How does the personal become political? Assessing the impact of mothers' employment on daughters' participation in political organizations

Abstract

The "Millennial" generation grew up in a period of changing gender roles, when labor force participation of mothers of young children was rapidly increasing. Past research has found that daughters of employed mothers are more likely to defy traditional gender scripts by seeking employment and authority positions. Building on this literature, I assess whether exposure to a full-time employed mother has an impact on Millennial women's participation in political organizations. I use prospective data on childhood context from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, and apply propensity score weighting and a matching technique based on covariates. Evidence suggests that exposure to a full-time employed mother increases participation in political organizations for low-SES daughters. According to sensitivity tests, these findings are reasonably robust to unobserved confounders. In contrast, exposure to a full-time employed mother does not have a significant effect on the participation of sons or high-SES daughters.

Keywords: Gender; Maternal employment; Political participation.