When it comes to caregiving and its portrayal on TV, actor Geena Davis wants to showcase how different male caregivers are and should be depicted.
“More recent TV shows [depict men] doing more housework and more caregiving. In fact, the ratio of caregivers is about equal now on television, which is very interesting. So we’re definitely making progress in that way. Women spend more time on TV shows doing it, but men are equally doing it,” Davis told “Inside the Issues” host Alex Cohen.
The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media released a new report titled “This is Us? How TV Does and Doesn’t Get Men’s caregiving.” They analyzed 225 popular scripted shows from 2013 to 2020.
Called the “apprentice dad trope,” research shows male caregivers are portrayed as twice as likely to be shown as being incompetent when they’re caregiving. Male parental characters on TV are also shown to be more physically and emotionally abusive compared to female parental characters, which Davis labels as the “abusive dad trope.”
These tropes have become engrained as stereotypes on TV and while this has changed a lot over the years, there is more progress to be made, Davis said.
In more recent scripted TV shows, men were shown doing more housework, but it was gender-stereotypical housework, such as fixing a sink, grilling or painting. Housework associated with domesticity, such as cleaning, cooking or laundry is still depicted by female characters.
“There’s a certain gender divide in the caregiving tasks that’s shown in these shows, and many, many of the most popular shows in streaming television,” Davis continued. “I’d like to see us disrupt the male breadwinner model where the man is making all the money. Most families now are dual income and we should reflect that in what we’re showing on screen.”
Davis hopes male and female caregivers are depicted the same on screen: both as complex people who make mistakes but still know how to rise. Now that the institute officially has this data, Davis hopes to share it with creators of current TV shows.
“Just, ‘I think you maybe didn’t know this,’ and share it with [creators of TV shows] in a collegial way privately,” Davis said. “From the first meeting to the one we had last week, it’s always the same. They’re shocked and they’re grateful, and they want to do something about it because we’re telling them stuff they don’t know.”
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