Congress’ New Dads Caucus Advocates for Working Parents
California representative Jimmy Gomez gained attention earlier this January after bringing his baby boy Hodges to work. Amid voting for a new speaker of the House of Representatives and working on legislation, Gomez fed, changed and cared for his adorable five-month-old. With these small acts, Gomez brought to light the juggle and occasional struggle working parents deal with daily.
But showing up as a representative of working parents wasn’t enough for the Democratic lawmaker. Gomez wanted to take things a step further to help make parents’ lives easier. So he, along with fellow congressmen and fathers Andy Kim of New Jersey and Dan Goldman of New York, announced the formation of the Dads Caucus.
According to Gomez, the Dads Caucus is “rooted in a simple idea: Dads need to do our part advancing policies that will make a difference in the lives of so many working families across the country,” representative Jimmy Gomez told NBC News.
Gomez is hoping the Dads Caucus can help long-standing groups like the Moms in The House Caucus and MomsRising push through game-changing legislation. “With this group here today, and with more members to come in in the future, we’re determined to achieve real solutions by fighting for our national paid family and medical leave program, affordable, high-quality child care, and the expanded Child Tax Credit, which cut child poverty in this country by 40 to 60 percent during the nine months that it was in existence,” Gomez said according to The Hill.
The members of the Dads Caucus acknowledge that the new caucus is far from a fix to the many problems facing working families but hopes that this is another step in the right direction.
“It’s not going to be easy,” Gomez admitted of the caucus formation, “because some people will believe that we’re getting unfair attention, and other people are going to believe that we’re truly not doing enough — and we’re probably not doing enough! But I think this is going to help start those conversations.”
