Families and Parties, and Party Families: Parenthood and Political Careers in Germany

One important axis of difference between contemporary political parties is their social traditionalism/progressivism. This ideological dimension structures parties’ orientations in many policy areas, ranging from their preference for childcare infrastructure vs. direct family subsidies to their support for trans rights. Given the significance of parties’ ideological differences for their policy orientations, it is reasonable to expect that they would also relate to social patterns among legislators. In other words, members of a socially traditionalist political party would have more traditionalist home lives, while socially progressive party members would have more progressive family arrangements. We examine these expectations in the case of Germany, an ideologically diverse party system that offers the opportunity to study important questions about the salience of politicians’ family lives for their careers. Research on the consequences of family labor for sitting officeholders is limited, more attention having been paid to social factors that shape candidate emergence, in the first place. We add to knowledge about these dynamics with findings from a survey of elected members of the Bundestag and of Germany’s 16 state legislatures that we fielded in October-November 2023. Survey respondents hailed from more than a dozen, ideologically varied political parties. Their responses inform answers to the following questions: What kinds of consequences does family labor have for political careers, to what extent are these consequences gendered, and to what extent do these consequences vary across political parties? Finally, we asked respondents about what supports they viewed as important for politicians who are parents. In particular, the survey allows us to juxtapose several competing hypotheses about variation between political parties. Are more socially traditionalist parties, such as the AfD, settings where women office holders are more likely to conform to traditionalist gender stereotypes by having kids and fulfilling maternal roles? Alternatively, do women in these parties experience pressure to wait to run for office until any children are older? Or do women in these parties, viewing traditionalist maternal roles as incompatible with a political career, choose not to have children, at all?