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Are Stay-at-Home Dads Real Men? The Potential of Critical Media Literacy to Enhance Teacher Training

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Gender, Sexuality and the UN's SDGs

Part of the book series: Sustainable Development Goals Series ((SDGS))

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Abstract

Recent events in the media around the place of women in Higher Education and in employment heighten the need to revisit issues around gender across the world. Along with international news coverage, gender issues are reflected in, and influenced by, media texts such as tv programmes. These texts carry with them discourses that may well influence behaviours in society more widely. Beck et al. (Beck, Lash and Giddens Reflexive modernization: Politics, tradition and aesthetics in the modern social order. Stanford University Press, 1994) suggested that individuals come to understand the social conditions of their existence and can then change them accordingly. This is a very optimistic view and perhaps avoids the very real inhibitors when subjects step outside of gendered expectations at work and at home. The work of Lois McNay (1999) and Lisa Adkins and Beverley Skeggs (2004) will be drawn on to challenge the ease of accessibility of choice over roles in certain domains, in this case parenting and employment. In recent popular culture there has been considerable interest in gender-based issues and often the use of comedic strategies can be useful in foregrounding some prevalent discourses around levels of agency for both sexes.

The chapter will argue that contemporary constructions of parenting and in particular the ‘stay-at-home father’ are presented in very specific ways. In doing so we get a glimpse into deeper debates about how masculinity and femininity are constructed when the roles taken up challenge the normative expectations that have been prevalent over time. The chapter will critically analyse the British series Motherland and the American equivalent Working Moms to show how ideas around reflexive modernity assumes as Adkins and Skeggs (2004) notes the assumption that subjects exist outside of social worlds and therefore make objective choices about what they can and cannot do. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the need for gender equality elements to be placed firmly within international agendas like sustainability development goals to ensure more equitable choices going forward.

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  1. University of Sunderland, Sunderland, UK

    Kim Gilligan

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  1. Kim Gilligan
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Correspondence to Kim Gilligan .

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  1. Faculty of Education and Society, University of Sunderland, Sunderland, UK

    Drew Dalton

  2. Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries, University of Sunderland, Sunderland, UK

    Angela Smith

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Gilligan, K. (2023). Are Stay-at-Home Dads Real Men? The Potential of Critical Media Literacy to Enhance Teacher Training. In: Dalton, D., Smith, A. (eds) Gender, Sexuality and the UN's SDGs. Sustainable Development Goals Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31046-1_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31046-1_13

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