Deconstructing Dads

Changing Images of Fathers in Popular Culture

By: Laura Tropp (Editor), Janice Kelly (Editor), Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns (Contribution by)

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Hardcover | 24 December 2015

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In the twenty-first century, fatherhood is shifting from simply being a sidekick in the parental team to taking center stage with new expectations of involvement and caretaking. The social expectations of fathers start even before the children are born. Mr. Mom is now displaced with fathers who don't think of themselves as babysitting their own children, but as central decision makers, along with mothers, as parents. Deconstructing Dads: Changing Images of Fathers in Popular Culture is an interdisciplinary edited collection of essays authored by prominent scholars in the fields of media, sociology, and cultural studies who address how media represent the image of the father in popular culture. This collection explores the history of representation of fathers like the "bumbling dad" to question and challenge how far popular culture has come in its representation of paternal figures. Each chapter of this book focuses on a different aspect of media, including how advertising creates expectations of play and father, crime shows and the new hero father, and men as paternal figures in horror films. The book also explores changing definitions of fatherhood by looking at such subjects as how the media represents sperm donation as complicating the definition of father and how specific groups have been represented as fathers, including gay men as dads and Latino fathers in film. This collection examines the media's depiction of the "good" father to study how it both challenges and reshapes the ways in which we think of family, masculinity, and gender roles.

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Communication scholars Tropp and Kelly have compiled an important, in-depth collection that explores the ways in which contemporary media representations of fatherhood cultivate expectations about family life, fuel misconceptions about parenting, and promote complicated and contentious ideas about what being a father means. Contributors use literature reviews, audience studies, and content and textual analyses to examine topics such as the culture of fatherhood and the conduct of fathers; sperm donation and lineage; soldiers, military service, and family commitment; stay-at-home dads, caretaking, leisure, and manhood; masculinity in crime dramas and horror films; increased, yet domesticated, portrayals of gay fathers; and how representations of African American fathers in sitcoms and Mexican American fathers on film disrupt and perpetuate stereotypes about these men and groups. Taken together, the essays illustrate striking contradictions in representations of fathers by showing how these representations are progressive, subversive, and hopeful and also restrictive and harmful, among the latter especially those that offer tidy, uncomplicated depictions of fatherhood; reify patriarchy; and perpetuate traditional attitudes toward gender and parenting. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

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