The Null Impact of Parenthood on Technical Risk Preferences

The transition to parenthood is a highly disruptive experience. Previous research has found that this disruption can change an individual’s political views, but there is a debate in both the academic and popular literature on if parenthood makes individuals more liberal or more conservative, particularly on technical social risks such as climate change and gun control. Taking advantage of recent evolutions in Differences-in-Differences methodology & best practices, I test the impact of parenthood on public opinion toward climate change and gun control in the United States using panel data (N = 9,000) that allows each individual to be used as their own control group. This is the first panel study of climate change and parenthood to take advantage of these methodological improvements and the first panel study to examine the link between parenthood and gun attitudes. Despite expectations that individuals will move their opinions once they become parents, I do not find any evidence that, regardless of subgroup and model selection, parenthood has a significant impact on preferences towards either topic. I find null effects of parenthood on political ideology, but evidence for a conservative effect on social issues. I argue that these results are a reflection of parenthood’s nature as a treatment: individuals self-select with full anticipation into a treatment they know will be risky.