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 146
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