Gracie Miller's response to parenting presentations

The notion of parenthood in America in the media seems to take on two extreme views.  That either being a parent (mother) is the right and most magical wonderful thing to do.  Or being a parent is horribly hard and the benefits do not outweigh the costs (mostly the view put on father’s).  I found the views presented on motherhood in the media are what I have encountered, when Brook talked about People Magazine’s representation of parenting and how they portray celebrity mother’s fully complete and fulfilled when they have a baby, I went back through a People that I had in my room, and saw that most of the pictures of women in the magazine are of mother’s and their children.  I also looked for pictures of father’s and found that as Brook said, the magazine portrays fathers mostly with children, not with babies, whereas the mother’s are for the most part are pictured with infants.  This disparity of parenting between mother’s and father’s in a popular magazine is saddening to me on one level, because instead of presenting women in the media in all the roles that they play, the magazine chooses to focus on only what comes out of the uterus.  Yet I do understand why the magazine does focus on motherhood, in order for the draw of celebrities to continue to make advertisers and media outlets wealthy, the media must present them in such a way as they are relatable to the average reader (women for People magazine) but also glamorous and somewhat unattainable, so that the consumer has something to strive for.  So in the name of capitalism, we end up with this presentation of an idealization of motherhood, a common occurrence in American society, depicted in a sensationalized manner in order to sell something. 

What I also found interesting about the presentations was that they talked about how the media perpetuates the idea that motherhood is the right thing for every woman, and that a woman’s life is only complete when she has children.  It seems to me that the real trap that the media falls into, or rather creates for the American woman and consumer, is that it tells women that they are not fully a woman until they are a mother.  The media seems to say that while women can be sexy and feminine and successful, that is not enough, they must procreate as well.  I think the real problem is not what the media dictates as acceptable but what it excludes in its definition.  The gray area the media gives women to be more than a mother is very small and unsatisfying.  Whereas men are presented with fatherhood as a lifestyle choice, women are told motherhood is a necessity.