Planting Liberally

Several months ago, I noted that data which suggests a "baby gap" between liberals and conservatives is only relevant in so far as the act of parenting has no effect on a parent's ideology. I doubt that's true, although it's not clear to me entirely which direction the act of parenting tends to move someone. My guess is that parenting is a moderating process for both conservatives and liberals, but what do I know? Regardless, I think it's important that liberals make an effort to support parents, and to use the parenting process as a "hook" into the liberal movement. Focus on the Family has done this for years, bringing legions of parents into the conservative movement by providing them with much-needed advice and support. Now it appears that a new site, Babble.com, is seeking to create a "magazine and community for the new urban parent". If I read that right, the site is making a play at supporting parents who are highly predisposed to be liberals, if they are not already. Babble is founded by Rufus Griscom, the founder of Nerve.com. As MediaLife magazine notes, it remains to be seen whether Babble will succeed in the face of growing online competition for parents. My belief is that Babble will tap a need which is so far largely unserved online. While I haven't had a chance to fully explore it, my understanding is that blogs dedicated to parenting are a very active and growing niche. That suggests to me that many parents are online, tech savvy, and interested in finding other parents. To the degree that Babble can work together and augment the parent-blogosphere, the site will be tremendously successful. Of course, there's no guarantee that Babble will work wonders in liberal ideological conversion. My guess is that its overall ethos will be distinctly liberal, but not explicitly so; after all, Griscom is out to make a buck, not win an election. Still, it's a step in the right direction, and it opens the door for further and more explicit liberalizing parenting sites to spring up in the coming years. My guess is that parenting is really just one piece of the puzzle. If liberals really want to garner the support of people whose family and personal lives put them in a position for potential ideological conversion, they will start to focus on providing more advice and support to niche families and households, including: - Single-parent households - Mixed-race households - Same-sex households - Low-income households - Multi-roommate households - Newly married couples - Domestic partnerships - Civil unions - Families with adopted childern By "advice and support", I don't mean new policies and political support (although there's nothing wrong with that.) I mean immediate, on-the-ground, person-to-person support with the daily trials that face these households, including help with everything from legal advice to carpooling and babysitting. I think the need for this kind of support is already tremendous, and I believe it will only grow stronger in the coming years. To be sure, there are probably scattered examples of providing such support throughout the country. We would do well to weave these separate efforts together into a full-fledged effort, in order to make it easy for any family in any city to find this network of support and to spread the word about it.