marriage/family

Jay Livingston over at Montclair Socioblog reports on a report by the Pew Center. First this image:

Jay writes:

When Reagan asked this question in the 1980 presidential debates, most people, according to Gallup felt that yes, they were better off – 52% vs. 25% who felt they were worse off. That’s puzzling, considering the apparent success of Reagan’s question – he won the election handily.

The interesting result from the Gallup numbers is that when Reagan left office – after the “Reagan recovery” cherished by anti-tax, anti-regulation conservatives – the numbers were identical. If you look at actual changes in median family income, you see a slight decline in the Carter years and an increase in the Reagan years. But these changes aren’t reflected in how people felt, at least not as measured by Gallup.

This year’s numbers show optimism at its lowest ebb since Gallup started asking the question in 1964. “Better off” still tops “worse off,” but by only 41% to 31%. Even more surprising to me was the proportion of these self-identified middle-class Americans who rate their quality of life as low (five or less on a ten-point scale).

I took this photo on Father’s day. The images were on the window of a Sephora store (basically, a make-up store) in Pasadena, CA. The text says:

father’s day is June 15.
who’s your daddy?

I’m sure it’s supposed to mean “Who’s your babydaddy?”  But still… do we really need to go there?

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

…”Obama’s Baby Mama.” Way to racialize the democratic nominee and his wife. See it here.

Thanks to an anonymous tipster!

NEW: Pat C. sent in an image (found here) showing the FOX News caption referring to Michelle Obama as a “baby mama.”

Thanks, PT!

Miguel pointed out that AskMen.com collected a list of “worst male-bashing ads,” all of which represent men as morons or useless oafs. Here are some of them:

1st for Women, a South African auto insurance company that only insures women:

A Domino’s ad in which the wife laughs at her husband’s sexual overtures:

A Sony Cyber-shot ad that depicts men as a horse’s ass (it’s the first clip; for some reason there are some FedEx clips afterward):

Men as easily manipulated by flirty women:

These might be useful for a discussion of masculinity and portrayals of men as idiots and morons, especially regarding family life, which serves to reinforce the idea that men can’t be trusted to cook or clean or care for children because they’ll just mess it up. Although it doesn’t come up in these ads, it’s also good to bring in the class element we see in shows like “King of Queens,” “The Simpsons,” “According to Jim,” and “Married with Children,” which all have working-class, generally pot-bellied idiot husbands married to smart, gorgeous women who sigh and put up with their childish behavior.

Also see the earlier post of a Roomba ad that portrays the husband as a literal ass (this ad also made it into the AskMen list).

Thanks, Miguel!

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

A while ago I posted a set of ads for engagement rings, asking what those ads had to sell you in order to also sell you a diamond ring (see the post here).  Then Miguel sent us the ad below, writing: “This ad is almost too honest.”  Indeed.  Notice that it also supposes that it is the quality of the ring, and not the quality of the groom, that makes a woman happy on the day she says “yes” to marriage.

Vesko J. sent in several images from “Bee Movie,” the cartoon with Jerry Seinfeld as the voice of the main bee character, Barry. He says:

Female bee workers exist in the movie, but are hardly visible (unless sexual presence is needed.) They can be seen only for a few seconds in the distant background and don’t have any lines of dialogue (as opposed to random male bee workers, who are clearly visible and have lines of dialogue).

Even the bees, that pollinate the flowers, are male. They are called “pollenjocks” and all the female bees fall for these strong, muscular, brave guys.

These are the pollenjocks. In case you didn’t know, it’s actually female bees who collect pollen.

The pollenjocks are big, muscular male figures who tower over the females, who, as far as I can tell, could be called pollengroupies. They aren’t really individuals with personalities; they exist as background to show how awesome the pollenjocks are. On the other hand, the female characters that are treated as individuals tend to be in the home, such as Barry’s mom. Barry’s love interest is not a female bee but a human female, a florist.

Now, I get it. It’s a kids’ movie, and there’s going to be a lot of anthropomorphizing and such. But how animals are anthropomorphized tells us a lot about our social assumptions and what we’re comfortable with. There’s no reason the worker bees’ sex has to be changed, except that it makes more “sense” to us that the hard-working providers would be male. The choices to make the males the center of the story, to make them bigger than the females, and to portray female bees as fawning groupies desperate for male attention tells us an awful lot about the gender stories we tell ourselves about humans, and that they’re important enough to us that even children’s movies have to recreate those stories, no matter how much fiddling with reality it takes. And even though this is an animated children’s movie about bees that talk, flirt, and wear clothes, I bet an awful lot of people will think the gender hierarchy in the movie is fairly accurate.

Thanks, Vesko!

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

I’m always interested when I see ads that play on parents’ fears of neglecting their children as a way to sell them stuff. Middle and upper-middle class parents often encounter, and adopt, a parenting ideology that requires the input of lots of money, time, and emotional energy to be a “good” parent. Parenting is commodified into a set of things parents feel a lot of pressure to buy to prove that they love their children and care about their futures–and don’t want them to be social outcasts.

My mom got pregnant with me when she was 16 and I grew up decidedly working class, and the parenting style I was used to was basically, “The kid’s still alive, so I guess I did a pretty good job.” My mom may have taken this attitude to extremes a bit, since she was known to put me in a harness and tie me out to the clothesline so she didn’t have to keep such a close eye on me when she was busy around the house. Give her a break–she was a teenager! It seemed like a really good idea! (And admit it: there’s part of you that is thinking, “That’s brilliant!”)

My point is, I’m always interested in the ways we seem to always be raising the bar on what is considered good parenting, and “good” parenting is usually defined by middle class standards–though we also often criticize middle and upper-middle class parents for supposedly being distant and self-centered and for pushing their kids too much to succeed. So it’s a catch-22: working-class parents don’t have the money to buy a lot of the products or services we think loving parents must provide their kids, and middle-class parents who do provide them may be criticized for doing so.

Anyway, the other day I came upon these two ads, both of which try to sell products by making parents afraid that if they don’t, they’ll be neglecting their kids. This first one makes it clear that this tactic isn’t new; it’s from 1919:

I found it in the article “Standardizing Childrearing through Housing,” by Paul C. Lukin and Suzanne Vaughan, in Social Problems, volume 53, issue 3, p. 299-331 (the poster is on p. 310).

I found this ad in a Las Vegas community magazine. The text lets you know that silver crowns can be unattractive, and that for your child’s sake you better pay for the white fillings (which are more expensive, and the extra cost is often not covered by dental insurance, even when people have it). I also like that metal fillings are called “bling.” Awesome.

Some of the text below the picture:

Being able to see the dental work in your child’s mouth is not always an appealing appearance. A healthy, natural looking smile for your child is our goal…Now you have a choice!

This is from the WNBA’s website–it’s their Dads and Daughters page. When I first came upon it, I assumed it highlighted the fathers of WNBA players. There’s a Dad of the Week section and a schedule of games that have a Dads and Daughters event. But the Dads of the Week aren’t necessarily related to anyone on the team. They’re just dads who are being highlighted–one Dad of the Week is the Executive Vice President of Products at AOL. How the Dads of the Week are chosen is not clear.

I went to the NBA website and looked around, and unless I’m missing something, there is no Moms and Sons (or even Dads and Sons) page.

I have a theory about this. From the beginning, one problem the WNBA faced was not appearing to be a “lesbian league,” which would presumably alienate advertisers and audiences. To highlight the femininity of the players (because pretty girls who wear makeup can’t be dykes, right?), players were encouraged to wear makeup (and were even sent on Oprah to get makeovers) and players with husbands, boyfriends, and children were photographed with them and their profiles made sure to stress their family roles. When the WNBA began, the website had a forum about the uniforms (potential colors, shapes, styles, etc.), and there was some discussion of making the players wear skirts. [For an interesting discussion of gender in the WNBA, check out: Sarah Banet-Weiser. 1999. “Hoop Dreams: Professional Basketball and the Politics of Race and Gender.” Journal of Sport & Social Issues 23: 403-420.]

The Dads and Daughters page fits into the efforts to make the WNBA seem “family friendly,” i.e., not lesbian. The importance of men in women’s lives is reaffirmed (and also the idea that girls get their athletic abilities from their dads, not their moms). It makes it clear that the WNBA is not a “women only” social space.

The NBA has no need for a similar emphasis on women because we assume that male athletes are heterosexual (in fact, playing sports is one of the ways men prove they aren’t gay).