How YOU Can Avoid Parent Shaming
What is "Parent Shaming" and Have YOU Been Subject to It?
Parent shaming was briefly discussed on the Parenting and Media and Misconceptions page. This method of communication is often used by child care companies to catch the attention of parents because let's face it, no one wants to be labeled as the "bad parent." Communicating information about children in this way is not new and has been used for many decades because it has been an affective way to grab a parent's attention and get them to consume in their product. Here's an example from a public health advertisement for infant tuberculosis in a 1925 statement from the Child's Bureau of the American Red Cross created by Alice Dick Dumas.
We can see in the advertisement that the emotions used by Dumas are fear and anxiety to transmit information about the spread of infant tuberculosis. Additionally, Dumas channels the idea of ideal parenting and what it means to be a "good parent." In this advertisement it is obvious that a good parent would not let their child sit on a dirty floor surrounded by other sick children. Instead, a good parent would take preventative measures to ensure that their child didn't contract tuberculosis. The addition of the Death figure looming over the children adds to the fear and anxiety aspects of this advertisement. It intensifies the seriousness of infant tuberculosis as a public health issue. Do you think this is a fair way to reach parents?
In this time period parent shaming could be further specified as mother shaming. Since at this time it was a woman who was the primary caregiver for a child, they became the target for all things child related. Today we still see many ads targeted at women as well with a few becoming more open to the shift in parenting as a dual gender role. For example the website http://adhdmomma.com/ clearly is still targeted at mothers as an outlet for mothers to communicate but has made a few modifications to their home page to be more gender inclusive.
