Massachusetts Legislator Says She Doesn’t Make Enough Money To Have Children

By Matt McDonald | February 24, 2022, 16:11 EST

Lydia Edwards

Massachusetts state Senator Lydia Edwards says she doesn’t have children because she doesn’t have enough money.

“I do not have children. It is because it’s a financial decision. A very hard one to make, honestly. And I would love to be a mother one day – I’m putting it out there to the universe – but I also need my bank account to be able to match that,” Edwards said during a press conference Wednesday, February 23.

Edwards is currently making more than $200,000 a year in salary for two elected offices she holds, though that amount is scheduled to drop by half when she resigns from one of them about two months from now.

Edwards, a Democrat who lives in East Boston, appeared at a press conference outside the YMCA in East Boston hosted by Boston Mayor Michelle Wu. The event touted a new city agency designed to promote child care for working mothers and a bill in the state legislature that aims to provide free child care for poor people from state funds.

The bill is sponsored by state Representative Adrian Madaro (D-East Boston). Edwards tied in her own situation with the city’s new Office of Early Childhood and with Madaro’s child care bill.

“And that’s something also I want people to understand, and this office will help create the institution — the foundation in your legislation, Representative Madaro, will make sure it’s easier for all of us to be family, and one day mothers and fathers in this commonwealth,” Edwards said.

Edwards is currently drawing a salary of $103,500 a year as a Boston city councilor. She also began drawing a base salary of $70,536 a year as a state senator when she was sworn in January 20, 2022, after winning a special election January 11 to fill a vacant seat.

In the Senate, Edwards is also entitled to a $7,500 stipend for serving as chairman of the Joint Committee on Community Development and Small Business of the Massachusetts Legislature, and an additional $7,500 for serving as Senate vice chairman of the Committee on Bonding, Capital Expenditures, and State Assets.

As a state legislator, Edwards is also entitled to $15,000 a year in expenses, which she may use to augment her income. (Stipends for expenses, committee chairmanships, and committee vice chairmanships were included in the January 2017 pay raise bill the state Legislature enacted over the governor’s veto.)

Edwards’s total in state senator pay from those sources is $100,536.

Her total from the two elected offices is $204,036.

Edwards announced January 24 that she plans to resign her city council seat on April 30. That would eliminate her city council salary and leave her with $100,536 for her service in the state Senate.

Edwards, whose Wikipedia page says she is 40 or 41, was first elected to the Boston City Council in 2017. The annual salary for a city councilor when she first took office in January 2018 was $99,500.

Madaro’s child care bill would direct the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care to provide state funding for child care with no fee to families making up to half the state’s median income. Subsidies with a possible fee attached to them would be offered to families earning up to 125 percent of the state’s median income, according to a sliding scale. No family would be expected to pay more than 7 percent of its income for child care.

The median household income in Massachusetts in 2020 was $86,725, according to Statista.

Edwards represents the First Suffolk and Middlesex District in the Massachusetts Senate, which includes in Suffolk County portions of the city of Boston:  all of East Boston, the North End, the Financial District, and Chinatown. (The portions of the district in Boston are defined as Ward 1, precincts 1 through 14; Ward 3, precincts 1 through 4, 6, and 8; and Ward 5, precincts 1, 3, 4, 5, and 11). Portions of the district also in Suffolk County include the entire city of Revere and the entire town of Winthrop. The district also includes in Middlesex County portions of the city of Cambridge:  in East Cambridge, almost all along the Charles River. (The portions of the district in Cambridge is defined as Ward 2, precincts 2 and 3; Ward 4, precincts 1 and 3; and Ward 5.)

On the Boston City Council, Edwards represents District 1, which includes East Boston, Charlestown, and the North End.

Last year, as a city councilor, Edwards was one of three primary sponsors of a measure to expand the city of Boston’s paid leave for city employees to include abortion. The new policy, which the city council passed, provides up to 12 weeks of paid leave for a woman who has an abortion and her partner. During a subcommittee meeting she chaired, Edwards said supporters of legal abortion should not see the paid leave policy as putting a “stigma” on abortion.

The new policy went into effect September 17, 2021 when then-acting mayor Kim Janey signed it.

A spokesman for Edwards could not immediately be reached for comment on Thursday afternoon.

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