Ho May Man Maple

3035791866

Topic: Gender and Parenting: A conversational analysis on American sitcom –

Modern Family

Introduction
Families on television have demonstrated changing gender roles throughout history.
Although they are conceived as fictional, TV families portrays interactions and
attitudes about gender roles. Domestic sitcoms, in particular, have a long tradition of
depicting American families in audience’s homes.

American sitcoms play a significant role in shaping societal norms and expectations
regarding relationships, child-rearing, and other aspects of life (Hirst, 1979).
According to social learning theory, people learn rules and behaviors from the
characters in sitcoms given its characteristic being simple and one-dimensional
(Signorielli 2012). Sitcoms provide a framework to navigate their daily lives and
determine their acceptance in society. Sitcoms can be seen as cultural model that
promote and reveals orthodox ideologies (Dalton and Linder, 2005).

Gender roles within parenting are ever-changing. However, the relationship between
societal change and TV portrayals may not be linear. Recent polls suggest parenting
roles are moving away from traditional definitions and new norms are evolving.
Research has shown that the distribution of household tasks has been more equal
since 1996 (Brenan, 2020) and men has been increasingly taken up more
responsibility in caregiving (Tirabassi, 2021). So, have depictions of parenting style
kept pace with changing roles in society? If not, what are the reasons leading to this
phenomenon?

Literature Review
Gendered Parenting
According biological essentialism, there are distinct differences between female and
male due to biology and emotion composition (Bem, 1993). Mothers are tended to be
caregiver and provide emotional support whereas men are more likely to be
breadwinner and keep in emotions (Sharma, Chakrabarti & Grover, 1974). This deep-
rooted differentiated roles in society created prevailing notions of what constitutes a
gendered parenting model. Research has shown that women are responsible to take
care of housework, provide care to family members and rely on husband for financial
support and decision making (Lachance-Grzela & Bouchard, 2010). However, the
gendered roles have experienced changes. Expanionist ideas began to thrive in US
society in which it promotes more employment for women and family participation
for men (Lin & Burgard, 2017).

US Sitcom
Sitcoms are TV shows that have the same characters appear in various episodes
featuring amusing stories. There were various research concerning how US sitcoms
reflect gendered roles in parenting. Scharrer (2001) discussed how domestic sitcoms
portrays parenting role differently from 1950s to 2000. By investigating in all the
family consist of a father, mother, and a child, he then concluded that there was a shift
in father and mother role in which father changed from being authoritative to hilarious
role in family. Scharrer argued that social-economic status was one of the attributing
factors as he discovered that families with high social status were not confined to
change. Rabinovitz (1989) looked into The Mary Tyler Moore Show, a sitcom about
an unmarried woman’s parenthood, and he found that women are portrayed in a more
independent way.

“Modern Family”
Modern Family was a popular domestic sitcom in US country which has won the
Emmy Award several times, regarded as the best comedy at the time. The sitcom is
mainly focus on three interconnected families, including Jay Pritcheett, his son
Mitchell Pritchett and his daughter Clair Dunphy. Jay remarries to Gloria, a young
Columbian wife and raise her young son from her past marriage together. Claire and
Phil Dunphy raise their three children while Mitchell and his same-sex partner
Cameron Tucker adopted a Vietnamese daughter. The storyline in Modern Family
follows the typical structure of domestic sitcoms by depicting each family unit's
experiences through the challenges of parenting and family life.

There was numerous research about how Modern Family reflect gender roles in
family context. Staricek (2011) found out how Modern Family confine to the
traditional gender roles without transforming in regard to the evolving definitions on
gender roles. The research concern only Modern Family season one in 2010, while the
proposed essay concerns how Modern Family season 11 in 2020 depicts family role
and to what extent does it keep pace with changing roles in society. Scharrer et al.
(2021) and Coffin (2013) investigated in Modern Family to find out how father are
portrayed. However, the proposed essay focuses on how Modern Family shapes both
female and men parenting role.
Research Questions:
1. How does Modern Family depicts the gender roles in parenting?
2. Does Modern Family depicts of parenting style kept pace with changing roles in
society?
3. What are the underlying factors leading to the depiction in Modern Family as a
sitcom?

Methodology
The proposed essay would be using conversation analysis. Through conversation
analysis, speakers’ emotions and feedbacks can be revealed, which is hard to do so for
written discourse given that it is a plain text (Lien, 2005). This method is conducive to
explore what can be witnessed including behavior while providing the finest detail of
interaction without simply looking at the surface (Silverman, 1998). Therefore, by
using this method, it can vividly reflect the gender roles depicted in Modern Family.
The proposed essay would take reference from the conversation analysis framework
suggested by Harvey Sacks (Goodwin & Heritage, 1990) to examine features
including but not confined to adjacency pair, interruption, repair, and turn-taking.

Modern Family season 11 which were out in 2020 will be utilized for discussion to
make sure the data is most updated and most relatable to recent. Qualitative analysis
would be used by firstly watching through watching 22 minutes of 18 episodes to
collect sufficient gendered parental conversation and the relevant conversation will be
broken down to further analyze.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Qualitative analysis could analyze a specific phenomenon in detail which could
provide reader a holistic view. Due to the limit of time, the proposed research paper
would not adopt quantitative research as other researcher does. This may result in
over-generalization of specific phenomenon, although this method may be regarded to
be low representative, if the phenomenon is worth to be highlighted, generalizability
should not be seen as a disadvantage (Darlington and Scott, 2003).
 Reference

Bem, S. L. (1974). The measurement of psychological androgyny. Journal of

consulting and clinical psychology, 42(2), 155.

Brenan, M. (2020, January 29). Women still handle main household tasks in U.S.
Gallup. https://news.gallup.com/poll/283979/women-handle-main-household-
tasks.aspx

Silverman D. (1998). Harvey sacks : social science and conversation analysis. Oxford
University. Retrieved November 5 2023 from
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