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The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted work and family life around the world. For parents, this upending meant a potential re-negotiation of the 'status quo' in the gendered division of labour. A comparative lens provides extended understandings of changes in fathers' domestic work based in socio-cultural context – in assessing the size and consequences of change in domestic labour in relation to the type of work-care regime. Using novel harmonized data from four countries (the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands) and a work-care regime framework, this study examines cross-national changes in fathers' shares of domestic labour during the early months of the pandemic and whether these changes are associated with parents' satisfaction with the division of labour. Results indicate that fathers' shares of housework and childcare increased early in the pandemic in all countries, with fathers' increased shares of housework being particularly pronounced in the US. Results also show an association between fathers' increased shares of domestic labour and mothers' increased satisfaction with the division of domestic labour in the US, Canada, and the UK. Such comparative work promises to be generative for understanding the pandemic's imprint on gender relations far into the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The purpose of this study is to compare gendered framings of family issues in popular mommy blogs and dad blogs to assess what they reveal about parenting ideologies. Background: Blogs are cultural arenas where parents navigate what it means to be a "good" mother or father. Despite a growing body of work on parents' use of social media, the content and framing of parenting blogs by gender is understudied. Method: Through a comparative analysis of 400 written posts from the top 20 mommy bloggers and dad bloggers in the United States and Canada, we examine the scope and construction of family issues in blogs and how they are framed by mothers versus fathers. Results: Mothers frame parenting in ways that highlight their investment in safeguarding children's futures, often through consumer solutions. Both mothers and fathers extend similar concerns around protecting family health and create a counter‐frame against intensive parenting by admitting and accepting imperfection. Fathers' posts emphasize how work and gender norms constrain men's ability to be involved parents. Conclusion: Our comparative analysis illustrates gendered nuance in blog framings of family life and presents slight indications of shifting toward a shared culture of intensive parenting. Implications: This study elucidates the potentials and pitfalls of parenting blogs as platforms for family knowledge mobilization and social advocacy around parenting problems in a consumerist digital society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an interview with Sports Illustrated, former NFL player and current commentator Michael Irvin shared why he believes Brady felt the need to return. The Sport Marriage: Women Who Make It Work By Steven M. Ortiz (University of Illinois Press, 2020) On February 1st, 2022, Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady announced his retirement after playing 22 seasons in the National Football League (NFL). Closer attention to variation by race seems particularly important given how at least 70% of NFL and NBA players identify as African American and around 30% of MLB players identify as Latino (Tower, [6]). [Extracted from the article]

In 2018, reports surfaced that NFL player Kareem Hunt was involved in a public altercation. When video footage emerged of him shoving and attempting to kick a woman, many sports fans discussed the scandal in online forums. We examine these discussions through a qualitative analysis of 2,002 comments on Reddit. We identify three frames used to interpret the altercation: (1) Condemning Hunt or violence against women; (2) Vindicating Hunt through victim-blaming, downplaying the incident or providing gendered and racial justifications; and (3) Contextualizing the altercation by considering consequences linked to NFL policies and the role of tabloid media sensationalism. We find that commenters often use 'soft' racial and sexist framings to assess Hunt's culpability. We conclude by discussing the broader implications surrounding media representations of and online reactions to violence against women by racialized athletes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In our media-centric age, stories and commentary about children's gender socialization are exchanged online. Yet we know quite little about how fathers interpret the gender and sexual identities of their children and share those interpretations with others via social media. In this article, I present findings from a qualitative content analysis of blog posts about children's gender and sexuality (n = 122) written by American and Canadian fathers (n = 36). I apply Kane's (2012) "gender trap" typology to analyze how dad bloggers support and/or challenge heteronormative gendered identities, behaviors, relationships, and activities for children. Most of these fathers present anxious accounts of experimenting with gender-neutral parenting, imagining their children in future roles and relationships, permitting nonconformity in girls versus boys, and connecting childrearing to broader social inequalities. I develop the concepts of sticky essentialism—to demonstrate how essentialist logics permeate fathers' explanations for gendered childhoods, and ambivalent (de)gendering—to explain fathers' mixed feelings toward heteronormative gender socialization and accountability. To conclude, I discuss risks and benefits of fathers blogging publicly about children's gender and sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This study examines the thematic content and social‐health orientation of fathers' online blogs about parenting, health, and fitness. Background: Social media provide avenues for parents to contribute to public discourse about parenthood and to offer guidance on health‐related matters. Concerns about familial well‐being have been central to parenting discourse for ages, but little is known about how parents write and talk about health online. This knowledge gap is addressed by examining fathers' writing about health and fitness in blogs. Method: A qualitative content analysis of 223 blog posts written by 40 fathers is presented. Blogs were analyzed for thematic patterns and categorized within a social health matrix of personal, interpersonal, community, and cultural health orientations. Results: The findings illustrate four dominant themes: "becoming fit for fatherhood," "how to keep kids healthy," "the pros and cons of youth sports," and "public health awareness and promotion." Collectively, dad blogs are constructing fit fathering discourse that extends ideals for involved fatherhood and healthy masculinities. Conclusion: Dad bloggers use social media for civic engagement and health promotion with the intent to spread awareness of men's health issues, refine fathering practices, and enhance familial well‐being. By mobilizing fit fathering discourse online and offline, they are creating a more nurturing culture of fatherhood and raising expectations for father involvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research continues to examine the barriers to and facilitators of positive fathering behaviors. One area recently addressed by researchers focuses on the relationship between masculine norm adherence and father involvement. Yet, little work has examined cross-national variability in this relationship—despite differences in gender norms, fathering expectations, and social policies across countries. The present study considers possible differences in the relationship between masculine norm adherence and fathering behaviors in the United States and Canada—two rich, multiethnic countries with many similarities but some distinct policy and family support differences. Using data from fathers in Canada (n = 2057) and the United States (n = 2207), our results show that fathers in Canada are warmer, more involved, provide more care, and use harsh discipline less than their American counterparts. Furthermore, the negative association between masculine norm adherence and positive fathering behaviors is stronger among American fathers than Canadian fathers. Overall, our findings indicate the importance of social context for understanding how gender norms shape men's parenting, given that the association between masculine norms and fathering varies in two culturally similar countries with different social policies around family life. Implications for social policy in the two countries and within institutional contexts are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article presents a cyber-ethnographic study of a community of North American men who write parenting blogs—known as "dad bloggers." Informed by sociological and feminist media studies literature on parenting culture and digital public spheres, I examine dad bloggers as a social group who are collectively responding and contributing to contemporary cultural models of fatherhood. Drawing on data from fieldwork observations, blog posts, and interviews, I demonstrate how dad bloggers are developing their community and group "idioculture," reframing how fatherhood is represented in the media, and engaging in advocacy and activism for issues surrounding family, work, and gender. I argue that dad bloggers in North America constitute a "tiny public" who are constructing their own culture of fatherhood 2.0. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online discourse about parenting has grown with the expansion of social media technologies. With a community of "dad bloggers" developing in North America, further investigation into how men write about fatherhood on the Internet is needed. In this article, I present a qualitative analysis of 201 blog posts written by 40 dad bloggers. Adopting a social psychological perspective, I examine how fatherhood is constructed across lines of identity, experience, and ideology. My findings illustrate how dad bloggers reinforce and reshape family discourses in their writing about parental role models, becoming a father, work–family balance, generativity, and "good" and "bad" dads. Social media use is discussed as a part of fathering in everyday life and as a tool to display, promote, and normalize involved fatherhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Dad bloggers" are an emerging community of fathers in North America. These men use social media to document and discuss their experiences as parents and gather annually at the Dad 2.0 Summit. A central topic of discussion both online and offline is how involved fathers negotiate and rework gender roles and expectations. This study examines how dad bloggers create and engage with discourse about masculinities. Using blog posts, fieldwork observations, and interviews as data, I present qualitative findings illustrating the ways in which dad bloggers challenge traditional notions of masculinity, construct "caring masculinities," and adopt a pro-feminist perspective. Despite certain tensions and contradictions within the community, I argue that dad bloggers are reconstructing fatherhood and masculinities in ways that promote care and equality overall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An earlier study published in Popular Music and Society examined the gender-related trends on the Billboard Hot 100 music charts between 1997 and 2007 (Lafrance, Worcester, and Burns). Taking frequency distributions as indicators of gender equality, the authors found that male hits on both the sales and the airplay charts outnumbered female hits by a wide margin. More specifically, their findings demonstrated that male artists had more extreme highs and less extreme lows than female artists; men's worst showings of the decade were often just a few hits away from women's best showings, and most gender-related trends were not consistent across the sales and airplay charts. Using the same data sets, this paper extends the earlier study by combining the variable of race with the variable of gender. In doing so, it describes the race-related trends on the charts in question while considering them within the context of the gender-related trends reported by Lafrance, Worcester, and Burns. Our key findings indicate that black artists chart more often than white artists; black male artists have more chart success than both black and white female artists; most race-related trends are consistent across the sales and airplay charts, and musical genre must be taken into account in order to understand fully the relationship between race and chart success. In addition to providing a critical assessment of our findings, the paper presents a reflection on two unexpected methodological issues encountered over the course of our research: first, the conceptual complexities of coding for race, and, second, the problems associated with taking frequency distributions as indicators of equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technically Together: Reconstructing Community in a Networked World By Taylor Dotson (The MIT Press, 2017) From the outset of I Technically Together i , Taylor Dotson is forthcoming about his partisanship: he is an advocate for revitalizing more traditional forms of togetherness that have been lost or weakened as a result of shifts toward economic, cultural, and technological individualism. To Dotson, reconstructing society to prioritize the "thickening" of community will help to advance social equality and psychological wellbeing. Using such a vast amount of examples does come at the expense of providing a rich explanation of any one of them and Dotson is often limited to only noting the extent to which a given example "thickens" or "thins" community. [Extracted from the article]

In the “Health 2.0” era, digital media has altered how health care is conducted and how patients consume medical information. This article explores the reasons why health-care professionals create their own blogs and how they use blogging as a component of their work. We examine interviews with medical bloggers (n = 83) featured on “Grand Rounds,” a weekly medical blog forum or “carnival,” to interpret the ways in which blogging is incorporated into their everyday lives. In performing a qualitative thematic analysis, we develop five themes that help capture what blogs mean to these health-care practitioners. The uses of blogs speak to articulating and reestablishing a professional reputation, connecting with patients informally, writing for therapeutic reasons, negotiating institutional constraints, and promoting community and health-care reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]