Melissa Brown and Dr. Mark Grandstaff, History
Betty Friedan, in her book, The Feminine Mystique argues that men shape women’s roles through the media, but at some points in time, the reverse has been true. During WWII, Parents’ Magazine, with it’s almost all-woman editorial board and largely female readership produced more articles on fatherhood than all the other parenting magazines put together. As the war dawned, many fathers left to fight, removing the buffering force that kept the magazine’s portrayal of the father’s role grounded in a reality. As a result, during the war years, Parents’ Magazine’s portrayal of fathers changed, as this analysis of over one thousand, two hundred article titles, and over one hundred and forty article texts from that magazine shows.
The impact theories of popular culture indicate that these changes in the magazine’s portrayal of fathers would actually change people’s perceptions and behaviors. Since women’s behaviors and perceptions impact men’s to some extent, as well as children’s, finding out what these women were being told is important because it had the capacity to shape society as a whole and may explain some studies conducted on children whose father’s had been gone during the war and found that they had formed unrealistically ideal images of fathers.
The deterministic theories of popular culture, on the other hand, suggest that these changes in the magazine’s portrayal of the father’s role indicate society’s fantasies regarding what a father should be. Since both the readers and the editors of Parents’ Magazine were largely women, the changes may also indicate their ideal fantasy father.
This study found that between 1940 and 1945 the magazine portrayed the father as more helpful, affectionate, willing to spend time with his family, disciplinary, competent, idealized, and as a better provider than the magazine portrayed him during the twelve previous years from 1928 to 1939. These changes do indeed seem to represent an ideal fantasy father, and if passed on to the women’s children, would explain the research mentioned above.
I present the results of this research more fully in a 72 page thesis submitted to the Honors Department with charts and graphs measuring the change quantitatively and describing it qualitatively. Yet the best answer to “Where do Daddies come from?” may still be “from Mommies, just like everyone else.”