Campaign Funds for Childcare can transform the political system—and new data shows it is

The high cost of childcare can keep parents out of politics, but then we don’t have lawmakers writing childcare policy who actually understand modern-day realities of raising kids in America.

It’s a catch-22. We need more moms in government to actually fix our country’s childcare crisis. But too many moms can’t afford to run for office because childcare is too expensive.

In our broken political system, running for office is the longest job interview you’ll ever have. If you run for Congress, you give up two years of your life, work 24/7, and forgo your salary. Candidates who aren’t independently wealthy—the people we most need representing us—are often taking out second mortgages, emptying their retirement accounts, or maxing out their credit cards just for a chance to represent their communities.

Think about who can succeed in this system:

• People who have the means to do unpaid work for two years

• People whose kids are adults, so they don’t need childcare

• Men, who have wives at home to take care of their kids and their house

Is that the kind of legislature that best represents us? One that is richer, older, and more male than the general American population?

To get universal affordable childcare for everyone, we need to break the cycle. We need moms seated at the decision-making table, not just advocating from the outside hoping that politicians will listen. We need them on the inside as well, but to do that, we need to break the structural barriers that keep moms out of office and out of power.

That’s where Campaign Funds for Childcare (CFCC) comes in. This policy allows parents to use their privately raised campaign dollars to pay for childcare while they are campaigning, at no cost to taxpayers. It helps level the playing field, so we get more moms in office to deliver paid leave, universal childcare, and so much more.

I got CFCC authorized at the federal level when I ran for Congress in 2018. I can still remember doing call time back then, holding my 1-year-old in one arm and dialing with my other hand, all while my 3-year-old daughter put way too many hair clips into my hair. I became the first woman in history to receive approval from the Federal Elections Commission to use CFCC, a decision that is still cited when federal candidates use CFCC now.

To date, 40 states and DC have also authorized CFCC for state and local candidates, thanks to the efforts of Vote Mama Lobby. In 2025, state legislatures enacted 29,000 new laws, compared to fewer than 40 new laws passed by Congress. If we actually want to make life better for families, we have to improve our representation in state legislatures.

New data from Vote Mama Foundation shows that CFCC is making a difference. The research found that state and local candidates have collectively spent over $700,000 on CFCC between 2018 and 2025, with spending increasing by over 1400% in that seven-year period. More and more parents—moms and dads—are using CFCC to be able to run for office.

If we look at the demographics of candidates using CFCC, it shows exactly how this policy can transform the political system. Nearly 60% of CFCC users were women, and of the Top 10 spenders, eight were candidates of color, and seven were women.

But if we dig one level deeper into the data, we can also see where there’s still progress to be made. While women made up a majority of the candidates using CFCC, a majority of the funds were spent by men. There are a few possible explanations:

• A lot of candidates still don’t know about CFCC. Campaign finance is complicated enough. Moms of young kids may not think to ask about CFCC because they just assume that running for office will bankrupt them.

• There’s still a stigma against women using CFCC. When I was running for Congress, people told me it was political suicide to use CFCC. There’s a cultural expectation in our patriarchal society that women should do the child rearing. As a result, women aren’t as comfortable using CFCC.

• In general, it’s harder for women candidates to fundraise huge sums of money. This is because men typically donate more to men, while women donate more to women—but there are more male donors in the political ecosystem and they give more money. When women candidates have fewer campaign dollars, they have to stretch those limited resources further to be able to win.

We can fix these problems by educating the public generally about CFCC and why it’s important, and normalizing moms serving at every level of government.

To be clear, CFCC alone will not erase sexism from politics. But in a political system that already throws up so many hurdles to everyday people, especially parents, running and serving, there are a lot of barriers we have to break to make government fully representative.

CFCC moves us in the right direction, and given that Vote Mama Foundation has identified that we’d need to elect 763 more moms of minor children to state legislatures to reach full mamas’ representation, we need all the help we can get.