Fathers are made invisible in the media - I have the headline and I have the photos!
My last post was about the FAMILIES who protested for better maternity services in London at the weekend. I took lots of photos, particularly of the men. This is the headline in The Independent. A different picture entirely.
My family once arranged a family photo and the photographer asked me to hand the baby to Clare “because it does not look right” with me holding the baby.
Does it matter that editors and photographers change the reality and tell a lie? So what if men who care for children are airbrushed out of the picture “because it does not look right”? Is not the important thing that they are doing it?
I think it does matter. Because a false picture underpins inadequate policies and services. There are striking statistics from the former Equal Opportunities Commission about how much more caring of children is shared these days. But people don’t believe these statistics - “they don’t look right”. And so policies and institutions remain unchanged. This affects the vulnerable families much more than the well-resourced, because it is the vulnerable who need services more.
It also matters in families. When one parent, the mother, finds that her role as a parent is persistently elevated and impossibly idealised, whilst the other sees that his role is persistently unrepresented, it has an impact on family dynamics. Take a debate about parenting methods between a mother and father - in most couples both parents will feel the mother is more entitled to assert an opinion than the father.
The new debate about families is all about relationships. This is good because a relationship implies more than one person; the word itself changes the picture. But to understand relationships, we still need to understand how differently messages are conveyed to mothers and fathers and how much this affects how they see themselves and each other and how they negotiate with each other.


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