Parenthood status and climate policy support


Lisa Seiler, York University

Does parenthood increase support of climate policies? A green parenthood effect is theorized, suggesting that parents may display pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours, but evidence has been mixed (Shrum et al. 2023). This corresponds with the various forces at work on parents. On the one hand, parents have a responsibility to their children and future generations or a desire to leave a legacy (Wade-Benzoni and Tost 2009; Shrum et al. 2023). On the other hand, day-to-day pressures leave parents short on time and money to engage in more time-consuming or expensive pro-environmental behaviours (Thomas et al. 2018). Few studies have looked at the relationship between parenthood and environmental policy support. Even fewer have looked at climate change and climate policy support. Results of an earlier study suggested that there was a link between parenthood and climate policy support in Canada (Seiler and Stalker 2023). In the present paper, we further analyze the results of a Canada-wide survey to identify mechanisms influencing parental interest in climate change. Shrum et al. (2023) asked for further research into whether gender, socioeconomic status, political orientation, or other factors moderate the green parenthood effect. It has long been noted that there is a gendered aspect to environmentalism. According to the safety concerns hypothesis, females tend to display greater environmental concern than males when the environmental issue is related to health and safety (Davidson and Freudenberg 1996; Xiao and McCright 2012). This is due to greater perception of risk, per the gendered risk perception hypothesis (Bord and O’Connor 1997; Xiao and McCright 2012). Climate change has been less of an immediate threat, however, so evidence relating to climate change is inconclusive (Xiao and McCright 2012). The parental roles hypothesis expects that mothers will be more concerned about the environment and fathers will be more concerned about economic issues (Davidson and Freudenburg 1996; Blocker and Eckberg 1997). More recently, fathers in Sweden were shown to worry more about climate change than other males (Ekholm 2020). Evidence of a gendered relationship to climate policy support in Canada is mixed (Davidson and Haan 2012; Rhodes, Axsen, and Jaccard 2017; Kitt et al. 2021; Seiler and Stalker 2023). Socioeconomic status similarly has generated conflicting results concerning environmental and climate policy support. Lower socioeconomic status, like the female gender, could lead to a greater feeling of vulnerability (Slovic 1999; Xiao and McCright 2012), and hence, support for climate policies. Higher socioeconomic status has been associated with greater willingness to pay for environmental policies that were related to ability to pay (Kotchen et al. 2013) but also greater energy use (Poortinga et al. 2004). Neither education nor income has been consistently predictive of climate policy support. Political orientation, on the other hand, has been a strong predictor of climate policy support in the United States (Leiserowitz 2006; McCright et al. 2013; Goldberg et al. 2020). Conceptualized both as political ideology and political party support, the former has been found to be more relevant in the global context (Cruz 2017) whereas the latter has been more relevant in the US context (Xiao and McCright 2012). In Canada, Conservatives have been found to be more likely to oppose climate policy (Rhodes et al. 2017; Seiler and Stalker 2023). Our quantitative analysis considers the above and other factors as potential modifiers of the relationship between parenthood and climate policy support in Canada.

Non-presenting author: Glenn Stalker, York University

This paper will be presented at the following session: