Daughters Make Their Daddies More Liberal

This post is two years old, but if anything, I’ve grown more resolute in my liberal politics as a result of being a father to my darling, independent, assertive toddler Heloise.

There’s been a lot of research done over the years on the impact that becoming a parent has on one’s political preference. The common wisdom has generally been that becoming a parent, particularly to a daughter or daughters, would push that parent rightward in his or her politics. Indeed, back in my own youth, I heard some variation on this line from several sources: “What’s the definition of a conservative? A former liberal with a teenage daughter.” It “sounded” right, and not being a parent (but being quite left-wing), I was prepared, however reluctantly, to believe it might be so.

My student Hilary sends me a link, however, to this post at the wonderful FiveThirtyEight: Having Daughters Rather than Sons Makes You More Liberal. 538 provides a link to a PDF file of a forthcoming paper which summarizes a number of recent studies, all of which indicate that the presence of daughters in father’s lives (more so than in mother’s) tends to move men leftwards. This trend is true in both the UK and the USA (the two nations studied), and true both for ordinary voters as well as for politicians. For example, the study cites the work of economist Ebonya Washington:

By collecting data on the voting records of US congressmen, Washington… provides persuasive evidence that congressmen with female children tend to vote liberally on reproductive rights issues such as teen access to contraceptives. (She also) argues for a wider result, namely, that the congressmen vote more liberally on a range of issues such as working families flexibility and tax-free education. Her data — compiled partly but not wholly from voting record scores compiled by the three interest groups of the National Organization of Women, the American Association of University Women, and the National Right to Life Coalition — cover a cross-section of 828 members of four congresses of the US House of Representatives for the years 1997 to 2004. As her
final sentence puts it:

“Not only should we consider the influence that parents have on
children’s behavior, but we should acknowledge that influence may flow from child to parent.

Read the whole study, the comments at 538, and check out the fun graphs and charts. A statistician’s delight!

I argued in March that “strong public institutions which offer alternatives to traditional family structures and allow for maximum personal autonomy and responsible self-expression are a key way to promote a feminist vision on a macro-economic level.” That was and is my view, but it’s interesting to see that having daughters seems to lead other men (politicians and ordinary voters alike) towards that same position. It’s not the case that those who have girls are automatically more liberal; it’s difficult to argue that on most issues, Dick Cheney was somehow made more progressive by having two daughters and no sons! One shudders to think how much more extreme he might have been had he had “Larry” and “Mark” instead of Liz and Mary. (It’s worth noting that his nuanced and moderate position on gay marriage, rare for a right-wing Republican, was certainly influenced by having a lesbian daughter.)

In February, I wrote that – almost to my surprise — I felt that I had become more pro-choice, far more strongly supportive of abortion rights, as a consequence of becoming a father. I saw the sonogram images; I was there when my daughter came into the world. I held little Heloise before even her mother did, and I loved her from the moment I saw her being formed in my wife’s uterus. I quote my final paragraph from that post:

Becoming a father is, on a daily basis, making me a different and (one hopes) a better, kinder, more thoughtful man. I cannot begin to explain how much I love this little girl, and how I loved her from the moment I saw her. And of course, I loved her before she emerged from the womb. Was there a person there before she was born? Surely. Was there a soul there? My faith tells me yes, there was. But that person was inextricably linked to and dependent upon another person, a sovereign woman, one whose body bore the entire brunt of pregnancy and all its attendant burdens and joys. I am so glad my wife and I have had this child; I rejoice in the choice we made together. But my reverence for the principle of feminist autonomy has never been stronger than it is now, as a consequence of witnessing so closely this journey my wife and baby were on together for the better part of a year.

Now that I am getting to know my nearly four-month old baby girl, delighting each day in the wonderful new things she does, that “reverence for the principle of feminist autonomy” grows ever stronger. Folks know I’ve taken a very progressive line on adolescent sexuality, for example; many have inquired as to whether having Heloise has made me more instinctively conservative, out of a paternal protectiveness. One friend asked “Does it change your general liberal bias about teen sex, now that you have a daughter?” And the answer, at least for now, is a very clear “no.” Mind you, my baby is just that, a baby. She’s a long way from puberty. But I know that she is not mine to guard jealously forever; I will not be taking her to any of those obscene father-daughter purity balls. Heloise will not be “Daddy’s innocent princess”. I will stand beside her and protect her when necessary, but I know that she belongs more to herself than she does to me or to her mother.

My goal is to give Heloise a foundation for a happy, vital, meaningful life of sharing and experience, pleasure and learning, service and creativity. I want to raise her to be ethical but not guilt-ridden, responsible but not enslaved by self-denial, ambitious but not anxious to achieve at any cost. And I will vote for social, environmental, and economic policies which will maximize her personal liberty, maximize her opportunities, and minimize the amount of harm that her Western lifestyle (and that of her children, and her children’s children) can inflict upon the earth and its many vulnerable, valuable creatures. I was a liberal before I became a papa — and I am more liberal than ever now.