Unpacking the Family Penalty in Elected Office: Why some mothers persist?

Recently, scholars have turned their attention to the impact of parenthood on political participation. As a critical life course transition, parenthood and the care work it entails are found to have a negative impact on levels of political interest and participation. Unsurprisingly, the negative effects of parenthood on political participation disproportionately affect women more than men, potentially contributing to the persistent underrepresentation of women in politics. Research results are clear: concerns about parental responsibilities prevent women from running for office (Bernhard et al. 2020); difficulties in balancing family and political work are often lamented as one of the main problems faced by women politicians (Campbell and Childs 2014), particularly in the absence of “gender-friendly" political institutions (Palmieri 2011). As a result, mothers’ political careers tend to be shorter than those of fathers and those of women without child-raising responsibilities. Finally, those women who do make it to the top of the political hierarchy generally have fewer children than their male counterparts (Fiva&King 2022; Joshi&Goehrun 2021). In this paper, we aim to extend our knowledge by focusing on the effect of parenthood on politicians' perceived self-efficacy as officeholders. While the literature has shown that women politicians are more likely than men to leave politics when their influence in the political process stalls, the relationship between parenthood and self-efficacy has been overlooked. However, we hypothesise that parenthood has an impact on the set of incentives that lead women to stay in politics: if mothers perceive that they have no influence and no longer find politics a worthwhile experience, they would be more likely to consider leaving politics than men and non-mothers. We ask: does the responsibility of parenting affect the self-efficacy of male and female MPs differently? In order to understand this relationship in depth, we also examine how a range of different institutional and personal factors mediate the relationship. Specifically, we argue that day-time political meetings and economic compensation for political activities positively impact self-efficacy. We expect political seniority, experience from a political youth organisation, and experience in office to have a similarly positive impact on the perceptions of politicians’ self-efficacy. To answer our research question, we focus on the case of Norway. Norway's widespread culture of gender equality and welfare state provision for co-parenting and childcare would suggest that childcare responsibilities are evenly shared between parents, making it a least likely case for studying gender political inequalities and the potential impact of parenthood on such inequalities. However, recent research has shown the existence of a 'child penalty' for female Norwegian politicians (Fiva&King 2022). This evidence calls for a closer examination of the mechanisms behind such a penalty. To answer our question, we draw on original survey data collected as part of the Norwegian Representative Panel (a survey of all Norwegian elected representatives at all levels of government), distributed after the local elections in September 2023. Our results help to shed light on different conditions that could break the negative cycle that makes parenthood a burden for women's political engagement.