The Effect of Pregnancy on Engagement with Politics. Towards a Process-Oriented Model of the Role of Parenthood in Society.

Becoming pregnant and giving birth to a child are life changing experiences. Fundamental physical, psychological and behavioral transformations characterize this phase in life. This paper focuses on the understudied political consequences of these life-changing events and asks how pregnancy and birth giving influence political engagement. In particular, we present pregnancy and birth giving as dynamic processes during the beginning of parenthood that are inherently relevant for a broad array of research on political behavior and political opinion which needs further theoretical and empirical attention. Using a pre-and post-test design, our data from a large-scale Swedish citizen panel (N=60,000) records political engagement already before, as well as during and after pregnancy. This design uncovers whether and how (dis)engagement from politics among women starts already with the pregnancy. Since 2015, we have asked respondents whether they or their partner are pregnant every sixth month. We therefore have unique and better suited data than has ever been utilized in the study of political consequences of these early phases of parenthood. By political engagement, we refer to the resources one needs to be active in politics – such as political interest, political self-efficacy and information seeking¬ – as well as the political actions such as political discussions and actively addressing political issues through means of contact and protest. Our results suggest that behavioral change regarding political participation and perceptions about the importance of politics sets in already when women become pregnant. These changes continue during pregnancy and after childbirth, leading to a significant drop in political engagement for women. The disengagement from politics thus starts before the child is even born, which has not been theorized or discovered so far. We argue that the difference between women and men has to do with the relatively larger investment - cognitive, physical and psychological – by women into the pregnancy. We examine whether women spend more time seeking information about pregnancy and child related issues than men, and find that this clearly is the case. We also compare women with and without psychologically and physiologically burdensome pregnancies, to understand whether this matters for disengagement from politics. Preliminary results there are mixed, indicating that investment in the pregnancy does not always result in consequences for political engagement. We end with a discussion about temporary and long-term impact on political engagement as well as implication for understanding gender gaps in political engagement as caused by early parenthood.