Rep. Linda Sanchez, Expecting Baby, Plans to Marry

I've met Congresswoman Linda Sanchez on a couple of occasions. She represents the 39th congressional district in Washington, and she was reelected to office this month with a 70 percent majority.

It turns out that Representative Sanchez is pregnant, which is a little awkward, as she is unmarried:

California Congresswoman Linda Sanchez is pregnant. Ordinarily, this would not make headlines, except to the Sanchez family and maybe in a newsletter to the 39th Congressional District in southeast L.A. County, which just elected her to her fourth term. It's no big deal nowadays when members of Congress give birth. The first was Mrs. Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, 35 years ago.

What makes Sanchez's pregnancy news is that she is not married to the baby's father -- not yet, anyway.

You're practically the first to know. Even her sister and fellow congresswoman, Loretta Sanchez, didn't know until a few days ago.

The baby's father and Sanchez's "unofficially engaged" beau of a year and a half is Jim Sullivan, a government and PR consultant and the divorced father of three boys.

Washington is a back-fence-gossip kind of town, and Sanchez expects there to be some fuss and bother.

"I don't know how it'll be received," she said. "I hope people will recognize that to be able to plan that in your life -- I don't think that marriage and childbirth are black and white. There are certain instances in which you have to do things in reverse order."

Twenty years ago, it simply wouldn't have been possible -- pregnant, single and a member of Congress? Oh, the scandal! But Hester Prynne has morphed into Juno MacGuff, the culture wars have been fought to a truce of exhaustion, and "unwed mother" has been recast as "single mom."

Read the whole thing, here.

Sanchez boasts a very active student internship program, and I routinely recommend students to apply for the program.

I must say though that this is quite unusual. Times have changed, certainly, but the fact that this is not likely to be scandalous tells quite a bit about the changing nature of political culture and social norms.