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News Analysis

Mom Is Running for Office

Credit...Kiersten Essenpreis

The symbols of motherhood in American political life have long been comforting and predictable: a gauzy family tableau in campaign ads, with smiling kids gathering for a meal. The ads were meant to disarm voters, to show them that women were running for office to take care of people. It wasn’t about personal ambition — it was about serving others, the way a mom would.

That’s not the motherhood of 2018 political ads. Motherhood in this midterm season is not just a credential for public office. It’s a potent weapon.

Several Democratic candidates tell wrenching stories of their sick children, explaining that the prospect of losing their health insurance had prompted the candidates to run for office. At least two women running for governor, in Wisconsin and Maryland, introduced themselves to voters with scenes of them breast-feeding. And Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, who on Monday became the first senator to give birth while in office, has been pressing to change a Senate prohibition on bringing children onto the floor, which could impede a breast-feeding mother’s voting.

A few women with very young children have decided to run, despite research suggesting that voters can be uneasy about how female candidates with young children will juggle public and private duties. Instead, these candidates are proclaiming that their expertise with multitasking equips them to cut through gridlock.

Health care is a rallying cry, particularly among Democratic candidates. Betsy Dirksen Londrigan, running for Congress in Illinois, told the story of her son Jack’s battle with a life-threatening illness. He was placed in a coma, and doctors warned that he could emerge with brain damage. Although he fully recovered, Ms. Londrigan said she decided to run for office when the House passed its attempted repeal of Obamacare in May and she watched her congressman at a triumphant appearance with President Trump. “Seeing them celebrate taking health care away from people — it was like a knife to the heart,” she said.

Several candidates who are mothers cite fears for their children as the root of their support or opposition to gun control. Kelda Roys, who is running in a crowded primary for governor of Wisconsin, described picking up her daughter at preschool and hearing about how she had to hide and be very quiet. Her 3-year-old was describing an active-shooter drill.

Women running for office in both parties have long used their status as mothers to explain their policy stances. Kelly Ayotte, the former Republican senator from New Hampshire, ran an ad that cited her children as a reason to cut wasteful spending, said Kelly Dittmar, a political scientist at the Center for American Women and Politics. Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Republican of Washington, who gave birth to three children while in Congress, cited her son’s Down syndrome to object to those who would abort fetuses with the condition.

By and large, though, Republican portraits of motherhood have tended to be more traditional, Ms. Dittmar said.

By contrast, this newest group of Democratic candidates seems more outspoken and unconventional. They do not appear to be concerned about research suggesting that motherhood should be conveyed in safe doses — some pictures of the children but not too many lest voters doubt women’s credentials.

Take the breast-feeding videos. In one, Ms. Roys calmly lifts her sweater and lets her fussing baby nurse, while discussing a bill she helped pass in the Wisconsin Legislature banning BPA, a suspected carcinogen, from baby bottles.

In another, Krish Vignarajah, who is hoping to prevail in a crowded Democratic primary to face Maryland’s Republican governor, Larry Hogan, breast-feeds her baby and declares, “There are no women in statewide or federal office in Maryland.” A former policy director for Michelle Obama, Ms. Vignarajah cuts to other scenes of her behind a desk, lists policies, then ends with another breast-feeding shot: “Some say no man can beat Larry Hogan. Well, I’m no man. I’m a mom, I’m a woman and I want to be your next governor.”

Political consultants say that they sense a hunger among many voters for breaking with political conventions and traditional backgrounds for office — the same impatience with politics as usual that made Mr. Trump appealing to his base. So mothers as well as business executives (and some are one and the same) can fit the bill.

Margie Omero, a political consultant, said such portrayals fit with more frankness about a range of topics in society now — sexual harassment in the #MeToo era and conversations about racism — “feeling that your untold story is important to tell.”

Motherhood has long been a political constraint as well as a political advantage. “We don’t see a celebration of women when they advocate for themselves and their grievances, we see it if they advocate for others,” said Jill S. Greenlee, the author of “The Political Consequences of Motherhood” and a political scientist at Brandeis. “When someone says ‘I’m running for office because I’m a mom,’ it re-entrenches that women ought to be moms.”

But she, like others, sees shifts in the political landscape. Some of the new female candidates are younger and have not spent years working their way up from local to state to national political posts. Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood, said her mother, Ann Richards, the former governor of Texas, had to bank her political ambitions for years.

“My mom would be thrilled to see that women aren’t waiting their turn — they’re just jumping in,” she said. “Back in the day, a woman had to have an entire résumé of accomplishments, three times as long as a man running. A lot of things that women already do — running the PTA, raising children, balancing a job and a family — those are all attributes that make them highly qualified to be in elective office.”

Motherhood can be a credential, but research also suggests that women have to work harder to persuade voters that they have expertise in realms like national security. A study conducted by the Barbara Lee Family Foundation during the 2016 election found voters had the deepest misgivings about mothers with young children, but not about men with young families.

This newest wave of candidates seems undeterred by this thinking — and perhaps is poised to toss it out entirely. “Women are going with their gut,” said Barbara Lee, the foundation’s president. “They’re running as if these obstacles haven’t taken place in the past. It’s their sense of urgency about changing the status quo.”

The status quo, of course, is quite stubbornly in place. This raw portrait of the realities of motherhood as a political calling card doesn’t go over with everyone.

Ms. Roys, the breast-feeding mother running for governor in Wisconsin, said she is still sometimes asked who would take care of her young children if she were to win. One man running for state attorney general told her that he never gets that question.

Susan Chira (@susanchira) is a senior correspondent and editor on gender issues for The New York Times.

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A version of this article appears in print on  , Section SR, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: Mom Is Running for Office. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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