Polarized Families, Polarized Parties. Gwendoline M. Alphonso
of public lands/homesteads to families, and child support, many of which were not mentioned in party platforms at the time.
The late twentieth-century period stands apart in its unprecedented proportion of Soul family values bills, particularly during the 104th (1994–1995) and 105th (1996–1997) Congresses, even though economics-focused bills continued to otherwise prevail. During the Contract with America Congresses (104th and 105th Congresses), for the first time, legislators sponsored more Soul family bills, even exceeding the proportion of Hearth bills, a phenomenon that remained unmatched in any of the other congresses investigated.97
Moreover, in this more recent period, many more legislators clustered their support through cosponsorship around valuational Soul bills, evidencing the increased political salience of family values following the Republican takeover of the House in 1994. Of the 1,009 family bills examined in the period from 1989 to 2004, almost identical proportions of Hearth and Soul bills were cosponsored.98 However, in the period following the 104th Congress, Soul bills began to attract more cosponsors (32.2 cosponsors per Soul bill) than Hearth ones (22.9 cosponsors).99
Thus, the late twentieth-century period is distinctive to family political development not only in terms of the increased proportion of Soul bills (despite the ongoing higher proportion of Hearth bills) but also because many more legislators began to attach their names, in larger numbers, to Soul family values bills rather than to Hearth ones. This development was put into play, beginning with the 104th Contract with America Congress in 1995 (Figure 10).
In terms of patterns of partisanship, the Progressive and late twentieth-century periods resemble each other in contrast to the postwar era. In these two periods, party affiliation of the legislator (as Democratic [coded as 0] or Republican [coded as 1]) was strongly correlated with the kinds of family bills he or she introduced (as Hearth [1] or Soul [0] (see Table 2).
Party attachment to kind of family bill also demonstrates a clear reversal in party family ideologies through the twentieth century. Whereas more Republicans sponsored Hearth bills in the Progressive Era, by the late twentieth-century period, more Republicans introduced bills with a Soul focus.100 In the Progressive Era, the majority of Soul family bills (57.4 percent) introduced was sponsored by Democrats, while the majority of Hearth family bills (69.7 percent) was introduced by Republicans.101 By the late twentieth century, however, Republicans introduced the vast majority of Soul bills (80.5 percent), and Democrats introduced many more Hearth ones (68.7 percent).
Figure 10. Mean number of cosponsors, Hearth and Soul bills, 1989–2004.
The increasing polarization in Hearth and Soul family ideologies is clearly evidenced in cosponsorship patterns as well. An average 17.1 percent of the congressional Republican delegation cosponsored a Soul family values bill in the late twentieth century compared to only 3.29 percent of the Democratic delegation.102 In contrast, an average 12.8 percent of the congressional Democratic delegation cosponsored a Hearth family economics bill in contrast to 4.3 percent of the Republican contingent. For Republicans in Congress, cosponsorship percentage and Soul family bills bore a statistically significant relationship (at the .05 level) starting from the 104th Congress (1995–1996) through to the last Congress examined (the 108th [2003–2004]).103 This was so for Democrats starting in the 105th Congress, when the size (percentage) of Democrats cosponsoring a bill and its Hearth ideology became statistically significant (at the .05 level). At this time, partisanship and the kind of family bill introduced (its ideology) thus became much more strongly correlated than ever before.
Table 2. Correlation Between Ideology of Family Bill and Party Membership of Sponsor
a Correlation is significant at the .01 level, two-tailed.
In sum, whether in the kinds of family bills sponsored or the extent and content of bills cosponsored, since the 104th Congress, party affiliation has significantly divided Congress members in their family-related legislative behavior. Republican victory in the election of 1994 was followed by a dramatic overall increase in the proportion of Soul family values bills introduced in Congress; this coincided with the sharp rise in the percentage of the Republican delegation that began to cosponsor Soul bills. Among Democrats, while the relationship between cosponsorship percentage and bills’ family ideology was not significant in the 104th Congress, since then—starting from the 105th Congress—this relationship has become statistically significant, with significantly greater proportions of Democrats sponsoring Hearth family economics bills. Legislative behavior on family-related bills thus came to be strongly correlated with family ideology for both parties following the Republican takeover of the House in the mid-1990s.
Conclusion
There have been three historical periods marking partisan family development: the Progressive Era, in which Republicans embraced a Hearth family economic ideology and Democrats were more aligned to the Soul family values approach; a midcentury, post–World War II period in which the Hearth ideology emerged as clearly dominant across both parties; and finally, the late twentieth-century period, when the Republican Party championed the Soul family ideology as never before. The period since the 104th Congress is especially significant because of the strong partisan character evidenced in the introduction and cosponsorship of Hearth and Soul family bills since then. Sponsorship and cosponsorship of Hearth bills were now much more strongly correlated with Democratic members of Congress, while bills espousing the Soul family values approach were much more correlated with Republicans. The polarization in family ideology, as evidenced in bill sponsor/cosponsorship data as well as party platforms, is thus both a recent phenomenon as well as one reminiscent of an earlier, albeit more muted, period at the start of the twentieth century.
This chapter’s assembly of the historical development of the two parties’ family ideologies over time is important for at least three reasons. First, unlike issues of race or gender, the parties’ shifting (and reversed) position on the family has gone largely unnoticed in political science literature, and the description and classification of this empirical phenomenon are therefore necessary and worthwhile. Second, this assembly situates the more recent partisan focus on the American family within a larger historical frame, demonstrating that the two parties have long relied on family economics and values as discursive frameworks to address and approach family in policy. Third, the chapter also reveals specific dynamics that engender empirical puzzles: Why did family burst into political significance in the late twentieth century? Why did the Soul ideal gain unprecedented political traction in the late twentieth century despite being unable to gain a strong foothold previously? More generally, why have the parties framed and adopted their approaches to family differently in different eras?
The phenomenon of partisan family ideational development illustrates broad mechanisms in the dialectical nature of party ideologies themselves. The historical development of family party development is thus also important in that it begs investigation into the precise dynamics that shape the emergence of distinct party family ideologies—why the parties separate or converge on family. By so doing, it is possible to address the larger question of why parties adopt the ideologies and positions that they do and identify the conditions and contexts in which parties change and sometimes reverse their ideologies. The next three chapters do this. As in-depth case studies, they reveal the contexts and conditions under which Democrats and Republicans formed their family ideals in the Progressive, post–World War II, and late twentieth-century periods. Cumulatively, the chapters demonstrate the ongoing relation between state and society as the parties interact with demographic family change and shifts in lived families’ experiences and attempt to translate them into coherent policy ideologies, to attract constituents and gain electoral traction and success.
Chapter 2