Every election cycle, the media fixates on two demographic groups that they claim are central to the success of either political party and towards whom they should pitch their messages. One is white working class men and the other is white middle-class women. Why these two groups are singled out for special attention is a mystery to me but seems to be based on the assumption that they are the most persuadable to switch from one party to another and hence worth targeting. I am not fully convinced that they are more persuadable than other groups since such analyses are usually based on historical data and may not be currently applicable.
For example, the conventional wisdom is that white working class men used to be a strong Democratic constituency that switched to the Republicans following the civil rights era of the 1960ss while white middle-class women used to be strongly Republican but now are peeling away from them. But the key fact is that both targeted groups are white and not poor, which explains why the concerns of the poor and minorities tend to get put on the backburner during election time, which in the US is pretty much all the time.
For white middle-class women especially the media seems to come up with an inexhaustible list of cutesy labels consisting of taking a description that signifies a stereotypical middle class lifestyle and concerns and adding ‘moms’ to it, such as ‘soccer moms’, ‘security moms’, and this year’s ‘suburban moms’. What’s next? Yoga moms? Coffee shop moms? Volvo moms?
The ugliest part of Trump’s re-election strategy is his racist appeal to this group that he refers to as ‘suburban housewives’, a highly anachronistic term that harkens back to the image in the fifties of middle class women living in lily-white suburbs, wearing aprons and baking, cleaning the homes, and taking care of the children while their husbands support the family. Trump is trying to make them fearful that a Biden victory will lead to people of color moving in next to them. This was the fear that was prevalent in the Jim Crow era when segregated suburbs were the norm but were being threatened by the civil rights movement and Supreme Court decisions that outlawed the red-lining of areas to keep black people out.
But things have changed a lot since then, as Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg, who specializes in looking at suburban voters, points out.
Taking a step back, there’s always been this attempt to characterize a certain set of women voters—whether it’s “soccer moms,” or “waitress moms,” or “security moms”—this kind of caricature of a woman voter who lives in the suburbs, has children, is very concerned about “kitchen table” issues like their children’s health, but also very worried about security and keeping their kids safe. And there’s a notion that there’s a particular set of issues that suburban women uniquely care about because of them being moms: They’re a little more economically liberal, if you will, but more socially conservative, and they are all sort of similar to each other.
But that’s never been true. And it couldn’t be less true now.
…Suburban women are not this monolithic bloc of voters. There are really big differences based on religiosity, education level, race. Some are married, some are not married; some have kids, some don’t. The assumption is that suburban women are all white, but there’s a just huge diversity within this group — demographically, and in terms of opinions and experiences.
The way Trump thinks about what suburban women care about is through a very traditional gender lens, which is not anywhere near where we are. When you’ve got 60 percent of white college-educated women voting for Biden, those traditional ways of appealing to women — which were a little suspect to begin with — just feel out of touch.
…“When Trump referred to suburban women as ‘housewives,’ it was telling,” Greenberg said. “When you look at the ways they’re trying to appeal to this archetypal woman voter, it is so rooted in a fairly traditional way of thinking about women’s experiences and what women care about. And it misses the mark in some pretty profound ways.”
One of those ways: Trump’s focus on “law and order” in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests just doesn’t seem to resonate with suburban women in the polls and focus groups Greenberg has seen. And, in fact, it reminds many of them of one of the things they dislike most about the president: The sense that he’s inflaming racial divisions.
“People come to this narrative already in a place of being unhappy with how Trump has dealt with the issue—that rather than bringing people together and having a reckoning to try to move us forward, he, in fact, has sort of made it worse,” said Greenberg. “Like, there’s no monolith of white women in the suburbs who are like locking their doors and putting on their burglar alarms, scared of invading hordes. It’s just not the way they think about their lives.”
The Trump campaign is clearly banking that running a racist campaign as if this was the 1950s, where he is the challenger and not the incumbent, will be enough to win. He is running as George Wallace.
Yahbut, George Wallace had enough sense after being shot and paralyzed to change his position on issues. I doubt The Orange Toddler-Tyrant would have such a mental revelation if he suffered the same fate.
Not only is the Republican campaign focused on the 1950s, it’s also focused on the red states and the middle of the country.
I live on one of the coasts, and here, most women under Boomer age are educated (which Republicans hate because an educated and engaged populace doesn’t tend to vote for them) and work. Within a hour’s drive radius of my house, there are 4 branches of the state university, 3 HBCUs, and at least 3 private colleges. We’ve got world-class bio-tech, hospitals, IT, and federal jobs. We also have a fairly high cost of living, so the subset of women staying home belongs mostly to the Boomers who had the benefit of cheap housing, the women who choose not to work and whose husbands are making mega-bucks, and those in abject poverty.
It’s possible the mid-west has a bigger subset of women who don’t work. There’s a reason the Republicans go after that population.
Why do white middle class women have to be mothers or housewives? “White middle class women” and “mothers” are two very distinct categories with only partial overlap. And only some of them also qualify as “housewives.”
Personally, as a childfree person, I perceive it as offensive or at least ignorant when people use language, which assumes that all adults have to be parents. If people want to talk about middle class people who identify as female, then calling them “moms” or “housewives” is highly inaccurate and potentially sexist due to all those attached expectations about gender role fulfillment.
Katydid, you can find all sorts of stats about labor force participation rates and related issues by gender, race, age of children, geography etc at https://www.dol.gov/agencies/wb/data
WRT geography, see https://www.dol.gov/agencies/wb/data/labor-force-participation-rate-by-sex and https://www.dol.gov/agencies/wb/data/womens-labor-force-participation-rate-presence-age-of-children
Overall, women’s labor force participation is highest in the midwest and the northeast, lowest in Appalachia, parts of the south and southwest (but these areas have low employment in general, I wish there was a map for gender difference in labor force participation). Women’s labor force participation is lower when they have children under 6 (and lower yet if they have children both under 6 and between 6 and 17) but higher when all their children are between 6 and 17. Again, I wish there was a map for women with no children under 18.
#3 Andreas Avester: Yeah there’s a whole crap load of assumptions attached to their ideas of homemaker, housewife, and suburban mom, because another one, along with the one you just mentioned, is the idea that none of those roles can be embodied by women of color, non- Christians, or bi/lesbian women! Plenty of suburban women are childless and educated, too.
trump’s definitions of the terms he’s using are extremely, extremely, narrow, and the population of that demographic is just as small.
Why these two groups are singled out for special attention is a mystery to me
White supremacy.
@Andreas Avester, 3
“as a childfree person, I perceive it as offensive or at least ignorant when people use language, which assumes that all adults have to be parents.”
As a child-having person I perceive it as offensive when the child-free fail to understand that the entire fucking world doesn’t revolve around them and their preferences.
Oh,”housewife” doesn’t describe you? Here’s an interpretation for you : Trump isn’t aiming his campaign at you. He doesn’t give a shit how you vote. He’s not saying you don’t exist. He knows perfectly well you exist, but he doesn’t care. I’m not a work class male, so I’m invisible too. Get over it.
Another hint: he’s limited his campaign to people in the USA who are entirled to vote. As a non member of that group I suppose that offends you too?
@sonofrojblake(#7):
Yes seeing that the US deems it self worthy of openly interfering in for example the economic development of my country I’m offended that I cannot vote for the people who seem to have more sway about what happens here then my own government.
[I think you had forgotten to end the block quote. I did that for you. I hope you don’t mind. -- Mano]
Not following here. Someone in the “working-class” is “not poor”? Relative to our oligarchs, they certainly are. A “middle-class” person is too, of course.
The basic point is to create divisions among those who are not oligarchs, according to race, class, gender, religion, or whatever it may be. As long as they remain in power, they don’t seem to care how it goes in detail, since our lives are all basically irrelevant. Those things are seen more or less as convenient weapons, and they expect us to use them against ourselves, which is exactly what many of us do.
@Andreas; there is some sociopolitical stuff going on in the USA that might not have crossed your radar because you simply don’t have to know about it. The backlash from the gains women made in the 1980s kicked up in the late 1980s, hit full stride in the 1990s, and hasn’t subsided yet in the Republicans. In mainstream American culture, there were a number of popular movies about women who somehow became responsible for babies or young children--either through unplanned pregnancy or inheriting them from some recently-deceased relative. The women are always successful business women but realize by the end of the movie that their own true happiness is being a mommy. Very subtle, no?
Likewise, on the radio there was the clear message to women (via “Dr.” Laura and Phyllis Schafly and Ann Coulter) that the only possible path for a “real” woman to take was to be a stay-at-home mother--note the irony of women having a career based on telling other women they were horrible humans for having a career.
In television programs and news stories and popular magazines, the public was bombarded with story after story about women who had successful careers but realized it was all empty compared to having and nurturing their own children.
I was reacting to that in my last post. That was the era when I had children, so you’d think I’d be beyond reproach, but nope, I also had a career so therefore I could not possibly be a “real” mother. Are you familiar with the German “ravenmutter”? The same thing was going on in the USA. Obviously this ignores the reality that many people either have to work, or their interests and skills are best captured by work.
Of course it helps Republicans if women adopt the barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen chained to the stove and obsessing over fixing the perfect lunch for their children. Childfree people are derided because they don’t have the mommier-than-thou distraction of the children, and have more time and energy to educate themselves. Ann Coulter insisted women should not be allowed to vote, and obviously an electorate knowing about anything serious and being educated on political matters doesn’t help the Republicans.
@7 sonofrojblake
I know why you have a bug up your butt about Andreas, but I really don’t think antagonizing him like this accomplishes anything. It definitely makes you look bad. Could you just let it lie?
cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stepford_Wives
@sonofrojblake: as a child-haver, I believe Andreas has every right to give us his opinion. Like him, I also get really tired of the assumption that all adult people should have children, and the usual follow-on that of course the women should have to sacrifice it all in servitude to those children.
Also, one of the points of reading comments on blogs is to learn other people’s views of things. As a non-USAian, Andreas gives the USAians a window into how his country operates.
@ 3 Andreas Avester
To follow up on Katydid @ 10’s remarks, I am just reading a book [Anderson, Kurt. (2017). Fantasyland: How America went haywire. Random House ISBN 978-1-4000-6721-3; 978-0-8129-7890-2] .
I live in Canada, have American relations & friends, and never quite realize how culturally different a lot of Americans can be.
Superficially Canadian and US cultures appear almost the same but if Anderson is right we really are very different in our basic assumptions. It help to explain some of the batshit crazy things Americans do.
If you can find a copy you might find it interesting.
To clarify: if a politician wants to have a campaign that appeals to “mothers,” that’s fine. Or they can more broadly appeal to “parents.” Or they can appeal to “people who love to hunt for boletes in forests every autumn.” Whatever. They are welcome to pick any demographic they like.
But if they choose a demographic classified as “suburban middle-class women,” then it is rude to assume that this demographic consists entirely of people who are white, married with a straight man, mothers, housewives, etc. extra adjectives that create a very sexist, homophobic, and racist narrative about how suburban middle-class women ought to live.
So to sum up, a politician is welcome to appeal either to “middle-class women” or to “mothers,” but they should pick only one of these labels for their speeches and abstain from treating both of these demographics as synonymous.
I am one of those annoying people who prefer non-bigoted and inclusive or exact word choices. If you talk about people who menstruate or have abortions, don’t say “women,” because it ignores trans men. If you are a dietician giving nutrition advice to people who are planning a pregnancy, don’t say that this advice is aimed at “reproductive-age women,” because many women within this age group are not planning a pregnancy. If you talk about suburban middle-class women, don’t say “white women.”
My dislike for non-inclusive or too broad word choices does not mean that I imagine that the whole world revolves around trans men, childfree people, or women of color. Instead it means that I dislike all the hidden bigotry (sexism, transphobia, racism) that still remains in our language and everyday word choices.
Katydid @#10
In USSR unemployed housewives were rare. Thus we inherited the cultural expectation that women are supposed to work. Unfortunately, there are also some nasty stereotypes about what professions they should choose (school teacher, nurse and so on).
So here the idea is that a good woman should have a full time job (she is allowed to not work for two years after the birth of each of her kids but after this time period is over she has to get back to work). She also has to be married and have kids. She must be the primary caretaker of her kids, she also has to cook meals for the entire family and do all the cleaning chores at home. In short: she has to do it all and perfectly. If her meals aren’t tasty enough or her performance at work is lackluster, she’s a failure. And this kind of stressful life in which she has to work all the time and devote her life to everybody but herself is supposed to be the greatest happiness and give her the ultimate fulfillment.
In more conservative circles, especially among the devoutly religious, skipping work and being a full time housewife is encouraged.
In more liberal circles, skipping marriage and kids is still frowned upon. You have to simultaneously be a full time worker and a mother.
The world is sexist everywhere.
Yep, a similar concept exists also here. Except that a woman is supposed to be a perfect mother also while still having a career. There’s a lot of judgment and condemnation if a woman prioritizes her career and dumps a major portion of childcare duties on a nanny or her kid’s grandparents or even her child’s father.
@abbeycadabra, 11:
I can’t comment on the reason, as I already promised not to discuss it further, so in that way, demonstrably, yes, unlike him, I can let it lie. However, you make a good point: Andreas does deserve to be a special case and not ever have any of his other opinions, on any subject, challenged either, no matter how uninformed or stupid they are. I’ll considered it the “abbeycadabra exception”.
@Katydid, 13:
Well yes, so do I. I just thought this opinion was particularly dense based at it was on an apparently deliberately obtuse misunderstanding of what was being said. But, as of this post, thanks to the abbeycabra exception, Andreas enjoys the additional right to spout such nonsense unchallenged, at least by me.
Well, so would I if I ever saw that assumption in the wild, rather than in the complaints of a certain kind of childless person. I myself made the choice to be childless well into my late forties, and never felt any pressure from outside to have children. I certainly never experienced and societal assumptions on that score, but then I’m just a ciswhitehetmale, so, y’know, my opinions are at best irrelevant if not actually toxic, so there’s that. Nevertheless, again -- nothing in this story makes assumptions about how people conduct their lives. The story is about targeting a particular kind of voter -- putting their needs first, above the needs of others. Targeting, say, black voters wouldn’t imply white voters don’t or shouldn’t exist -- that kind of hysterical over-reaction is the sort of thing those on the left would ridicule the right for, with some justification. And targeting “moms” (to use an Americanism I find particularly repellent) doesn’t mean unmarried or childless women don’t or shouldn’t exist -- it just says “we don’t give a shit how they vote”. Now: you can argue that targeting limited election funds in that way is wrong, but you’ll have a harder time than saying “women have a right to not have kids”, about which we simply have no disagreement.
Well… yes. And such outside perspectives can definitely add value, in cases other than this. But I’m going to leave it there, for good, on any further direct comment on what that person thinks about anything.
The whining of members of the world’s most privileged demographic always evokes in me (a fellow member) a mixture of amusement and disgust. The amusement is more prominent in this case, because sonofrojblake shows a hilarious failure to realise that the lack of pressure on him to have children could just possibly be related to his gender.