While recent election commentary explored the gender gap in voting preferences and candidates made explicit appeals to the “woman’s vote,” little empirical research has focused on unpacking women’s political perspectives as influenced by their experience as mothers. In her intriguing new work, Jill Greenlee notes that while motherhood has been a lens through which political appeals have been made to women at least since the American Revolution, little focus has been placed on understanding how and if motherhood affects women’s political perspectives. Using a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods, Greenlee empirically explores a number of questions relative to the nature of this political appeal over time, the impact on motherhood in framing a woman’s political perspective, and the forces that contribute to the political socialization of mothers. While arguing that the findings of this study are more generalizable to identity formation for other groups beyond mothers, the author is most compelling on the intellectual ground she cultivates regarding the impact of motherhood on political values and the potential for theory building on the identity development of mothers, which she leaves untested.

The Political Consequences of Motherhood begins by examining how political actors perceive women and motherhood in the context of presidential campaigns from the 1920s through 2012. Relying on media coverage of campaigns, internal and external campaign materials, speeches by candidates and their wives, as well as policy platforms, Greenlee finds the treatment of women to be quite distinct from that of male voters, who are rarely addressed as fathers. There is a concentrated focus on female voters addressed as mothers in the 1920s. In subsequent years, they are pursued as part of the larger electorate, but with family-oriented policy priorities, until the 1980s, when women are again addressed as mothers in the context of presidential elections. The author consistently found that “the more explicit appeals to women as mothers came from the Democratic candidates” (p. 114). Both parties made consistent maternal claims, and as women’s roles in the public realm broadened, the nature of the campaign appeals simultaneously expanded. However, there is a frequent confounding of the categories of “women” and “mothers,” with motherhood often used by campaigns as a proxy for women.

Greenlee then moves to explore the differences between mothers and non-mothers, particularly the impact of motherhood on women’s political perspectives. Relying on the American National Election Study, she empirically tests the impact of self-interest and social-role theories on mothers’ policy attitudes—focusing on the same types of issues that the two parties have attempted to trigger in the last 90 years of presidential campaigns. The author finds that motherhood is consistent with more liberal perspectives on social welfare (e.g., food stamps) and more conservative views on moral issues (e.g., abortion). Single mothers may have an additional motivation for specific social welfare views triggered by self-interest. However, no empirical evidence was found for motherhood differences on issues of war or school funding. Democratic appeals toward working mothers and Republican focus on moral mothers found in presidential campaigns might have either exploited prior differences between mothers and non-mothers or instigated new differences. While there are consistent trends, the most significant difference was found in the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections, particularly around heightened concerns for national security by mothers.

To better understand these distinctions, the author then turns to longitudinal data, following one generation of women through a political socialization panel study that featured interviews of graduating seniors and their parents conducted in 1965, 1973, 1982, and 1997. While Greenlee recognizes the dangers in generalizing beyond this particular political context, the findings are quite suggestive. Attitudinal change unique to mothers (compared to fathers and women without children) was evident and tended toward the conservative spectrum. The changes were the most obvious in young mothers (before 25 years) and are also evident among slightly older first-time mothers, “suggesting that even when women are past the ‘critical years’ of attitudinal formation, they may still experience some attitudinal shifting as a result of their new mother role” (p. 168). There was no corresponding effect on women who become mothers between the ages of 35 and 50. Greenlee concludes that there is an interaction between motherhood and its contemporary political environment.

To address the question of the role of motherhood on socialization, the author enhances her findings by a qualitative study in which she interviewed 46 women from San Francisco and Boston. She determined that the participants articulated six ways by which motherhood altered their political perspectives: “Motherhood motivates political awareness, sparks new political concerns, displaces old political concerns, causes women to think more about the future, helps abstract political issues become more concrete, and leads women to feel more empathetic” (p. 191). In pursuing how motherhood exercises this influence over the political thinking of the many women in her sample, Greenlee identifies four mechanisms: Three of them—changes in a woman’s identification after motherhood, a need to model certain engaged political behavior, and a change in self-interest now extending to her children—all had a “direct impact” on how the participants interpreted and interacted in the political sphere (p. 207). The fourth mechanism—changes in social networks after motherhood—was not as clearly articulated, and Greenlee was only able to imply its impact from the participants’ statements.

The contributions of this work in raising new research questions in subfields as diverse as political socialization, public opinion, and effective campaigning strategies are invaluable. It is obvious, however, that an immense amount of additional scholarship is necessary to adequately explore these questions. The primary weakness of the work is based on a monolithic presentation of motherhood. Intersectionality is not considered by the author, and so the impact of race, class, and sexuality on motherhood is generally ignored. The only cleavage within the construct of motherhood that is explicitly addressed is that between single and married mothers. The author notes that the interviews on which the theory building around identity is based are almost all with white women. What is most frustrating about this sample is the danger that theories emerging from this work and the conclusions made about political attitudes are based on a relatively essentialized understanding of motherhood. There is an implicit assumption that women who are mothers have more in common on the basis of this experience of formal mothering than on all of their other attributes and experiences that may lead them to have very diverse perspectives. Because research on political attitudes makes it clear that racial identity leads to very different political perspectives, might it not be worth exploring to see if motherhood ameliorates, aggravates, or has no influence on these differences? Instead, there is an assumption here that the theories derived from the interviews might be universal for all groups of mothers.

Overall, The Political Consequences of Motherhood drives the field into significant and relatively unexplored questions regarding mothers’ political attitudes and socialization. It is a good start toward a more robust understanding of women’s political values, and it attempts to address these questions through a variety of research methodologies. But like any good initial addressing of a significant research arena, the work raises more questions than it answers.