Laurel Elder and Steve Greene make a persuasive case in The Politics of Parenthood that the theme of parenthood indeed is political and that the impact of parenthood has increased dramatically over time. Perhaps in response to the decline of traditional nuclear families, political parties and politicians (at least at the presidential level) have made more appeals to parents and have heightened their use of language and rhetoric specific to the “family” and parenthood. Simultaneously, the media have also dramatically intensified their coverage of parenthood themes, including false reporting about the political ideologies and dispositions of parent voters. In fact, Elder and Greene demonstrate that while the media often characterize parents as conservative Republican voters, their data show that the opposite is true for mothers—women with a child under the age of 18 at home exhibit more liberal tendencies than do their childless women counterparts or men. This finding alone is a significant contribution to political science as well as to the literature on the gender gap. Elder and Greene keenly observe that while parenthood overall is a major shaper of political attitudes, ideologies, and vote choice, it operates differently for men and women. Their evidence indicates that while parenthood has a liberalizing effect on women, it pushes men in a more conservative direction. To be sure, these results do not hold across the board: fathers are actually more liberal than are childless men on education and childcare, for example.

Elder and Greene's findings are nuanced, though at times they could do more to untangle and acknowledge their complexities. For example, their results show a positive correlation of the effect of parenthood on certain issue areas—social welfare, family values, and national security—but null findings on political ideology, vote choice, and partisanship in 2008, at least among women. This nonfinding seems essential to Elder and Greene's argument that parenthood is a critical agent of political socialization via its influence on political attitudes. Still, their 2008 data also reveal that among men, fatherhood is associated with a more conservative ideology. The authors make sense of some of these findings by speculating that “rather than reinforcing adult socialization experiences, parenthood and marriage appear to exert cross-pressures on women. Combining marriage and parenthood into one variable as some studies have done may very well wash out the very distinct effects of these two life experiences” (113). Although this finding may seem to undermine the authors' argument about the distinctive nature of parenthood's contribution to political socialization (it acts mainly to wash out the effects of marriage), the importance of this finding cannot be overstated. Elder and Greene's work does much to advance our understanding of political socialization and ventures to new territory in emphasizing the role of parenthood, while past studies have focused on other life events, like marriage.

Elder and Greene's analysis of parenthood and political attitudes is cross-sectional, and the authors rightfully acknowledge the limitations of such an analysis. What I also see as a core limitation, however, is the way they measure this central variable: they make it a dichotomous variable of having children under the age of 18 in the household or not. This variable does not actually measure parenthood; it measures a particular type of parent—those raising minor children. The measure does not count people who have raised a child who no longer lives at home as a parent; nor does it allow for reflection on any differences caused by raising toddlers or adolescents, for example. Conceptualizing parenthood as the presence of minor children in the house also obviates parenthood as an influence once children grow up and leave the home. Thus, Elder and Greene are not exactly comparing parents to nonparents. Is there something about being in the “throes” of intensely active childrearing and having children still living in the home that makes parents think differently politically? Elder and Greene suggest that there is, but I would be also interested in seeing the relationship of parenthood and political attitudes not just cross-sectionally, but across time.

The authors also suggest that a direction for future research is to examine more nuanced measures of parenting, including level of parental involvement:

This point is well taken, though at times it seems like the authors assume that the former way of parenting, more of an “intensive parenting” model, is the norm and is what may drive the different political attitudes and views that parents hold. For example, they speculate that mothers may be more liberal on military issues because the motherhood experience engenders a more compassionate and nurturing stance. However, much research devoted to the exploration of parenthood has concluded that the model of intensive parenting, and especially intensive mothering, is mostly reserved for white middle-class women who have the privilege to expend the vast amounts of time and energy this model of intensive mothering demands (Hays Reference Hays1996). Furthermore, we know that the institution of motherhood varies significantly by race, and that the traditional nuclear family is not only in decline among whites, but was simply not as central to the cultures of other races. Elder and Greene find in their analysis that parenthood is associated with attitudes regardless of race, and the interaction of race and parenthood is insignificant except in one case (parenthood has a larger liberalizing effect on social welfare attitudes for white women than for non-white women). These findings reinforce the question Elder and Greene also ask at the end: what is it exactly about parenthood that leads to different political attitudes? The authors make a very valuable contribution by both documenting how parenthood has become politicized and by analyzing the consequences of such politicization. Now, future studies can take up the significant implications raised by this pioneering research.