Another Look at the Life Cycle and Political Participation

Our understanding of the connection between life stages and participation continues to be hampered by crude classifications of the former and narrow constructions of the latter. This paper emphasizes participation as domain-specific and as being responsive to changing opportunity structures over the life span. Data from the 1968 national election study are used to demonstrate that parenthood, as one stage in the life cycle, has a trivial or debilitating impact in the domain of national politics but a highly salutary one in school politics. This pattern holds across age groups and tends to be more pronounced for women than for men, especially among the young. It is argued that the results are illustrative of more general processes governing participation over the life cycle.