under 18.
California, Minnesota, Virginia, Michigan and Nevada were the states with the highest representation of legislature moms of minors. Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina, Mississippi and West Virginia had the lowest representation.
Vote Mama outlined recommendations for all 50 statehouses, including that:
- Every state legislator should be paid a living wage to support themselves and their families.
- All state legislators should have access to paid family and medical leave.
- All state legislators should have the option to participate in votes and committee hearings remotely
- All state legislators should be eligible to receive reimbursements to cover the costs of childcare and dependent care expenses that are directly related to carrying out their official duties.
- Mamas Caucuses build the political power of moms to pass truly family-friendly policies.
- All state legislators should have access to changing tables, pumping rooms, and on-site childcare at the capitol.
By Casey Smith — The Indiana Capital Chronicle is an independent, not-for-profit news organization that covers state government, policy and elections.
