This Year, Parents Have Plenty of Political Clout

Except for the fact that she doesn’t drive a minivan, Becky Allen fits almost anyone’s definition of a soccer mom. Her daughters, 15 and 18, have played soccer since they could kick. Her husband coaches soccer. She even plays soccer herself in a women’s league in Irvine.

She also works 40 hours a week as a bookkeeper, is squeezed by the time crunch and is being wooed by both presidential campaigns. Like most of the so-called “soccer moms”--a catch phrase this political season for white, suburban wives and mothers--she’s switching her presidential vote this year from Republican to Democrat.

She doesn’t follow politics that closely--who has time?--but she says she likes Clinton because, “I like what he’s doing for the young people. He’s making them more interested in politics. He’s making education more of an important issue, and athletics in particular. I think it’s important that kids stay involved. It keeps them away from the drugs and the crime.”

“Soccer moms” like Allen have clout this year not because they’re organized into any special interest group, but because they are perceived as a demographic group Dole has to win back for the Republicans, said Susan Carroll, a senior research associate at the Center for the American Woman and Politics at Rutgers University.

Both campaigns are implying they are trying to help. Clinton runs ads on the Family and Medical Leave Act he signed. Dole suggested in the presidential debates that high taxes make it more difficult for two-income families to make it.

As usual, politicians are using women’s family issues as a political football--this year, a political soccer ball--but without inviting parents onto the field.

A recent survey of 500 parents by the National Parenting Assn. suggests both candidates are only marginally in touch with what real families really want.

“Many of the measures parents support most aggressively are the ones that go to the heart of their problems,” said Sylvia Ann Hewlett, founder of the New York-based advocacy group. “Over 80% want flexible hours. They want the school day and the school year to better mesh with the workday. They want government to give incentives to companies so that if you work full time, you can keep your family above the poverty line.”

The survey confirmed her hunch that these problems are shared across class and race lines. “The time deficit is killing everyone and kids are being squeezed to the edge of their [parents’] lives,” she said.

Mothers indeed are interested in the economy, said Carroll, just not in the deficit and tax-cutting Dole talks about. They are more interested in job security and higher minimum wage jobs because, “They’re the ones most likely to be laid off and their families now depend on them. Many know they’re really just a divorce away from being in bad financial straits.”

Parents of course do not comprise the majority of voters. From a high of 50% in the 1960s, the number of households with dependent children has shrunk to 37%. But it’s parents’ role, not their numbers, that make them important, Hewlett said. “Kids are 100% of our future.”

She plans to use the survey to create a national agenda, harnessing the political power of parents, like the American Assn. of Retired Persons focused the clout of senior citizens. The association will be conducting more surveys and focus groups at state and local levels to form a coalition of all parents, not just the currently popular soccer moms.

“I don’t want a national conversation to get caught up in soccer moms,” she said. “There’s such a need to pull men and women together behind the act of parenting.”

* Lynn Smith’s column appears on Sundays. Readers may write to her at the Los Angeles Times, Life & Style, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053 or via e-mail at lynn.smith@latimes.com. Please include a telephone number.