Single Dads in the Entertainment Arena: Hegemonic Hierarchies and Happy Endings

Abstract

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So, You Think You Can Parent: Twitter Users’ Responses to Single Father Tropes in Television’s Single Parents

“…By contrast, current single fathers, who head nearly one quarter of single-parent families (U.S. Census 2020), experience gendered expectations more intensely because they are forced to take on non-normative gender roles (e.g., childcare) as the only parent in the home (Turchi 2014). Whether these pressures have, in fact, shifted the cultural expectations of fatherhood has yet to be settled in the academic literature (Feasey 2021;Wall and Arnold 2007). In fact, some conclude that not only have fathers' behaviors continued to support the "traditional father trope," but the traditional cultural expectations have persisted as well (Wall and Arnold 2007).…”

“…We seek to bring attention to representations' implications for viewers' understanding of what it means to be a single father. Feasey (2021) argued that representations of single fathers is key to their cultural visibility, and research must draw on audiences to understand the ways viewers make sense of single fathers. The men in Single Parents provide a mere snapshot of the experiences of single fathers; nevertheless, we start to see variety in the challenges they face and how viewers in turn make sense of those representations, thus providing some insight into the consequences of these representations for U.S. audiences.…”

“…Single-father-led households are growing in the U.S. (U.S. Census 2020), while Sink and Mastro (2017) demonstrate that men in scripted television programs reinforce traditional gendered norms by depicting men in masculine terms-competent, articulate, motivated and intelligent-rather than in feminine terms-warm, liked, and family-oriented-even as women cross into more masculine representations. Against the backdrop of this predominant trend, it is important to understand how viewers perceive single fathers' parenting styles given the need of single fathers to fill a wider range of roles for children as compared to married fathers in two-parent families (Feasey 2021). Televisual portrayals of single fathers are complex in their negotiation of both gendered parenting norms and the evolution of gendered expectations over time (Turchi and Laurena 2020), and Scharrer and Blackburn (2018) outline how the "[e]ndorsement of narrowly traditional views of masculinity has been associated with a host of negative outcomes" (150) for society.…”

“…Notably, studies of single fathers and their mediated representations focused primarily on married fathers, and little is known about single fathers’ experiences as primary caregivers (for review, see Coles 2015). Similarly, feminist media scholarship rarely addresses representations of single fathers (Dole 2021; Feasey 2021).…”

“…However, custodial single fathers were increasingly depicted as warm and nurturing, mirroring the increase in single fathers’ participation in traditionally maternal realms and implicitly rejecting long-running characterizations of fathers as secondary to mothers (Hawkins et al 2006). These studies typically presented limited snapshots (Vrtis 2016), while the recent increase in single-father representations presents the opportunity to give them long-overdue attention (Feasey 2021). For example, Turchi and Laurena (2020) found in their comprehensive analysis of primetime television that custodial single fathers demonstrated a wide range of traditionally gendered parenting roles and varying degrees of emotional competence.…”