Mominee’s Dilemma: Navigating Motherhood, Race & Gender in a U.S. House Campaign

• In Event: Gender, Race, and Sexuality in Elections

Abstract

Shifting societal norms around parenthood and politics require a fuller understanding of how diverse mothers running for political office shape their electoral appeals, and how these are received by voters. Currently, 7% of House Representatives in Congress are moms of children under 18, and only 2% of representatives are moms of color (Vote Mama 2022). While this is a record number, this is still severely underrepresented compared to the share of the U.S. population who are mothers with young children (17.8%) (American Community Survey 2019). Thus, there are far fewer moms in formal political positions of power compared to their share of the population. When running for office, candidates can use maternal appeals, “verbal statement or visual images that indicate a candidate’s commitment to maternal values or highlights a candidate’s maternal traits” to connect their identity to a campaign issue or differentiate themselves from the competition in the race (although notably, there are partisan cleavages in terms of using motherhood identity) (Deason 2020). Historically, studying motherhood within political science has been relatively homogeneous and political science has maintained a consistent focus on appeals and traits of Republican and conservative mothers (Weinenger 2022; Schreiber 2012; Schreiber 2016; Deckman 2016; Deason, Greenlee and Langner 2015). While there is emerging literature on campaigns exploring the axes of race, parenthood and gender, this remains a relatively underdeveloped area of study (Smith 2022; Burge, Hodges and Rinaldi 2019; Killen 2019; Dittmar 2020). For example, much of the experimental research in political science on moms running for office generally uses white candidate photos or does not indicate racial status, and consequently we know very little about moms of color running for office and the distinct opportunities/barriers they may face (Stalsburg 2010; Bell and Kaufman 2015; Stalsburg and Kleinberg 2015).

In my project, I ask: how does the identity of motherhood intersect with racial/ethnic identities of women candidates to shape their political opportunities? I argue that there are specific opportunities and constraints afforded to mothers which may vary based on their racial and partisan status. I investigate this question using an intersectional, mixed method approach including a qualitative set of case studies and survey experiments. The goal of the project is to identify how moms running for Congress select maternal appeals to appeal to voters, and how voter preferences constrain these options for moms with different backgrounds.

In my descriptive case study analysis, I analyzed the campaign outputs of six Congressional non-incumbent winners who ran between 2018 – 2022, are mothers to children under 18, and vary by race/ethnicity and partisanship. I analyzed outputs (including 41 campaign ads, 3,027 social media posts, and 12 webpages) to determine the presence and types of maternal values each uses to frame their campaign appeal to voters. My qualitative analysis has found that the existing maternal appeal typology fails to include mom candidates of varying racial/ethnic and immigrant backgrounds who run for office and may be constrained by forms of respectability politics. However, results support distinct maternal appeals relevant to more diverse group of mother candidates, including the model minority and supermom frames. Certain appeals (e.g. ‘Supermom’ and Moral Authority) are used by candidates across race/ethnic and party lines, whereas others appear to be more restricted to a subset of identities. For example, I find that women of color candidates who are first generation American use motherhood as an anchor to reinforce their legitimacy as a (legal) American citizen and reinforce their assimilation to American family values.

In an ongoing phase of the project I use novel experimental surveys and test how the presentation of motherhood is constrained by intersecting candidate identities and the influence of voters. I integrate some of the descriptive case study findings into a novel survey experiment to test which maternal appeal types are likely to be successful with different types of voters. The first experiment uses a widely available maternal appeal (e.g. Moral authority frame) to manipulate candidate race and the second experiment will manipulate candidate factors to better understand how voters’ behavior is shaped by maternal appeals. The descriptive data from the case studies ensures the experiments are grounded in realism, while the experiment helps strengthen causal claims about the effect of different appeals on voter perceptions.

Results from this project will further develop theory on how distinct lived experiences among mothers manifest differently on the campaign trail, and also provide campaign officials with data on voter biases/preferences regarding the intersection of maternal appeals and identities.

Author

• Michelle Irving, Rutgers