{"id":1382,"date":"2015-09-08T12:47:59","date_gmt":"2015-09-08T12:47:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/families\/?p=386"},"modified":"2015-09-08T12:47:59","modified_gmt":"2015-09-08T12:47:59","slug":"family-diversity-marketing-howwefamily","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/2015\/09\/08\/family-diversity-marketing-howwefamily\/","title":{"rendered":"Family Diversity and Marketing #HowWeFamily"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Click for a new window to watch #HowWeFamily.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The commercialization of everyday life usually gives me a headache, but I guess I can always take a Tylenol. After all, as Milk<\/em> screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, who directed Tylenol\u2019s recent #HowWeFamily<\/a> advertising spots, put it, the \u201cfamily brand\u201d is \u201chelping to dispel the fears around difference,\u201d to \u201cget people to understand diversity\u201d by introducing them to a wide range of families in videos that show that \u201cat the end of the day, no matter the gender of the parents, the color of the family\u2019s skin, the religion that they come from, the background that they come from, all of these families have the same concerns. They want what\u2019s best for their kid, they want to care for each other and create a home that\u2019s safe and happy.\u201d And sometimes, of course, they need a decent painkiller.<\/p>\n

The Tylenol spots\u2014of immigrant families, of mixed-race families, adoptive families, gay-parent families, military families, step-families, stay-at-home dad\/working-mom families, and so on\u2014are charming, well produced, and surprisingly rich and moving. The parents, some of whom are also celebrities, are appealing and articulate, the kids are cute, and the politics are unapologetically liberal. The introductory video takes direct aim at old notions of what and who makes a family, offering the company\u2019s \u201cmodern take on the Norman Rockwell family.\u201d It\u2019s an easy target, but still.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen were you first considered a family? When you fell in love? When you got married? When you had kids?\u201d<\/em> a kind woman\u2019s voice asks over soft music and images of straight couples holding hands, getting married, holding kids. Then, over similar images of same-sex couples and mixed-race families: \u201cWhen did you first fight to be considered a family? When you fell in love? When you got married? When you had kids? Family isn\u2019t defined by who you love, but how.\u201d<\/em> (Pause, then: \u201cTylenol<\/em>.\u201d) Many of the participants challenge the idea of a \u201cnormal\u201d family, while also asserting that, as one of them puts it, \u201cWe are, at heart, all the same.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

That people have families in a wide variety<\/a> of ways, throughout history and across cultures, is well established if also still widely ignored<\/a>. These Tylenol images, along with TV shows like Modern Family<\/em>, are part of an ongoing demotion of the ideology of One True Family (married, heterosexual man and woman with kids), and an emerging celebration of family diversity, in popular culture \u2014even as the legal system lags behind. That\u2019s great, and certainly better than the stigma, discrimination, and sanctimony which nontraditional families still routinely face.<\/p>\n

Still, it strikes me as significant that the Tylenol campaign, like the similar family representations that have been popping up, downplays the ways these families move differently <\/em>through the world, glosses over the origins<\/em><\/a> of the new kinds of families, like my own, that they celebrate, and focuses on only particular forms<\/em> of non-traditional family. One might wonder, for instance, about the experiences of the white parent<\/a> of kids of color in the face of racism, immigrant families in the midst of Trump-driven nativism<\/a>, same-sex parents whose children participate in a fiercely heterosexist culture. One might wonder, too, why we don\u2019t get sunny videos about women who chose to be, or have found themselves as, single mothers, or about multi-parent-by-design families, or #HowWeFamilyWithoutMoney. One might wonder about the birth families, egg and sperm donors<\/a>, surrogates<\/a>, and ex-spouses whose lives, labor, and emotions were part of the family creation process but who are invisible in #HowWeFamily. One might wonder about those marginalized members of our broader family\u2014in the communal membership sense of \u201cfamily\u201d long used by queer people\u2014who can\u2019t, don\u2019t, or don\u2019t want to benefit from the respectability<\/a> garnered by participation in conventional marriage and family institutions. One might wonder, that is, whether the demolition of the idea that there is a single \u201cnormal\u201d family requires the erasure of the ways social inequality shapes family creation and family life.<\/p>\n

We really shouldn\u2019t expect advertising to show that to us, of course. That\u2019s not Tylenol\u2019s job. Sometimes corporate actions contribute<\/a> to progressive social change\u2014in this case, when their branding interests are served by presenting non-traditional families as symbols of liberal tolerance<\/a>\u2014and oftentimes not. But we should wonder, and we should talk, about the less comfortable, less pretty inequities that are an inherent part of family-making old and new. That family diversity has become a corporate marketing tool can be flattering to some of us. But buyer beware.<\/p>\n

Joshua Gamson<\/a> (@joshgamson) is Professor of Sociology at the University of San Francisco and a Fellow at the Stanford Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences. His most recent book is <\/em>Modern Families<\/a>: Stories of Extraordinary Journeys to Kinship. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The commercialization of everyday life usually gives me a headache, but I guess I can always take a Tylenol. After all, as Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, who directed Tylenol\u2019s recent #HowWeFamily advertising spots, put it, the \u201cfamily brand\u201d is \u201chelping to dispel the fears around difference,\u201d to \u201cget people to understand diversity\u201d by introducing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1903,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8959],"class_list":["post-1382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-families"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1382\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}