The impact of parental status on the visibility and evaluations of politicians
| Author | Philip Cowley,Rosie Campbell |
| Published date | 01 August 2018 |
| Date | 01 August 2018 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1369148118775032 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
research-article2018
Original Article
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
The impact of parental
2018, Vol. 20(3) 753 –769
© The Author(s) 2018
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https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148118775032
DOI: 10.1177/1369148118775032
evaluations of politicians
journals.sagepub.com/home/bpi
Rosie Campbell1 and Philip Cowley2
Abstract
In increasingly personalised electoral contests, voters use evaluations of candidates’ personal
characteristics in their vote decisions, and candidates deploy personal information about themselves
which they believe convey a positive message in their communications with voters. We expand
the study of candidate characteristics to include parental status, examining the public’s view of
politicians with and without children and the behaviour of politicians in their communications
with voters. Men and women are equally likely to refer to their children regardless of party. We
find a preference for candidates who are parents and no punishment effect for women politicians
with children. Our findings, from a British study, contradict some of the research from the United
States which finds that voters’ reactions to candidates’ parental status vary depending on candidate
gender; as such, our results suggest that political and cultural context are important factors
determining the role gender plays in political behaviour.
Keywords
candidate evaluations, electoral behaviour, gender, parenthood, personalisation, political
behaviour
There is an increasingly large body of research examining the impact that candidate charac-
teristics have on voters’ preferences and attitudes. This literature has focussed predomi-
nantly on the United States and on a relatively small number of characteristics, most
obviously candidate sex and race/ethnicity. But more recent research has begun to extend
the study further, both geographically and in terms of subject area, finding other significant
characteristics, including visual image (Banducci et al., 2008, Mattes and Milazzo, 2014),
occupation and wealth (Campbell and Cowley, 2014a, McDermott, 2005), age (Campbell
and Cowley 2014b, Trent et al., 2010) and residency (Arzheimer and Evans, 2012, 2014).
There is, however, relatively little research that considers the impact that candidates’
parental status may have on voter evaluations. The dearth of literature on this topic is
surprising given that politicians routinely use images of themselves in domestic family
1Birkbeck, Department of Politics, University of London, London, UK
2School of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK
Corresponding author:
Rosie Campbell, Department of Politics, Birkbeck, University of London, Malet Street, Bloomsbury, London,
WC1E 7HX, UK.
Email: r.campbell@bbk.ac.uk
754
The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 20(3)
settings – Langer argues that politicians increasingly use aspects of their personal lives in
their campaigns in order to ‘offer a “human” persona’ (Langer, 2009: 61) – and that the
subject manifests itself frequently in political discussion. There is plenty of research that
considers the impact of voters’ parental status on their voting behaviour and political
attitudes (Elder and Greene, 2007, 2008, 2012; Greenlee, 2014, Oswald and Powdthavee,
2010) but much less that tests the impact of politicians’ parental status on vote choice and
political attitudes.
Interest in the subject is however slowly growing (Bell and Kaufmann, 2015; Morin
and Taylor, 2008; Stalsburg, 2010), not least because of the way that motherhood has
been politicised, particularly in the United States since Sarah Palin’s candidacy for Vice
President in 2008 (Deason et al., 2015; Greenlee et al., 2017), and the way that the topic
of parenthood in politics is so obviously gendered (Miller, 2017; Thomas and Bittner,
2017). For example, the Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard was variously described
by some of her opponents as ‘deliberately barren’ and ‘an unproductive old cow’ – phra-
seology that, for obvious reasons, would never be ascribed to a man – along with the
claim that because she had ‘chosen not to be a parent’, she was ‘very much a one-dimen-
sional person’. British Prime Minister Theresa May’s lack of children was raised by one
of her opponents for the Conservative leadership, who argued that her childlessness
meant May lacked a ‘stake in the future’.1 In New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern was asked
about whether she intended to have children within hours of becoming leader of the
Labour Party.
This article reports two studies into the effect of politicians’ parental status, one report-
ing on the behaviour of politicians, the other examining the reaction of voters. We test
whether the findings of the extant empirical work – namely, that male politicians are more
likely to publicise their parental status than women politicians and that women politicians
are more likely to be negatively evaluated for their parental status than men – hold in the
case of Britain. Evaluating both legislators’ behaviour and the reactions of voters allows
us to assess whether politicians might perceive a bias and whether one in fact exists. We
report data from Great Britain, where the issue has occasionally been one of topical politi-
cal debate – as noted above – but where a smaller proportion of the public has traditional
attitudes to gender roles, to several of the countries where the subject has been researched
thus far. We assess whether British Members of Parliament (MPs) differ in the extent to
which they display or hide details of their families from the public using observational
data and whether the British public view politicians differently if they have children by
using a survey experiment. We find that politicians do utilise their parental status in pub-
licity material and find a clear public preference for candidates who are parents over those
who are childless – but we find relatively few gendered or partisan effects.
Hypotheses
Whether politicians’ parental status influences voter support has, with some notable
exceptions (Elder and Greene, 2012), been paid relatively little attention by political
scientists. The few studies to investigate the topic have found that the impact of politi-
cians’ parental status on candidate evaluations was mediated by gender. In an experi-
ment conducted with an undergraduate sample in the United States, Brittany Stalsburg
demonstrated that childless women were rated less favourably compared to childless
men, and men and women candidates with children (Stalsburg, 2010). A bias against
unmarried childless women candidates was also found by Melissa Bell and Karen
Campbell and Cowley
755
Kaufmann in their survey experiment (Bell and Kaufmann, 2015). This research chimes
with the above examples of both Theresa May and Julia Gillard, in which being a parent
in general may be considered an electoral asset, but where childless women candidates
are thought to suffer an electoral penalty.
However, the broader literature relating to this question is more divided on the conse-
quences of parenthood, and especially motherhood. It can equally be argued that it should
be women with children who would suffer electorally, based on the traditional stereotypi-
cal view that mothers should prioritise giving childcare over paid work (Douglas and
Michaels, 2004; Mezey and Pillard, 2012; Norris and Lovenduski, 1995). Although atti-
tudes to traditional gender roles have changed markedly in western democracies over the
last half century, women continue to make up the overwhelming majority of carers of
young children and there remains a minority of the public who believe that women’s
place is in the home not the workplace (Campbell et al., 2010; Inglehart and Norris,
2000). It is not unknown for women candidates for office to be asked how they will com-
bine elected office with family life, questions that are rarely, if ever, asked of male candi-
dates (Dolan, 2014: 2). From this perspective, having children should have a reverse
effect on support for women candidates compared with men: fatherhood might be an
electoral asset, motherhood an electoral constraint.
The conflicting nature of the potential impact of stereotypes on political ambition and
support for women candidates who are mothers was explored by Grace Deason et al. in
their discussion of the politicisation of motherhood in the United States (Deason et al.,
2015). They describe how politicians’ increasing use of their parental status to develop
their political brand provides both constraints and opportunities for women candidates,
and how the increased visibility of mothers in politics has potentially expanded concepts
of political leadership to include feminine traits associated with motherhood. Thus, can-
didates who are mothers may receive an electoral penalty because voters may question
how they can fulfil their domestic role while holding office but equally they may be
viewed as uniquely capable of performing aspects of political leadership associated with
representing the interests of children and considered to have special gifts associated with
multitasking, consensus building and compassion that are associated with motherhood.
In sum, the extant...
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