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The COVID-19 pandemic created rapid, wide-ranging, and significant disruptions to work and family life. Accordingly, these dramatic changes may have reshaped parents' gendered division of labor in the short term. Using data from 1,234 Canadian parents in different-sex relationships, we compare retrospective reports of perceived sharing in how housework and childcare tasks were split prior to the declaration of the pandemic to assessments of equality afterward. Further, we describe perceptions of changes in fathers' engagement in these tasks overall, by respondent gender, and by employment arrangements before and during the pandemic. Results indicate small shifts toward a more equal division of labor in the early 'lockdown' months, with increased participation in housework and childcare by fathers, supporting the needs exposure hypothesis. We conclude by discussing gender differences in parents' reports and potential implications for longer term gender equality. La pandemie COVID-19 a provoque des perturbations rapides, vastes et importantes dans le travail et la vie de famille. En consequence, ces changements dramatiques peuvent avoir remodele la division parentale du travail entre les sexes a court terme. A l'aide de donnees provenant de 1 234 parents canadiens vivant dans des relations de sexe different, nous comparons les rapports retrospectifs sur le partage percu de la repartition des taches menageres et de garde d'enfants avant la declaration de la pandemie aux evaluations de l'egalite par la suite. En outre, nous decrivons les perceptions des changements dans l'engagement des peres dans ces taches en general, par sexe des repondants et par conditions d'emploi avant et pendant la pandemie. Les resultats indiquent de petits changements vers une division du travail plus egalitaire au cours des premiers mois de 'verrouillage', avec une participation accrue des peres aux travaux menagers et a la garde des enfants, ce qui confirme l'hypothese d'exposition aux besoins. Nous concluons en discutant des differences entre les sexes dans les rapports des parents et des implications potentielles pour l'egalite entre les sexes a long terme., THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC CREATED rapid, wide-ranging, and significant disruptions to work and family life. The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on March 11,2020 and by March 22, [...]

Dual-earner parents face the challenge of getting children ready for school or daycare while often simultaneously preparing for work. Although this morning routine is at the heart of the work–family intersection, it is understudied in relation to the gendered division of labor and as a potential stressor in parents’ lives. In this study, we examine who is responsible for and experiences strain from preparing children for the day. Drawing on a sample of 462 dual-earner parents from the Canadian Work, Stress, and Health Study (2019), we find that mothers are much more likely than fathers to perform this labor – even once controlling for work hours, schedule control, and other housework divisions. Moreover, if not for the fewer work hours, less job pressure, and more flexible shifts of parents who regularly prepare children for the day, there would be a marginally significant relationship between this parental responsibility and work-to-family conflict. Although getting children ready appears linked to work-to-family conflict for both mothers and fathers, results suggest that mothers have already sacrificed investment in paid work to take on this inflexible childcare routine. We discuss the social and health implications of temporal work structures intruding on the family’s morning rush hour. [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]

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]

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]

"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]

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]