Motherhood imposes substantial costs on women in professional settings, including politics, where public scrutiny and societal expectations about family roles are pronounced. We explore how election to political office impacts fertility decisions, using data from over 161,000 candidates who ran in local council elections in Finland between the years 1996 and 2008. By employing a regression discontinuity design that compares candidates who narrowly won to those who narrowly lost, we identify the causal effect of being elected on subsequent fertility outcomes. We find that women elected to office are significantly less likely to have children during their term compared to non-elected women, while we do not observe such effect for men. This fertility reduction is particularly pronounced in larger municipalities, where the demands of political office may be greater. Our findings suggest that political office may impose gendered costs, potentially contributing to the under-representation of women in politics and shaping broader life choices.