The Politics of Anticipation: How anticipatory motherhood and realized motherhood affect political outcomes

• In Event: Sociology of Culture Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): 18. Political Socialization & Anticipatory Identities

Abstract

Prior research has shown that mothers and non-mothers are distinct political groups in the United States. However, this work has not considered the anticipation of motherhood as a similar distinguishing force. In this article, I demonstrate that anticipatory mothers (women who do not have a born, living child but intend to someday) are distinct in how they conceptualize and interact with government from never mothers (women who plan not to have children). In other words, socialization toward becoming a mother someday is politically impactful, even if the reality of mothering a born, living child is not yet achieved. I conducted interviews with 84 women in the politically salient state of Wisconsin, United States, in 2019 to understand how they thought of government and their interactions with government. Never mothers were distinct from other groups in their emphasis on governmental injustice; realized mothers were distinct from other groups in identifying levels of government differently; and both anticipatory and realized mothers emphasized shifts in their own lives as impactful on their relationships with government, while never mothers did not. I demonstrate that conceptualizing women as either non-mothers or mothers is insufficient in the study of politics; the anticipation of motherhood matters.

Author

• Abigail Jorgensen, Augustine Institute