Raleigh’s Jane Harrison becomes 1st City Council member to give birth while in office
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- Jane Harrison is the first Raleigh City Council member to give birth in office.
- Mothers of young children remain underrepresented in elected office, per 2025 data.
- She switched to city insurance after fertility benefits were added and used IVF.
Raleigh Mayor pro tem Jane Harrison found out she was pregnant just days before being sworn in as one of four new City Council members in 2022.
“I didn’t know how I was going to navigate those two things,” she said. “I mean, honestly, I was kind of scared. But also excited because I wanted both of these challenges and joys in my life.”
But that joy and challenge wouldn’t come for several more years. Harrison miscarried shortly after taking office.
“It was a process of healing and accepting,” she said. “It took me about a year before I really wanted to try again to kind of take stock of where I was. The blessing in that experience was that it made it clear that I did want to have kids. I did want to keep trying.”
On Tuesday, Harrison and her husband, Doug, welcomed their daughter, Cadence. Harrison is the first Raleigh City Council member to give birth while in office.
“You’re most definitely perfect and we can’t wait for you to explore Raleigh with us,” she wrote on social media. “We will see the city with new eyes together.”
A ‘full circle’ moment
Harrison, 40, is the coastal economics specialist for the North Carolina Sea Grant, which is headquartered at N.C. State University.
In 2019, she was part of a group of UNC System employees advocating for parental leave.
“We didn’t have anything before, so you had to either have enough sick leave or vacation leave accrued for whatever time off you wanted to take to heal your body or bond with your baby” she said.
Now, university employees get eight weeks of leave, and it’s a “full circle” moment for Harrison.
“I was someone thinking about having kids at some point,” she said. “I wanted to make sure I was going to have time off, paid time off. And, unfortunately, that’s not a given in America.”
While the number of elected officials who are mothers of young children is growing, they still are underrepresented.
Vote Mama Foundation, an organization that advocates for the “political power of moms,” found the number of moms of minors in Congress would need to double to achieve proportional representation.
“Only 7.2% of the 119th Congress are moms of minor children, and there are still three times more men named John/Jon in the U.S. than there are moms of minors,” according to the foundation’s 2025 Politics of Parenthood report.
A 2024 report from the same group found North Carolina would need 19 more moms of minor children to reach proportional representation in the state legislature.
Her fertility journey
Early in her fertility journey, Harrison learned she had polycystic ovary syndrome, or PCOS, a condition caused by a hormone imbalance. It’s one of the most common contributors to infertility.
Her doctor told her the best chance she had at getting pregnant was using in vitro fertilization, or IVF, but the procedure wasn’t covered by her university system health insurance. So, instead, she and her husband tried intrauterine insemination, or IUI.
“We just kept trying month after month with these lower-cost options, even though there was a medical tool that I could have been using way earlier,” she said.
In 2024, the city of Raleigh added fertility treatment to its health-care benefits, and Harrison switched her insurance . Council members have been able to join the city’s health insurance since 2012, and many local governments offer municipal health insurance to elected officials .
“I actually got to approve that fertility benefit in my first term,” Harrison said. “And it was what helped me conceive. I ended up going through in virto fertilization, and, for me, it was my game changer.”
Recently, Raleigh leaders learned the city is facing an $18.3 million shortfall for the coming year’s budget. One idea discussed to help save money long-term would be for the city to stop providing health insurance plans for city retirees. The change would apply to new hires, with current employees still getting benefits.
Taking away retiree health insurance for future employees would be a “nonstarter,” Harrison said.
“I speak so highly of our health benefit package at the city,” she said. “It is from what I can see across the region unparalleled. The benefits that you get for a partner, a spouse, for children, the cost, it’s very high quality, and so I always tell people apply to work for the city of Raleigh. This is a great place to work. We take care of our employees, and I’ve experienced that firsthand.”
Running for re-election
Harrison represents southwest Raleigh in District D and is actively running for re-election.
“Luckily I don’t have a primary, so I don’t have to kind of be in that fray at the moment, but for the general election I do have a challenger,” she said. “I expect to be at candidate forums and pretty visible on the campaign trail.”
State law requires council members to vote on local matters in person, something Harrsion said she believes should change.
“If I am a little busier with a kid I hope folks will extend me the grace and the patience that I’m going to need in this time period, but still know that I’m dedicated to their needs in District D and across the city,” she said.
She plans to bring her daughter to City Council meetings, if her daughter will tolerate it.
“It depends on her,” Harrison said. “If she wants to come. We’ll test it out and see if she enjoys public life and local government.”
One of the things she’s looking forward to is figuring out how to ride her bike with her daughter, and she said one of the daycares she’s considering is along a trail on the Walnut Creek Greenway.
“Being able to see her play in our parks, to experience Gipson Play Plaza at Dix Park or the trolls, and to know that I have been part of the crew that has made that possible for her, and just to start to see the city in a new way, and what it is like for a young person growing up here is going to be really cool,” she said.
This story was originally published February 13, 2026 at 8:28 AM.
