Making Mothers Stay at Home? Analyzing the Impact of Partisan Cueing on Attitudes Toward Maternal Employment

Abstract

After decades of value change toward more favorable views of maternal employment, the trend has slowed down and even reversed in some Western countries. This article argues that political parties play a crucial yet neglected role in shaping the trajectories of value change: the dynamics resulting from interparty competition place parties in a position to provide cues to the electorate and to actively shape attitudes toward maternal employment. Partisan cueing should become particularly relevant with a declining relevance of party competition on economic issues. The results from multilevel regression models provide empirical support for this perspective.