This Handbook showcases representations of parenthood in twenty-first-century popular culture, critically assessing how these representations shape, respond to, and redefine notions of families, as well as popular culture genres. Uniquely, the collection brings together motherhood, fatherhood, and parenthood studies. Chapters use intersectional approaches to illuminate LGBTQ+, racialized, Indigenous, and AI-generated as well as normative or mainstream parental subjectivities and also address the topic of non-parenthood. The volume analyzes games, comics, social media, literature, film, television, and more. It is global in scope, signaled by the diverse cultural and geopolitical locations of the contributors and the texts they examine. Chapters are produced out of and/or are set within Canada, the United States, Britain, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, Finland, India, Iran, China, Japan, South Korea, Jamaica, South Africa, and Australia.
Elizabeth Podnieks and Helena Wahlström Henriksson, Introduction: An
Overview of Parenthood in Popular Culture.-
1. Gavin Davies, Expecting
Heroes: The Role of the Pregnant Protagonist in Video Games.-
2. Jon
Heggestad, Pregnant Men and Alien Others in Science Fiction Television.-
3.
Ida Aaskov Dolmer and Charlotte Johanne Fabricius, Gestational Labor and
Strategies of Visibility in Fiction and Graphic Memoir.-
4. Reut Odinak,
Motherhood and Surrogacy on American Sitcoms.-
5. Emilie St. Hilaire,
Non-Reproductive Parenting with Dolls: Facts and Fictions on Reborn Mothers.-
6. Leandra Hernandez, Childfreedom in Popular Culture: A Feminist Analysis
of Poor Things.-
7. Sushree Routray, Childfree Heroines and Reproductive
Autonomy: Unplanned Pregnancy Narratives of Married Women in Indian Cinema.-
8. Julie Rodgers, Interrogating Non-Motherhood through the Star Text of
Jennifer Aniston.-
9. Veronica Frigeni, Life Narratives of Queer
Motherhood in Contemporary Italy.-
10. Ridhima Tewari and Sanjana Suukyi,
I am a Mother without a Uterus: Unpacking Motherhood through Popular
Representations of Activist Gauri Sawant in Contemporary Visual Narratives
from India.-
11. Andrea OReilly, Misrepresentations and
Rerepresentations: Queer Mothering in Kristen Arnetts With Teeth and
Francesca T. Roysters Choosing Family: A Memoir of Queer Motherhood and
Black Resistance.-
12. Michael Mayne, Formations Against Family
Conscription in Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York
Commune, 2052-2072.-
13. Jaakko Turunen and Jani Turunen, Narratives of
Shared Physical Custody in Online Fora in Sweden and Finland.-
14. Helena
Wahlström Henriksson, Single Fathers Fail: Exploring Fatherhood in Swedish
Cinematic Drama.-
15. Shannon Lawlor, Playing the Single Dad: Essential
Paternity and Disavowed Maternity in Video Games.-
16. Leah Cates and Lacy
Guzmįn, #BadMomsOfTikTok: How U.S. Momfluencers Engage Social Media to
Subvert Notions of Intensive Mothering.-
17. Lisa Wagner Crews, Searching
for My Village: The Mom Humor Memescape of Instagram.-
18. Sinchan
Chatterjee, Cripping Parenthood: Deconstructing the Myth of the Good
Mother in Bollywood Representations of Disability.-
19. Zahra Jafari,
Cinematic Écriture Féminine: Re-Framing Iranian Motherhood.-
20. Rebekah
Lawler, Who Can Be Called Mother?: Teen Birth Mothers and Adoption in Young
Adult Literature.-
21. Glen Thomas, Yeah Mate? Australian Masculinity and
Fatherhood in Bluey.-
22. Rebecca Feasey, Welcome to Wrexham: What
Disneys Docuseries Can Tell Us About Football and Fatherhood.-
23. Katie
Barnett, Home for the Hollywood Holidays: White Fathers, Family, and the
True Meaning of Christmas On Screen.-
24. Zvonimir Prtenjaca, Powering
Through Stereotypes: Black Fatherhood and Alternative Masculinity in Luke
Cage Comic Books.-
25. Malose Langa, Tshisuaka E. Kabongo, Christopher
Kane, Livhuwani Maphorogo, Lereko Mfono, Harriet Perlman, and Garth Japhet,
New Voices of Fatherhood in South Africa in the Fathers Matter TV and Online
Film Series.-
26. Melvin G. Hill, The Representation of Black Fathers in
Telltale Games The Walking Dead and Insomniac Games Spiderman: Miles
Morales.-
27. Sony Raj and Adith Suresh, Every Child Matters:
Non-normative Fatherhood of Care and Compassion in Malayalam Cinema.-
28.
Julie Thompson, Pulling Every Dream from Her Own Marrow: Indigenous
Parenthood and Re-Storying Origins in Cherie Dimalines The Marrow Thieves.-
29. Elizabeth Podnieks, We need to have our babies on our side of the
line: Indigenous Parenting, Intergenerational Trauma, and Familial Power in
Lee Maracles Daughters are Forever and Katherena Vermettes The Strangers.-
30. Kyoung-suk Sung, Abuse, Neglect, and Family Redefinition in East Asian
Films: A Comparative Study of Hirokazu Kore-edas Japanese Films and Ji-won
Lees South Korean Film Miss Baek.-
31. Yue Chen, Father-Son Discordance
and Problematic Reconciliation in Contemporary Chinese Films.-
32. Sarah
Arnold, Mothering as the Intersection of Class, Care and the Corporeal:
Representing the Maternal in Contemporary Irish Film and Television Drama.-
33. Leigh Sparks, From Mothers of Bedford to Apart: How Independent
Documentary Films Tell Stories of Justice-Impacted Mothers and Their
Children.-
34. Shauna Wilton, The Problem with Parenting in the British
Crime Procedural: Mothers as TV Detectives.-
35. Jacqui Getfield, Riddims
and Schisms: Social Construction of Motherhood in Jamaican Dancehall and
Reggae Music.-
36. Katie Garner, How Extramarital Affairs in Contemporary
Nanny Novels Reflect Neoliberal Ideals in Contemporary Parenting: A
Post-Freudian Analysis.-
37. Suruchi Thapar-Björkert and Johanna Gondouin,
Indias Motherless Motherland and Dystopian Parenting in Manish Jhas
Matrubhoomi: A Nation Without Women.-
38. Gabriele Griffin, Sequestration:
Visions of a Motherless World in Dystopic Graphic Novels.- 39. Berit Åström
and Jenny Bonnevier, Selfless Servers, Weapons in Waiting: Androids Parenting
Human Children in Raised by Wolves and I am Mother.
Elizabeth Podnieks is a Professor in the Department of English at Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada. She is the co-editor of Textual Mothers/Maternal Texts: Motherhood in Contemporary Womens Literatures; and the sole editor of Mediating Moms: Mothers in Popular Culture, and Pops in Pop Culture: Fatherhood, Masculinity, and the New Man. Her most recent monograph is Maternal Modernism: Narrating New Mothers (Palgrave, 2023).
Helena Wahlström Henriksson is Professor at the Centre for Gender Research at Uppsala University, Sweden. Her work on representations of fathers and mothers in literature, media, and film has appeared in monographs including New Fathers? Contemporary American Stories of Masculinity, Domesticity, and Kinship (2010). She has edited several collections, including Narratives of Motherhood and Mothering in Fiction and Life Writing (Palgrave, 2023).
