Kamala Harris is the highest-ranking mom ever in U.S. politics. Here’s why that matters

That’s where Vice President Kamala Harris’ mother comes in. It’s no secret that the vice president was heavily influenced by Gopalan Harris, an Indian immigrant scientist and single mom who raised Kamala and her sister in the East Bay in the ’60s and ’70s. Many of Harris’ speeches feature quotes or stories about her mother, who died in 2009.

Tucked into the repeated parables Harris tells is a revolutionary narrative out of the White House: That parenthood, and in particular motherhood, is not just an individual challenge, but a societal one that needs and deserves an infrastructure around it to succeed.

Speaking with The Chronicle, Harris said she tells her stories very purposefully and that she was profoundly shaped by watching her divorced mom balancing children and career. “There was a lot of juggling that had to happen in order for her to pursue her life, right?” Harris said of her mom.

It’s not just about the past: Harris is also a mother, affectionately known as “Momala,” to two now-adult stepchildren with husband Douglas Emhoff, whom she married in 2014 when she was California attorney general. That has meant her own juggling of career and family, including a high-profile Senate hearing that conflicted with her stepdaughter’s high school graduation.

Experts say this is one of the subtle but powerful ways that Harris is changing politics by virtue of being the first person like her in her position — including the first mother elected on a presidential ticket, as well as the first woman and woman of color. And, they say, it couldn’t be more timely.

“For decades now, men have made policy and men have talked about the importance of roads and bridges, so that men can go to work, and so that men can create more jobs for men,” said Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat whose own presidential campaign prominently featured her struggles as a working mother.

“With more women in policy-making — specifically, more mothers — we’re now talking about child care as part of infrastructure,” Warren said. “And that helps create more opportunities for women, more opportunities for mothers, and more opportunities for women to work.”

As with any vice president, Harris’ role is usually to give credit to her boss, President Biden. Widely seen as Biden’s political heir apparent, Harris has become a lightning rod for criticism on hot-button issues assigned to her by the president, including migration to the southern border. But advocates who work with the White House say her presence and platform have already played a key role in shaping policy around motherhood, both in public-facing and internal ways.

Even before the White House introduced its proposed human infrastructure package named the American Families Plan, Harris was deployed nationwide to highlight some of its components, including a daylong trip to New Haven, Conn., in March to focus on child care and administration efforts supporting children. She has also pressed on these issues in internal meetings, according to staff and those close to the White House, helping keep the entire administration focused on it.

In a call with reporters marking six months of the new administration, Harris spokeswoman Symone Sanders noted the vice president’s work on these issues. Harris’ vision, Sanders said, “specifically led to the implementation of monthly payments for the child tax credit,” a provision of the COVID relief bill. Harris also “elevated the national emergency” facing women during the pandemic and was “a champion” for the child care provisions of the relief package, Sanders said.

Allies say her ability to call attention to these issues is invaluable. The White House, for instance, marked Black Maternal Health Week for the first time this year and held a roundtable on the topic hosted by Harris. It has been a focus of hers going back to her days in the Senate.

“Part of the work we have to do is to make all of this visible,” said Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, a group that promotes gender equality. She participated in a February roundtable with Harris and other female leaders about the pandemic’s impact on women.

“Once we do that, we’ll understand what it will take to invest in it,” Goss Graves said. “Babies and children don’t care for themselves. … So one of the things I think the vice president has been able to do is to make it visible, to help weave together why care is so essential to families but also to our full economy.”

When Harris tells the story of her mother’s balancing act between career and child care after getting divorced, she invariably mentions the crucial help of a neighbor and day care operator whom she calls a second mother. The ecosystem of care, she said, was simply seen as natural.

“Those were the earliest models I had,” Harris said. “It was about community as an extension of family, but it was about taking care of working women and their children.”

Harris’ longtime staffer and domestic policy adviser Rohini Kosoglu has observed firsthand how the vice president keeps this focus up across the administration. In a recent meeting with the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, for example, Harris pressed on how the proposed budget benefited children and other family issues. Harris said she tells her team to break down every policy they present to her in terms of how it would affect a child.

“She’s using her platform to elevate this issue for the American people,” Kosoglu said. “This is is her experience, and it’s also she’s a great ambassador to do that.”

As a candidate for president, Harris’ first policy proposal was an idea to raise teacher pay, and as vice president she has been the White House’s chief campaigner for pouring billions of dollars into child care.

Several of Harris’ supporters say her taking the office of vice president couldn’t be more timely, as mothers have disproportionately dropped out of the workforce during the pandemic after decades of their needs being neglected by policy.

To be sure, it’s hard to pinpoint evidence that having mothers in elected office narrows those gaps, said Sarah Damaske, a sociologist at Penn State University who studies gender, family and work. The sample size is just too small: “We don’t know because we haven’t had enough moms making policy,” she said.

But there is plenty evidence of where mothers fall through the cracks — and a liberal political culture isn’t enough to fix the problem, according to Leah Ruppanner, a Bay Area native who studies work and family in the U.S. and abroad at University of Melbourne.

Ruppanner’s analysis found, for example, that despite California’s progressive policies on gender equality, it has among the lowest rates in the U.S. of workforce participation by mothers. Short school days, expensive child care and high cost of living discourage many mothers from working, she said.

“States like California are really, really good at empowering women,” Ruppanner said. “They’re abysmal in supporting mothers.”

Time and again, experts emphasized that policies that support mothers aren’t niche concerns, but rather benefit all of society.

One of the participants in the Black maternal health roundtable Harris held was Erica McAfee, who founded a company to support other women after her own losses in pregnancy and birth. The gaps in maternal health and fertility care for Black women are especially tragic, but not isolated, she noted: “If we truly do save Black moms and babies, we’ll save all moms and babies.”

Other prominent mothers in political office say having representation at the highest levels makes changes in some obvious and some subtle ways — something they credit Harris with building upon.

Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who was the first person to have a baby while serving as a senator, said her own experience made her realize the importance of private lactation rooms, leading her to get laws passed to ensure access to such spaces in airports and federal buildings.

“There’s just a lot of lived experiences that … I didn’t think about until I actually gave birth to my first daughter,” Duckworth said. “I never got it, how hard that was, until I was trying to pump breast milk for three hours. That’s when I wrote the law.”

Oakland Rep. Barbara Lee, who raised two sons while going to Mills College as a single mom and has long supported Harris’ career, said she’s starting to see change thanks to more representation for mothers. When she was a staffer for former Oakland Rep. Ron Dellums, there was no child care for Capitol Hill employees. Now, they have access to it. She said mothers can also make change through how they shape the national conversation, including as committee chairs in what hearings they schedule, and whom they invite to speak.

Provide universal preschool for children ages 3 and 4 and two years of free community college post-graduation.

Ensure middle- and low-income families have access to high-quality child care at the cost of no more than 7% of their income.

Create a national paid family and medical leave program.

Expand nutrition assistance to families to address hunger.

Extend and expand tax credits most beneficial to families.

Feb. 18: Held a virtual roundtable with female senators, representatives and nongovernment leaders to discuss the coronavirus relief package’s impact on women and the needs of mothers in the workforce.

March 3: Visited a female-owned business in Alexandria, Va., to highlight the coronavirus relief package and its impact on women leaving the workforce, especially mothers.

March 18: Met with female leaders in the labor movement to discuss women and mothers in the workforce.

March 24: Held a roundtable discussion with female leaders of advocacy groups on Equal Pay Day.

March 26: Traveled to New Haven, Conn., to visit a child care center and highlight the needs of families and parents.

April 13: Convened a Black maternal health roundtable with women who experienced complications in pregnancy, birth, and postpartum.

April 15: Gave remarks about implementing the coronavirus relief package’s support for child care.

May 5: Held a roundtable in Rhode Island with women leading small businesses to discuss their needs, including child care.

June 8: While in Mexico City, met with female entrepreneurs and highlighted needs such as child care and paid leave.

June 11: Spoke about the administration’s support for families at a child care center in Washington, D.C.

June 21: Delivered remarks in Pittsburgh on the expansion of the child tax credit and other parent-focused efforts by the administration.

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The impact isn’t only from Democratic mothers in office, though there are more of them. Washington Republican Rep. Jaime Herrera-Beutler helped start a congressional caucus on maternal care and has written laws including requiring the Transportation Security Administration to better accommodate parents traveling with breast milk.

Harris confirmed to The Chronicle that there have already been times in this administration that she changed the direction of a discussion because she was in the room, emphasizing mothers deserve more than platitudes from society.

“Recognizing someone’s value is not about giving them a greeting card,” Harris said. “It’s about a true recognition, understanding the value of that work and then acknowledging that with the resources and the support that is necessary to allow that work to happen.”

Tal Kopan is The San Francisco Chronicle’s Washington correspondent. Email: tal.kopan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @talkopan