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Media and Middle Class Moms: Images and Realities of Work and Family, by Lara J. Descartes, Conrad Kottak
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Written by nationally recognized anthropologists Conrad Kottak and Lara Descartes, this ethnography of largely white, middle class families in a town in the midwest explores the role that the media play in influencing how those families cope with everyday work/family issues. The book insightfully reports that families struggle with, and make work/family decisions based largely on the images and ideas they receive from media sources, though they strongly deny being so influenced. An ideal book for teaching undergraduate family, media, and methods courses.
- Sales Rank: #2761396 in Books
- Published on: 2009-02-07
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.90" h x .50" w x 6.10" l, .60 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 208 pages
Review
Choice Recommended, February 2010
About the Author
Lara Descartes is Associate Professor of Family Studies at Brescia University College. She earned her doctorate in Anthropology from the University of Michigan. Her research interests include work and family, popular culture, and how identity factors (race, class, gender, geographic locale, etc.) impact family life.
Conrad P. Kottak is the Julian H. Steward Collegiate Professor (and former Chair) of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. He has done ethnographic field work on work/family issues in Brazil, Madagascar, and the United States. His research interests also encompass global change, national and international culture, and mass media.
Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Media Representations and Realities
By Beverly Yuen Thompson
The authors of Media and Middle Class Moms: Images and Realities of Work and Family, Lara Descartes and Conrad P. Kottak, stress in this ethnographic study that "American parents received, interpreted, processed, used, avoided, and resisted media messages about work and family, in the context of their actual work/family choices" (2). Media provides "scripts" for individuals to understand and evaluate their own identity and actions, the authors argue (3). This ethnography was conducted in a small Michigan town during the years 1999-2002 with white, middle class families. The researchers captured data on the media viewing habits of the participants, which shows they currently viewed, which shows they had watched in the past, and their ideas about media usage by their children and themselves. They were asked how they interpret their favorite shows and the ways in which these shows might influence their feelings about family life. The authors argue that while the formations of family life as represented on television has added more modern components, traditional gender role expectations are still widely prevalent. For example, "although, today, home is not seen as women's only role, it still is portrayed as their primary role. Similarly, work is not seen as men's only role, but still as their primary role. 1950s images do survive in current media representations" (40). The authors conduct a content analysis of various shows that were significant in their participants' lives. The authors also observed in households the ways in which media is used: "Gender influenced how media fit into the daily routine, such as being used to distract children while doing housework chores (women) or while relaxing and as a way to enjoy time with the family (men)" (59). Women watched media on the fly, and the viewing desires of children and husbands often superseded their desires, although fathers in the focus groups still complained about watching their wives' shows in the evenings. Another gender difference that the authors noted was that "mothers tended to want to protect their children from the outside world by limiting media, whereas fathers preferred to introduce their children to the world by sharing the media experience with them" (59). Finally, the authors also point out a paradox in which Americans often exempt themselves from being influenced by media, while pointing towards others' susceptibility. The authors argue that the impact of the media on individuals has been scientifically confirmed; therefore, it is an important topic for social scientists to consider.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Media and Middle Class Moms
By Bonnie A . Smith
The book "Media and Middle Class Moms" by Descartes and Kottak outlines a study done by two anthropologists about families and their interactions with media: both family-based media and not family-based media. The study goes to show how many Americans and their family members are so influenced in their decisions about what to eat, how to treat others, who should hold which gender roles, and how a so-called "normal" family should function. Even though most Americans and their families are heavily influenced by television, radio, books, movies, music, and so on most deny their excessive exposure to it and deny as well how much it impacts their lifestyles and decisions.
Where I can understand where the authors of the "Media and Middle Class Moms" are coming from in presenting their points about media and the effects it has on families, there are many points which I think are emphasized a little too heavily in the book. For instance, Descartes and Kottak basically portray through many of the chapters that media is to be avoided at many costs by families. I personally don't believe this is the solution to the media having too much impact on families in this era. Everything should be able to be done in moderation; of course watching too much television is never a good thing! However, it is not the T.V. companies' faults that families are being negatively influenced by certain things on T.V. If parents are too lazy to take part in any constructive activities with their children and just let the T.V., for instance, act as a babysitter, of course children will end up watching too much television and be susceptible to negative influences. This example is just one of many where the authors took an issue and magnified it to the extreme to scare Americans away from all types and forms of media.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Book Review-- Sociology Class
By Amanda Roberts
In the book Media and Middle Class Moms by Descartes and Kottak, the authors discuss how the media representations of mothers are effecting real-life mothers by giving them false information about what a mother is "supposed to be like", they also explore the gender roles shown in media, show their research taken from middle class moms, etc. in order to show the effects of media on the mothers and families.
In chapter one, the authors explain that, though the media does have some responsibility in the formation of gender roles and mother's status', it does not completely contribute to the deterioration of the family, but instead can be used as a strengthener of the family. Also, because of the formation of gender role's, as promoted by the media, it leave the women and mothers watching confused about the combination of work and family, and sometimes have trouble with the balancing of the two.
Chapter two starts off by describing the set up for the authors' research. They tell of the town of Dexter, in which they based their research off of and they also explain who most of the information came from, which would be mostly middle-class women with children, in a marriage. They also explain how they got their information, which they say is by interviews with the women, and focus groups with a few women all speaking out together. The authors then describe how the research was going to be conducted and they give a brief discussion of the research as a whole and some of the conclusions.
In chapter three the authors look into the "nature and content of [the] representations." (Descartes 39) Meaning, they were going to examine the different types of media that the people in the town of Dexter were exposed to during their study. They also look into a few of the questions found at the end of chapter one, which are questions about "...how media messages and representations involving work, family, and gender accord with current social reality" and "To what extent are such representations mired in 1950 images, [and] what has changed... what has remained the same?" (Descartes 40) In this chapter they conclude that, though the media representations have gotten better since the 1950s, there is still a lot of false information that leads to the confusion of women, especially because in television women are usually portrayed as not being able to have a job and a family at the same time, and women that do work instead of raising their children end up having troublesome children.
Chapter four goes into the amount of media consumed by families, and how it effects children, mainly. Parents often allow their parents to over consume media and, the media usage is usually based on gender, and therefore the gender roles became instilled in the children by their parents, based on who the children spent more time with. They also, in the second half of the chapter, examine the idea of people claiming that they are not influenced by media, but at the same time, they're afraid that media is influencing their children, when in fact, as the authors find, media also influences the parents themselves
Chapter five delves into the difficulties face by both working mothers and stay at home mothers. It explains that women sometimes take up jobs, as well as take care of the children, for many reasons, mainly financial ones, or because they feel incomplete without the job. It then goes on to say that, though women do want the jobs, it is sometimes extremely difficult to keep their jobs when trying to also be a mother, because employers usually do not consider their worker's family life when scheduling them, or allowing them time off. Also, work hours do not usually coincide with school hours, therefore making it hard for working women, especially with young children, to be there when they're needed at home to take care of their children. They also go into some detail about how at-home mothers also have it difficult due to the amount of work they have to do in the home, and how much they have to put into raising their children. The idea of women working part-time is also discussed as a happy medium to the two extremes in each case.
Chapter six explores the different types of portrayl of women in the media. The first one they describe is the media's "super mom" which shows women working and taking care of families with such skill and ease that it puts real life moms to shame, making them feel inadequate, and like their not doing their "jobs" properly, and it makes stay-at-home moms feel like they're not doing enough because they're not able to work as well as take care of their children. On the opposite side, the media often portrays women who work as taking precious time away from their children, thereby making them bad parents. This representations makes the working moms feel bad about their decisions in life.
Chapter seven shows the actual research that is done in the project by showing six of the families that they studied in the town and comparing their lifestyles to one another. They come to the conclusion that, even though the families are different and the mothers do things differently in each family, there are similarities in the women's ways of thinking and their ways of doing things, thereby showing that family life is similar in almost all instances and women should be able to see eye-to-eye on certain situations and band together in times of need.
Chapter Eight concludes by telling of how women often look to media for help in their everyday lives, and how sometimes the advice is very misleading and often incorrect, which is why women shouldn't attempt to imitate what mothers in the media do, but rather follow their own advice and make their own decisions. If they listen to the media, they might find themselves unable to do what was portrayed and they'll end up feeling inadequate to the women in the shows.
In the end, I really liked this book. It opened my eyes to a world of media manipulation that I didn't know about, and now I know that when it comes time for me to be a mother and decide what to do with my life, I'll follow my own heart instead of trying to imitate what is done on television. Also, I know that whichever choice I make, my family should end up fine, because I've seen examples of both working and stay at home mothers with children who ended up perfectly fine and happy with their mother's choice and did not despise them for whatever their choice was.
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