Monday, December 05, 2011

All Politics is Local

From my NC State colleague Steven Green:
The Politics of Parenthood: Parenthood Effects on Issue Attitudes and Candidate Evaluations in 2008
Laurel Elder & Steven Greene, American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract: This project employs 2008 National Election Study (NES) data to explore whether parents are different than nonparents in terms of their political attitudes and candidate evaluations. We find that parenthood does have political consequences although often not in ways suggested by conventional wisdom. Rather than finding parents to be a conservative group, our results support the idea that raising children has liberalizing effects on the attitudes of women. Fatherhood shapes attitudes less than motherhood, but these fewer effects are in a conservative direction. We argue that the distinctive politics of mothers and fathers reflects the impact of parenting as a gendered socialization experience combined with the contrasting parenthood themes articulated by the Republican and Democratic parties. Finally, despite media coverage suggesting Sarah Palin’s “Hockey Mom” image would attract parents, especially mothers, to her candidacy and the Republican ticket we find no support for this idea.

1 comment:

Mr. Overwater said...

I'm glad to see that this got published. It's interesting work.

In the link to his webpage, change Green to Greene.