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At the 2008 Republican national convention, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin accepted the vice presidential nomination for her party. In her fiery speech, she conveyed that she was tough as nails but also a loving mother. She noted that her path to politics began with the PTA when she was “just your average hockey mom.” In one of her most notable lines from the election, she declared,“You know... the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick”(Palin 2008). Palin’s focus on motherhood stood in contrast with that of the Democratic Party vice presidential candidate in 1984, Geraldine Ferraro. Palin spent her first moments in the national spotlight talking about her children and her role as a mother, whereas Ferraro mentioned her family only briefly in the final lines of her nomination speech (Ferraro 1984). Though many factors distinguished Palin and Ferraro as vice presidential candidates, the contrasting ways in which they invoked motherhood can be seen as an illustration of how the dynamics among gender, motherhood, and politics may have changed over the past several decades. Once a necessary qualification in order to fit with social expectations of what a woman “should be,” but antithetical to strong leadership, motherhood has been portrayed in recent years as an asset by some female candidates: evidence of both selflessness and toughness. This trend raises some key questions that we explore in this chapter. Does the evolving focus on motherhood by female candidates mark a shift in how women are evaluated when they run for office? Is there evidence that mothers are viewed more favorably by voters than women without …