Meg DeJong - Parenthood Presentations Response

      I really enjoyed the presentations on parenthood. I grew up in a pretty typical family; my Mom was the one to stay at home, while my Dad was the one who always worked. For most of my life, my Mom has worked. The only time she completely took off work was when I was two and my brother was born. However, she has almost always worked part-time jobs and structured her work day around being there when my brother and I went off to school and when we came home from school. Generally, this is almost always the image you see portrayed in the media: the stay-at-home Mom and the working Dad. Since I was so used to seeing my family style in the media, I feel that I probably wasn’t as sensitive to how skewed our media is to just this family type. During the parenthood presentations, I thought back to the to the documentary we watched in class, Daddy and Papa. In the movie, one of the fathers discussed how his son was upset after watching the Rugrats movie after Chuckie finds his mother because his son didn’t have a mother. This really made me think about how we hardly ever see alternative family styles represented in the media and I was happy to see how the presentations focused on positive portrayals of alternative parenting.
       Overall, I was really drawn to the discussion of motherhood in presentations because I picture myself becoming a mother someday. The presentations made me realize how unrealistic and idyllic the images of mother is in our media. In her presentation, Brooke talked about the idea of motherhood as magical in that it’s portrayed as being transformative and can even save you, as was represented in one of the covers of People magazine that Brooke showed us. I thought this related closely to the commercial with Kelly Ripa that Josie showed us. In this commercial, motherhood is shown as being literally magical as Kelly throws laundry in the air and it magically lands perfectly on the shelf. The majority of presentations focused on how we see unattainable images of motherhood in the media. Additionally, we almost never see the hard parts of motherhoods and mothers always seem happy doing unpleasant things, such as cleaning the house or doing the dishes. Overall, these images send the message that all women should be happy doing these tasks and that there is something wrong with any woman who is not.
       One of the representations of alternative parenting that was focused on in one of the presentations is that of Cam and Mitchell, a gay couple who is raising a daughter, on the very popular television show Modern Family. I’ve been watching the show Modern Family since the first season, and I feel that Cam and Mitchell definitely represent a positive image of how a gay couple can lovingly raise a child together. However, our media still needs a more diverse representation of parenthood and what it means to be a parent. We also need to see more realistic images of parenthood that goes beyond the typical stay-at-home Mom and working Dad because more and more, very few families actually encapsulate this image.