Caregiving, COVID-19, and Running for Office

The pandemic brought out a range of emotions in all of us. For Senator Patty Murray of Washington, it brought out rage: "I am a rage mom…Well, a rage nana, at this point, as my granddaughter would say." In the summer of 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic took root, parents were overwhelmed, and some were ready to take their frustrations to the voting booth. But did any of them – or the millions of other Americans who give care to members of their family and community – consider running for political office? 

In our research we look at the experience of family caregivers during the COVID-19 pandemic to understand if their caregiving role motivated or muted their desire to run for office. The pandemic increased the caregiving burden for many, as school, care facilities, in home care services, respite programs, and the like temporarily closed. How did this experience impact caregivers’ politically? Did it affect their political ambition? Did caregiving enhance the desire among some to run for office amid the turmoil of the pandemic, because their caregiving roles activated political interests? Or did the pandemic diminish political ambition because the burdens of caregiving leave space for little else? 

In exploring the relationship between caregiving and political ambition, we examine patterns that emerge by gender, race, and ethnicity. Our findings demonstrate that the relationship between caregiving and running for political office does not look the same for all women or all men. We find that while being a caregiver did contribute to higher levels of political ambition for some individuals, it is a subset of caregivers who link their caregiving role to their political views who are most likely to say that they would consider running for office. 

In this brief, we describe some of our descriptive findings and discuss the important implications this work has for 1) organizations that work to recruit candidates who are in touch with the needs of families and caregivers and 2) organizations that advocate for care communities.

Who are Caregivers?

We define caregivers as individuals who are engaged in uncompensated caretaking for members of their family or community. These caregivers are often called informal or unpaid caregivers. And while their work and well-being are often connected to formal or paid caregivers, we focus on individuals who receive no compensation for the care they give to elders, siblings, friends, and children. 

Many adults in the U.S. are caregivers, and their work is increasing. While caregiving intensified during the pandemic, many individuals were in this role prior to the global crisis. According to a 2018 Pew survey, roughly 30% of adults in the US provide unpaid care for a child under 18, and the time commitment associated with childcare has grown dramatically over the last half century. Moreover, roughly one in eight parents of children under 18 also provides care for an adult family member, neighbor, or friend. The National Alliance for Caregiving (NAC) and AARP reported in 2020 that more than 20% of Americans (21.3%) are caregivers for an adult or a child with special needs, a growth in roughly 10 million individuals from comparable 2015 data. In addition, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) reports that pressures on family caregivers are likely to increase over time, as the number of those who will need care increases but the number of available family caregivers decreases. Policy solutions to the caregiving crunch have been stymied by a lack of support among lawmakers.

Politicized Caregiving Perspectives

Scholars have established that politicized identities are often drivers of political action. They help individuals overcome barriers and resource restraints to engage in politics. Scholars have long studied how gender and race operate as politicized identities for some individuals.[1] Less scholarship has focused on the politicization of other identities, such as those connected to motherhood[2] or disability.[3] In this research, we consider how one overlooked but ubiquitous identity – that of caregiver – can be politicalized and how that politicization can impact political ambition. We develop a new concept that we call a politicized caregiving perspective and investigate how it shapes individuals’ political ambition. The way we conceive of this concept of politicized caregiving perspective is the degree to which a person reports that their role as a caregiver can influence their perception of politics. For someone whose caregiving role has been politicized, we anticipate that they will be more interested in running for political office.

We investigate the relationship between caregiving and political ambition in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, a time of widespread and intensive family caregiving. While the burdens of the pandemic, felt most acutely by women, had the potential to dampen political aspirations or interest among caregivers, we find that for some individuals this is not the case. Instead, we find that caregivers who express a politicized caregiving perspective are more interested in running for elected office than caregivers who do not express a politicized caregiving perspective. We also find that caregiving responsibilities shape political ambition in different ways across gender and racial groups. 

Data and Methods

We collected data through an original survey fielded by YouGov in June 2021. We had 2000 respondents with representative samples of Asian, Black, Latinx, and white respondents (500 in each subgroup). We asked respondents about their caregiving responsibilities, political preferences, political engagement and participation, and political ambition. Our measure of political ambition asks respondents to characterize their attitude toward running for political office and from this we create one variable that ranges from little or no ambition to high ambition.[4]

We examine different dimensions of caregiving by asking respondents to think about who they cared for before and during the pandemic, as well as whether the time they spent caregiving decreased, increased, or stayed the same during the pandemic. 

We measured politicized caregiving perceptions with responses to a question that asked respondents to indicate their level of agreement/disagreement with a set of statements: 

• My role as a caregiver shapes my political or policy views.
• My role as a caregiver gives me expertise relevant to politics.
• My caregiving responsibilities make me more motivated to get involved in politics and community affairs.

Responses were combined into an index; higher values indicated a greater connection between politics and caregiving while lower values indicated little or no connection.

Findings

Our data reflects typical patterns of political ambition among adults in the US. Women express less interest in running for office than men, and levels of ambition are comparable across racial groups. Of note, we find that many respondents have no interest in running for office, which is also reflective of national trends.[5]

We also find that 1,297 out of 2000 respondents report that they had caregiving responsibilities during the pandemic. Among women, 66.64% were caregivers, and among men, 63.12% gave care. The table below shows that most respondents in each racial and ethnic group reported that they had caregiving responsibilities during the pandemic, with Asian respondents reporting that they were caregivers at higher levels than other groups.

When Caregiving Intersects with Political Ambition

While caregiving is ubiquitous, how many caregivers also express some level of political ambition? Looking at our data, we show that nearly 50% of caregivers report some level of nascent political ambition (we define this as expressing any interest in running for office now or in the future). Indeed, the table below shows that while 46.7% of caregivers have political ambition, only 39.3% of non-caregivers have political ambition. Thus, while a majority of all respondents (caregivers and non-caregivers) have no interest in running for office, a substantial number of caregivers we surveyed (N=598) express some positive inclination toward running for elected office.

Who are these politically ambitious caregivers? Out of all white caregiving women, 37% express some level of political ambition, while among Black women who are also caregivers, nearly 47% report that they have some interest in running for office. For Latinx women caregivers, nearly 36% and for Asian women who are caregivers, nearly 44%, say that they have some level of interest in someday running for office. Among men of different racial and ethnic groups who are caregivers, greater percentages of these groups express some level of political ambition. This fits with long standing findings that men express more political ambition than women.

Among non-caregivers, these trends are largely consistent, with men expressing more political ambition than women and Black, Latinx, and Asian women more likely to express political ambition than white women. However, non-caregivers express less political ambition than caregivers across all groups but one (Latinas). The gender gaps in political ambition narrow significantly among Asian non-caregivers, and all but disappear among Black and Latinx non-caregivers. The gender gap among whites remains large, with white male non-caregivers still much more likely than their women counterparts to express political ambition.

We take these findings to mean that caregiving is not always a burden that leads to less political engagement. Rather, some caregivers – despite or because of their care obligations – are interested in running for political office. In fact, across nearly all groups, they express more political ambition than non-caregivers. 

While many factors may motivate nascent political ambition, we are interested in whether caregiving itself may propel some individuals into thinking about running for political office. While our data cannot tell us if caregiving is a cause, we can look for patterns among caregivers to see if some caregivers are more politically ambitious than others. For this reason, we turn to politicized caregiving perspectives. We anticipate that caregivers who see connections between their role as caretaker and the political world will be more interested in running for office.

Politicized Caregivers

How prevalent are politicalized caregivers in our sample? We asked respondents to indicate their level of agreement with the following set of statements: 

• My role as a caregiver shapes my political or policy views.
• My role as a caregiver gives me expertise relevant to politics.
• My caregiving responsibilities make me more motivated to get involved in politics and community affairs

We consider the degree to which caregivers are politicized by looking at how many of these three items respondents agree or strongly agree with. 

A similar percentage of men and women caregivers agree with one out of the three responses (nearly 14%). A slightly higher percentage of women caregivers agree with two out of three responses (nearly 13%) than do men (nearly 10%). But a slightly higher percentage of men caregivers (almost 18%) indicate that they are strongly politicized around being a caregiver, compared to 15% of women caregivers. And while this distribution varies among men and women, the same percentage of caregivers in each gender group, 41%, reports some level of politicized caregiving. This, we believe, is a very important insight into how caregivers see their caregiving role in relation to the political world. While the majority of caregivers do not connect their caregiving role to politics, a substantial minority of caregivers do. Organizations who seek to politically mobilize and engage caregivers in the political process could find success engaging with and politically mobilizing this 41% of caregivers across gendered lines.

Who are these politicized caregivers? 

We conduct a more complex analysis to identify profiles for women and men who are “politicized caregivers” and find that they are quite distinct.[6] Our analysis shows that among women, politicized caregivers are younger, have higher levels of interest in politics, report participating in politics in the past, and have trust in the federal government. Interestingly, neither partisan preference nor political ideology contribute to politicized caregiving perceptions among women. For men, several of the dynamics are different. Similar to women, they are also younger and have trust in the federal government, but they are liberal, professional, have a liberal view of gender roles for parents, are politically engaged, less educated, and have caregiving responsibilities for children. In addition, when comparing men of color (or specifically Latino men) to white men on their sense of being politicized caregivers, our statistical analysis shows that white male caregivers are more politicized than men of other racial and ethnic groups. These results suggest that the politicization of men’s caregiving seems to be limited to smaller subsets of men with distinct partisan identities, gendered beliefs, and caregiving responsibilities. For women, in contrast, politicization is more widespread across partisanship, ideology, and immediate caregiving responsibilities. We should therefore expect that women on the political left and the political right to have a politicized caregiving perspective – and that this perspective is one that can be tapped into to promote political action or engagement.

Are politicized caregivers interested in running for office? 

We look only at caregivers to understand how politicized caregiving perceptions intersect with political ambition. Among women caregivers who are politicized around their caregiving roles, a majority express some political ambition (54.5%). This is also true for men, with 70% of men who express a level of politicized caregiving perspective also reporting that they would consider running for political office someday. Among both men and women, the likelihood of expressing political ambition is greater among politicized caregivers than the full population of caregiver respondents.

Similarly, within racial and ethnic groups, women caregivers who are politicized around their caregiving roles are more likely to express political ambition than all women caregivers in that group. Among politicized women caregivers specifically, Black women express the highest degree of political ambition (62%), followed by Asian women (58.4%), white women (52.8%), and Latinx women (44.4%).

While we do not measure politicized caregiving perceptions among non-caregivers, comparing ambition expression data across these groups (politicized caregivers, all caregivers, and non-caregivers) shows that non-caregivers in our survey express political ambition in smaller proportions than all other groups.

These findings are particularly important. The intersection of politicized caregiving perceptions and nascent political ambition could be fertile ground for finding new political candidates. For Black and Asian women, the role of caregiver could be particularly mobilizing. Burdened and exhausted as caregivers were during the pandemic (and likely continue to be), for some this role may be a motivation to engage in politics and press for change.

Implications 

When running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) talked a lot about family caregivers and how the pandemic in particular left women overburdened. In an interview with The New York Times after her presidential bid ended, she said that “Women have just had it up to their eyeballs” but that “They’re fired up. And I love it.” This sense that the pandemic mobilized some caregivers into political action is the same dynamic that we seek to understand in our research. Our findings suggest that when caregivers see a connection between the political world and their role as a caregiver, they are more likely to express political ambition. What does this mean for political activists, party gatekeepers, and organizations that recruit candidates to run for office? We offer two practical pieces of advice for these groups.

First, find caregivers who see the connections between their care work and politics, policy, and government. Some groups, like Vote Mama, are already doing this. But as we note in our research, caregiving is not only parenting. It encompasses care given to spouses, parents, siblings, friends, and community members. This means that there are untapped candidates who may be advocating for others through groups like the National Alliance for Caregiving, the National Down Syndrome Congress, or The Alzheimer’s Association. If groups and political parties seek candidates who are likely to care about and address issues affecting families, they may want to turn to the local and state chapters of organizations whose members are caregivers engaged in activism around that identity.

Second, organizations who seek policy change in areas that connect to informal care may want to help the caregivers in their reach see the connection between politics and their care role. By helping individuals see that their role as caregivers connect to existing policies, public policy problems, and politics, these groups might help foster a sense of politicized caregiving that could boost political ambition. To that end, groups like Moms Demand Action, which while inclusive in their membership beyond just moms, have a particular appeal to mothers, might bolster politicized caregiving perceptions through their work, outreach, and presence in the public eye.

Of course, any work that is done to mobilize caregivers needs to be done with an eye toward helping them manage their caregiving load. Organizations that recruit caregivers to run for office should consider how to best support these would-be candidates in formal and informal ways. After a 2018 Federal Election Commission (FEC) ruling on campaign expenditures that allowed federal candidates to spend campaign funds on childcare, 26 states have extended similar approval to state level candidates. But these rulings do not cover other types of caregiving, leaving potential candidates who may be caring for adult family members without the same type of options. Moreover, finding appropriate paid support can be challenging. Organizations that help candidates identify resources, pay care providers, and otherwise make campaigning feasible for candidates with care responsibilities may help open the door to a new field of candidates.

The possibility for meaningful policy change, should more caregivers run for office and win, is substantial. Scholars have documented that lawmakers with some caregiving roles – such as mothers – advocate for policy change in areas that affect children and families more often than lawmakers who do not have that role.[7] But how might the intersectional identities of caregivers better inform policymaking and policy implantation? Based on research of lawmakers from communities of color, culturally competent policies are best built with lawmakers who share those multiple and intersecting identities.[8] We suspect the same may be true for caregivers whose race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and immigrant status shape their understanding of what other caregivers need.

Ivy A.M. Cargile is an Associate Professor of Political Science at California State University, Bakersfield. Jill S. Greenlee, is an Associate Professor of Politics at Brandeis University. Minhye Joo is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Riverside. Jennifer L. Merolla is a Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Riverside. Rachel VanSickle-Ward is a Professor of Political Studies at Pitzer College.

Suggested Citation: Cargile, Ivy A.M., Jill S. Greenlee, Minyhe Joo, Jennifer L. Merolla, and Rachel VanSickle-Ward. 2024. “Caregiving, COVID-19, and Running for Office.” Center for American Women and Politics, Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ.