Report: Alabama only state with no mothers of school-age children in legislature

Sen. Merika Coleman, D-Pleasant Grove, listens to debate in the Alabama Senate on a bill to extend immunity to in vitro fertilization programs on Feb. 29, 2024, at the Alabama Statehouse in Montgomery, Ala. Coleman had young children when she was first elected to the Legislature in 2002, but a new report says Alabama now is the only state without women with school-age children serving as legislators. / Alabama Reflector photo by Brian Lyman

By Jemma Stephenson / Alabama Reflector October 6, 2024 5 min read

Alabama is the only state whose legislature has no mothers of school-age children, according to a new report.

The New York-based Vote Mama Foundation said in the report that as of February, 7.9% of lawmakers were mothers of minors. Alabama is the only state to lack any legislators who are mothers of young children or teenagers.

But Sarah Hague, chief program officer for the foundation, said that the current numbers reflected a nearly 50% increase in representation of moms of minors over 2022.

“And we’ve more than doubled the amount of legislators who were pregnant or gave birth since our last data set,” she said. “So we are certain that moms are underrepresented in state legislatures across the country, but also are finding reason for hope that we are creating and seeing incremental change in the representation of caregivers.”

Alabama also had no mothers of school-age children reported in the 2022 dataset.