President Joe Biden’s Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has announced that he and his husband are now parents.
‘For some time, Chasten and I have wanted to grow our family. We’re overjoyed to share that we’ve become parents!’ Buttigieg tweeted on Tuesday afternoon.
‘The process isn’t done yet and we’re thankful for the love, support, and respect for our privacy that has been offered to us. We can’t wait to share more soon.’
Buttigieg, who is the first openly gay Cabinet member and the youngest transportation secretary at 39 years old, did not provide further details.
He and his husband, who is a former teacher and author, wed in 2018.
The couple have been open about their struggles in adopting a child. A July profile of Chasten in the Washington Post stated that they had tried to adopt for more than a year and went ‘on multiple occasions, to shop for baby gear and discuss names’.
‘It’s a really weird cycle of anger and frustration and hope. You think it’s finally happening and you get so excited, and then it’s gone,’ Chasten told the newspaper at the time. ‘We tried so hard for you. We waited so long for you.’
The couple live in a one-bedroom apartment in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, DC, along with their dogs, according to the Post. They sold their house in South Bend, Indiana, earlier this year as Buttigieg took a job in the Biden administration.
Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend from 2012 to 2019, ran in a crowded field of Democratic candidates that included Biden in the 2020 presidential election. Buttigieg narrowly won the Iowa caucuses and became the first openly gay presidential candidate to win a primary.
A leading member of Biden’s ‘Jobs Cabinet’, Buttigieg said he was inspired to pursue politics as a gay person by the late James Hormel, who was the first openly gay US ambassador.
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