How a breastfeeding lawmaker exposed what moms have to balance in the California Capitol

In California, Democrats routinely fight for gender equity for women in the workplace by passing laws that prohibit unfair pay disparities, enhance sexual harassment protections and bar corporations from having a male-only board.

But it took a breastfeeding lawmaker who drove to the Capitol in Sacramento with her 1-month-old daughter on the final night of the 2019-2020 session to provide a key vote for controversial legislation to enhance the state’s paid family leave law.

With that vote, Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, publicly symbolized the sometimes-double standard new moms experience in the super-majority Democratic Legislature.

In more than a dozen interviews with The Sacramento Bee, members and staff said while the Legislature’s family leave is generous, the Capitol has little, if any, top-down directive from leadership on creating an inclusive environment for new moms once they return to work.

Instead, The 120 legislators who help write the laws governing California workplaces are largely allowed to establish their own cultures that influence life for parents in their offices.

The inconsistent approach has left these mothers at the mercy of the members, who may or may not believe politics and babies are mutually exclusive.

“It is incredibly unusual that somebody comes back from maternity leave and segues in nicely,” a Senate chief of staff who’s worked in the Legislature for two decades told The Bee. “It’s really hard to figure out how to balance this job with kids and new motherhood, new parenthood.”

Most of the women spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation for speaking about their employers.

The California Legislative Women’s Caucus, in response to Wicks’ experience, acknowledged the Legislature is falling short for working moms, and pledged to “do better” by bringing outdated policies in alignment with what members promise for their own constituents. Wicks went to the Capitol that night after her request to participate from home was denied under the Assembly’s policy for proxy voting during the coronavirus outbreak.

“Buffy Wicks’ situation really brought everything to a head,” said Sen. Connie Leyva, a Chino Democrat and chair of the caucus. “Women are not going to get ahead in the Capitol or the working world until we are not an afterthought.”

Here’s what the moms said needs fixing.

‘Your job revolves around the member’

Most of the women interviewed said they were largely left alone during their maternity leave to bond with their babies and recover from childbirth.

But the moms said when they returned to work, members expected them to have the same “24/7” availability as before they gave birth.

The inherent “Type A” and perfectionistic culture of working in politics, the women said, fosters a culture of “working nonstop.”

“Underlying all of it, there’s an environment of ‘if this is too difficult or this isn’t the kind of work that you want to be doing, there’s 100 people lined up to take your job behind you,’” the Senate chief of staff said.

Because there are seldom part-time positions available and legislative work isn’t confined to a traditional workday, the women said they sometimes felt uncomfortable asking if they could leave at 5 p.m. to pick their babies up from childcare, or at noon for enough time to make midday feedings.

Several staff members said they felt pressure to respond to members’ late-night text messages or email threads while on leave, even if the lawmaker verbally expressed no expectation for an exchange. They said they worried about being replaced with younger staffers, someone who didn’t have children or male employees if they didn’t prove themselves always available.

“A lot of my coworkers were young, single and didn’t have kids they had to navigate around,” a Senate committee employee. “When you are personal staff, your job revolves around the member. There’s that pressure to be engaged, and there was never a chance to turn off.”

Pumping in privacy

Secretary of the Senate Erika Contreras was still a nursing mom when she assumed her role overseeing the house’s administrative operations in 2018.

“I had to use the closet in my office on the fourth floor of the Capitol because the blinds didn’t provide sufficient privacy,” Contreras said. “I would schedule ‘Valentina’ twice a day in my Outlook calendar so I could be sure to pump enough to maintain a milk supply.”

Several other moms echoed that experience.

The Senate committee staffer said she didn’t feel comfortable using the new mother’s room in the Capitol, which she considered too communal for what she wanted to be a more private experience.

“When you’re pumping, you know, your nipples are out,” she said.

Another long-term staff member in the Capitol said during hours-long hearings, she would pick a controversial bill she wasn’t working on to take a 15-minute pumping break in her office before she started “leaking.”

A third mom who works in the Assembly would use the conference space available in her member’s office during pumping sessions.

“The reason I mostly utilized our private space was if I had a dress on that needed to be unzipped,” she said, “I didn’t want to undress with two other moms.”

Contreras said before the pandemic rocked California in March, she was working on establishing “nursing pods” — like those at most airports — and additional “lactation accommodations” for lawmakers, their staff and Capitol visitors.

“We also were looking into small, personal refrigerators for milk storage so as to avoid having to store milk in shared staff fridges where colleagues are storing their lunch,” Contreras said. “My staff and I are continuing to work on these issues in real time so that our new parents, and especially our new mothers, can make that successful transition back to work and maintain a healthy career/life balance.”

‘The institution was created by men’

Both members and the staff interviewed said the Legislature is working hard to modernize decades of rules established at a time when women didn’t work in the Capitol.

A Senate staffer said when she worked as a legislative aide 16 years ago, she would bring her baby into the office when she was in a childcare crunch and navigating her divorce.

“The waiting list for child care was two years long,” the staffer said. “To support my stressful situation, the senator allowed me to bring my newborn son to come to work with me daily. We set up a crib next to my desk.”

Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, said the Assembly has in recent years made it easier for members to drop their kids off at school on Monday mornings or pick them up on Thursday afternoons.

The Assembly staffer who used the conference room to pump said she agreed the Capitol, along with most workplaces, had kinks to straighten out. But, she added, the Legislature has worked hard to welcome parents into the building.

“Would it be awesome if the Capitol were a place like Google that had washing machines and day care facilities? Sure,” she said. “Is that something the public would or should go for with tax dollars? Probably not. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of that utopian, family Disneyland, but it’s not a bad place to be a good parent.”

After witnessing Wicks’ experience, however, both Leyva and Assemblywoman Monique Limón, vice chair of the caucus and a Santa Barbara Democrat, said they’ll continue working toward making the Legislature a more mom-friendly environment.

The caucus might consider a uniform expectation of how members treat new moms in their offices through training, Leyva said. Members also want to encourage more women to run for office and help dismantle any patterns of moms being overlooked for promotions.

“The institution was created by men, for men and without women,” said Limón, who’s likely to become the first state senator in decades with a newborn baby. “That’s what we are trying to change...170 years.”

This story was originally published September 23, 2020 at 5:00 AM.