How Paul Ryan Is Changing the Conversation About Family Time for Public Servants

Rep. Cyn­thia Lum­mis was in the throes of her reelec­tion cam­paign in Wyom­ing last Oc­to­ber when her hus­band, Alv­in Wieder­spahn, died sud­denly. He was just 65 years old.

Lum­mis couldn’t even find his will as she took on a new load of re­spons­ib­il­ity. She had to shore up her hus­band’s busi­nesses and pull to­geth­er a me­mori­al ser­vice. Her daugh­ter was grown, but Lum­mis says she still felt a push and pull between her per­son­al life and Con­gress.

As Wyom­ing’s only mem­ber of the House, she felt an ob­lig­a­tion not to fall short in serving the state even as she grieved. There was a lame-duck con­gres­sion­al ses­sion to at­tend, and she served on the steer­ing com­mit­tee re­spons­ible for ap­point­ing a new in­com­ing class of fresh­men to com­mit­tees.

“I really did not have any choice, so I just kept up the pace,” Lum­mis said in an in­ter­view with Na­tion­al Journ­al.

Like many wo­men in Con­gress, Lum­mis has been re­luct­ant to take a step back from work in the face of fam­ily ob­lig­a­tions—or even per­son­al tragedy. She con­tin­ued fly­ing between Wash­ing­ton and Wyom­ing on week­ends, a jour­ney that takes a min­im­um of eight hours be­cause there are no dir­ect flights. That’s the job, she said.

When men in polit­ics pub­licly mourn or seek more time with their fam­il­ies, their de­cisions are ap­plauded, praised, and held up as ex­amples of why they are well-suited for pub­lic ser­vice. A touch­ing in­ter­view between Vice Pres­id­ent Joe Biden and Steph­en Col­bert left view­ers aching for a Biden run at the White House. On the cam­paign trail, Sen. Marco Ru­bio sel­dom misses an op­por­tun­ity to talk about his de­vo­tion to fam­ily life. And now, Rep. Paul Ry­an has drawn a line in the sand for work-life bal­ance.

But many wo­men in Con­gress—just like wo­men across the work­force—haven’t felt com­fort­able pub­licly ad­dress­ing the toll their jobs take on them and their fam­il­ies. Most have dis­missed the no­tion that their jobs are more de­mand­ing than oth­er wo­men’s. And speak­ing out has car­ried risk. That is un­til Paul Ry­an.

“To have someone like Paul Ry­an, who is clearly Mr. Grav­itas, say ‘I am go­ing to put my kids first on the week­ends’ is go­ing to bend the curve for oth­er people in polit­ics, par­tic­u­larly wo­men,” Lum­mis said. “Now, they won’t feel that it is a sign of the in­ab­il­ity to bal­ance your life or some sort of weak­ness when they say, ‘Hey, I am go­ing to need time for my fam­ily.’ ”

When Ry­an stood be­fore his con­fer­ence a week ago and laid out what he was and was not will­ing to do as House speak­er, the 45-year-old was not only en­sur­ing his three chil­dren would see their dad on week­ends, he was be­gin­ning to change the ex­pect­a­tion for work­ing wo­men in Con­gress, too.

“If a wo­man had been the first one to say that, I just don’t think it would have gone over well at all,” Lum­mis said.

Rep. Martha Roby, a 39-year-old moth­er of two, was on the way from the Cap­it­ol to the air­port Fri­day af­ter­noon when she spoke to Na­tion­al Journ­al. It had been a mara­thon week for Roby, an Alabama Re­pub­lic­an who serves on the Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Benghazi. She had ap­peared on CBS This Morn­ing, CNN’s New Day, Fox’s The Kelly File, and MS­N­BC’s Morn­ing Joe in the span of a few days, en­dured an 11-hour hear­ing with former Sec­ret­ary of State Hil­lary Clin­ton, and kept up with GOP con­fer­ence meet­ings and votes.

Roby usu­ally tries to hold meet­ings early enough on Fri­day morn­ings to get out of town to pick her kids up from school on Fri­day af­ter­noons in Alabama. Last week, she missed that treat.

She has been try­ing to find ways to bal­ance her work and fam­ily since she got to Con­gress in 2011. On spring break, her kids come to Wash­ing­ton. In the sum­mer, each child—Mar­garet, 10, and George, 6—vis­its Mom by them­selves for a week. Still, she said it al­ways helps when a fel­low le­gis­lat­or stands up and ac­know­ledges how hard it is to raise a fam­ily and serve.

“I re­spect any of my col­leagues pri­or­it­iz­ing their fam­il­ies—male or fe­male. This job that we do is very im­port­ant, but it is not more im­port­ant than our fam­il­ies,” Roby said, be­fore apo­lo­giz­ing pro­fusely for cut­ting the in­ter­view short so she could catch a flight.

Rep. Cathy Mc­Mor­ris Rodgers, who as chair of the House Re­pub­lic­an Con­fer­ence is the highest-rank­ing Re­pub­lic­an wo­man in Con­gress, says Ry­an’s de­mands last week set a new pre­ced­ent not just for wo­men in pub­lic ser­vice, but for men too. With Boehner in lead­er­ship, the ex­pect­a­tion had been that the speak­er fun­draised year-round. That left his depu­ties fol­low­ing in those foot­steps. With grown chil­dren, Boehner has man­aged to make that sched­ule work, but Mc­Mor­ris Rodgers says Ry­an has now opened the door for a new gen­er­a­tion of lead­ers.