Caring about care on TV

A new report finds that care narratives are sticky

Before I tell you about TV, a few research updates! My lab had a busy few weeks, with new papers led by my amazing trainees Phil Newsome and Anthony Vaccaro both out in peer-reviewed journals—Human Brain Mapping and Emotion, respectively. Phil’s paper looked at how men respond to images of their babies in the neuroimaging scanner. Research on parents have found that parents’ brains typically activate more in reward, emotion, and mentalizing regions when viewing one’s own baby compared to an unfamiliar baby. Most of that work has been done on mothers. We found similar patterns in our study when we showed men video clips of their infants, but we added a couple of twists. First, we threw in a new condition, video clips taken of the men’s partners. If you’re a parent, your own baby is special for a few reasons—it’s a creature that you’re evolutionarily motivated to care for, but it’s also a familiar member of your own household. Adding the partner condition allowed us to factor out the “familiarity” piece and establish what was unique about babies in particular. We also added a new method, Multivariate Pattern Analysis, or MVPA. This is a fancy statistical technique that uses machine learning to distinguish between different conditions, letting us see which brain activation patterns in a father’s brain could differentiate his own baby from his partner or an unfamiliar baby. To learn more about what we found, check out the paper or Phil’s social media summary, or buy my book Dad Brain when it comes out next year!

Anthony’s paper also looked at fathers’ brains, but he focused on whether men’s brain changes across their transition to parenthood are linked with their sense of meaning and purpose. Anthony’s research focuses on how the brain deals with mixed emotions, and parenting is a perfect example of a mixed emotional experience—many new parents describe bringing home a baby as both joyful and stressful. We hypothesized that cultivating a sense of meaning might be a resilience booster in new dads. We scanned our dads both before and after they had their first child, and looked at their resting state connectivity – in other words, the interconnected patterns of activation found in the brain that is “at rest,” not engaged in a specific task. Across the transition to parenthood, men’s brains became more connected in social cognition networks. When men’s brains showed increases in connections with the insula, a structure important for interoceptive awareness, emotion, and empathy, they reported greater meaning from parenthood and lower parenting stress. To learn more, here’s the paper, here’s Anthony’s social media summary, and you can also read all about this study in Dad Brain.

Phil and Anthony are both terrific researchers and I’ve been lucky to have them in my lab. Anthony recently moved on to a research faculty position at the Winston Center on Technology and Brain Development at the University of North Carolina, where he’s continuing his research on meaning and mixed or ambiguous emotions while developing new studies on how teens use social media and tech. Phil is currently mapping out his dissertation. I should note that through no fault of his own, Phil’s graduate funding was precipitously and chaotically canceled this spring. Phil was funded by the same NIH mechanism as my student Gabe León, and, ironically, his funding got on the same day that I published this essay on Gabe’s funding cancellation. These are tough times to be a junior scientist.

OK, now let’s talk about TV.

Here’s a story that will either seem inspiring or depressing, depending on your disposition. I had coffee a few years ago with Vicki Shabo, a policy expert at the New American Foundation and one of the most knowledgeable people on the planet when it comes to family leave policy. She had been closely tracking the “care as infrastructure” investments that were originally planned for Biden’s signature Build Back Better package. As many will remember, those care provisions, which included historic investments in parental leave, childcare, and eldercare, got left on the cutting room floor after getting blocked by Joe Manchin. This was a devastating defeat for many care advocates, since the legislative package seemed to represent the last best chance to invest in early childhood and family policy. Indeed, as we now know, it really was a last chance, at least for the forseeable future; the current administration is moving in the opposite direction, slashing programs like Head Start that account for a high percentage of childcare in the United States.

Shabo told me that the defeat had refocused her attention. She realized that the political will for meaningful care policy in the United States was not quite there. One of my own personal axes-to-grind is that U.S. parents are not mobilized to demand the kinds of basic public goods that are normative in other countries, like generous paid parental leave, subsidized affordable childcare, free or affordable college, and flexible work options. We’ve become so resigned to not having these options that we fail to organize around them. Plus, Congress is a gerontocracy, so its members have little recent experience with starting a family; the median Senator is a guy in his 70s who had a traditional marriage with a stay-at-home wife and never needed to worry about how to afford time off from work or find high-quality childcare. Given these barriers, Shabo recognized that the first step to passing a care policy agenda would be to invest first in culture change.

Shabo’s insight reminds me of the pronatalism conversation, which is increasingly acknowledging that policy change only gets us so far when it comes to propping up the lagging birth rate. Countries with generous family policies, like Sweden and Finland, have birth rates that are not particularly enviable compared to countries like ours that offer way fewer goodies. There’s still a great case for investing in baby-boosting policies to relieve parent’s stress and remove some obstacles to procreation, but you can’t rely on policy alone. You also need a pro-baby culture. Non-WEIRD cultures are often better on the culture front because they have more communal models of childcare, whereas wealthy countries (with the exception of the U.S.) are often better on the policy front. (Elena Bridgers wrote a great piece about how ideally, you need both). Israel is one of the rare wealthy countries that has both pronatal policy and culture; the U.S., increasingly, has neither (except, arguably, for the more family-oriented culture brought here by recent immigrants). Thinking along similar lines, Shabo concluded that before people can be convinced to vote for care policies, they needed to see them as salient, familiar, and relatable. They needed to imagine how they might face their own care challenges. In other words, they needed to hear stories about care. For example, how does a member of the sandwich generation manage an older adult’s memory loss while also helping her teen apply to college? How does a new mom ask for time off from work? How do families find an affordable preschool, or deal with a chronic illness in the family, or try to achieve work-life balance in the face of a caregiving challenge?

The reason I was able to have coffee with Shabo in the first place is because she was in Los Angeles, setting up meeting with TV writers and producers to make the case that narratives like these about care deserved a bigger spotlight.

This story might seem depressing in that one of the foremost D.C. policy experts in the country had given up on politics (at least for now) and was heading to Hollywood instead. But I choose to see it as inspiring, because I think it’s such a smart realization that changing popular culture might set the preconditions for political awakening.

Shabo’s team recently released a big report on this new culture-change initiative that makes both a business case and a creative case for more stories about care. Titled “The Power of Stories About Work, Family, and Care on Screen,” it reflects a survey of 1,310 TV streaming viewers, combined with social media analytics on TV viewing preferences. The report walks through a few key findings.

The first finding is that TV viewers overwhelmingly want to see stories about balancing work, family, and caregiving. When asked how important it is for shows to depict these themes realistically, using scenarios depicting characters’ everyday lives, almost half of respondents (48%) answered “very important” and another 44% said “somewhat important,” meaning that a combined >90% of viewers think it’s important for shows to incorporate care-related storylines. Moreover, half of the viewers want to see more care-related storylines, 46% are fine with the current amount, and only 4% want to see fewer of these stories.

The interest in care-related stories is especially high among millennial viewers (age 25 to 39), Black and Latino viewers, parents, full-time workers, and those whose households earn at least $100,000 in income.

Care-related stories hold an even greater appeal among what the report calls “enthusiast viewers”—the buzz-driving folks who participate in online fan communities and discuss their favorite shows with others. Two-thirds of those viewers want to see more themes related to work-family and caregiving on their favorite shows. This might be due to the “relatability effect.” Viewers say they can relate to TV characters better when they are going through the same kinds of challenges that they are dealing with themselves, and relatability can also elicit more parasocial engagement with shows. Most (71%) of the viewers surveyed said that they’ve dealt with care challenges like managing work and child care demands, being the main caregiver to an older family member, or leaving a job to care for a loved one.

Here are some of the care scenarios that viewers said they’d like to see on TV:

Here’s what a few viewers said:

“I’d be interested in seeing characters navigate work-life balance struggles, like managing parenting while meeting job demands, and financial stress within families, such as budgeting, job loss, or career changes: real, relatable challenges many face daily.”—Woman, age 25–39

“I would like to see the real-life scenario of a working adult having to take care of his dementia-inflicted parent, [who] is slowly progressing into Alzheimer’s disease, while still having to focus on the work at his job.”—Man, age 25–39

The survey also revealed surprisingly broad support for care support policies across the political spectrum. When asked if “families and families and communities would be more stable if the United States had national policies like paid family and medical leave and affordable child and elder care that make it easier for Americans to work and care for their loved ones,” not only did 94% of Democrats say yes, but a whopping 80% of Republicans said yes too! A similar number of viewers said that these policies would make the U.S. economy more stable. (It’s hard to imagine a bigger disconnect between the level of bipartisan public support for a set of policies and the lack of political will to actually instantiate these policies, which are standard in most countries outside the U.S.).

Along similar lines, 70% of viewers – 82% of Democrats and 65% of Republicans – said that the government should do more to address stress and financial challenges among family caregivers. That’s a pretty big number of Republicans who actually want more public support for these challenges!

In addition to their survey, researchers also used social media analytics to refine these takeaways, looking at metrics of interest and engagement in particular shows. They found more online chatter concerning dramas that centered work, family, and care. Shows that focused on care issues were recommended on social media 26% more often, and received 16% more social media mentions.

The report also found that shows that spotlight work, family, and care themes can boost streaming subscriptions; 65% of viewers say they are more likely to subscribe, or continue a subscription, to a streaming channel that features authentic stories about care.

Of course, the big question is whether these kinds of stories can actually inspire viewers to care more about care. Based on the report, the answer is yes; people feel like they learn more, connect more, and develop more empathy after viewing care narratives in their favorite shows.

Viewers don’t necessarily want their shows to only be about care; they said that they wanted to see caregiving stories pop up in a wide variety of genres, from comedies to dramas. And they don’t always want dire, apocalyptic narratives about care (although The Last of Us was definitely a caregiving story), but rather to see positivity and solutions on TV, like these.

The report concludes by articulating a strong business case for care narratives in popular media. These themes aren’t going to turn off, bore, or polarize viewers, but rather, as the survey and social media analytics indicate, are appealing to viewers and promote more conversations about shows. Although I started this essay by telling you why Shabo got interested in culture change around care policy, this isn’t some sneaky leftie Trojan Horse designed to trick viewers into adopting political stances that they would otherwise eschew. Quite the contrary; these themes resonate with viewers because they are already relatable, and they connect with policies, like parental leave and eldercare subsidies, that a majority of viewers across the political aisle already say they want.

The problem is not that people reject care policies, but rather that they don’t see these policies as salient enough (or perhaps, too intractable in the current environment) to motivate action and advocacy. If politicians aren’t going to care about care issues, then perhaps TV writers can step into the void.

MUSIC RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK

Past recs: Broncho // Alvvays // Capitol Years // The Cairo Gang and Hard Quartet

The Beths

I am salty about the fact that I couldn’t get tickets to see The Beths this week at a puppet theater (seriously!) less than two miles from my house. I queued up (virtually) for their presale, failed to score tickets, and then queued up again the next day for regular sale tickets and struck out again. My friend Katie Tell managed to get tickets so hopefully she’ll comment here and tell us how the show went.* Katie and I caught the band a few years ago and their show was marvelous. Even the onstage banter was delightful because they have the best New Zealand accents since Flight of the Conchords. Our moms band covered their song Future Me Hates Me and it is extra catchy and charming, as is their whole catalogue. Their video for FMHM really captures their endearing vibe:

Although FMHM makes you think they are a power-poppy band, I find their sadder slower songs to be some of their most compelling. The song Jump Rope Gazers is a heartbreaking account of a love that takes a long time to manifest. I always get a little choked up when she sings, “I want to give it my best try.”

They even did a video where they all bungie jumped! My husband calls them “Alvvays-lite” and it is true that they have a similar combo of clarion-clear high female vocals and clever guitar work, but Alvvays is more shoegazey and anthemic and The Beths are more like a classic post-punk powerpop quartet in the slightly goofy vein of an illuminati hotties or Beach Bunny.

*My new foolproof strategy for getting engagement on here is to namecheck a subscriber friend each week so that everyone has to read to the end of my posts in order to see if they are mentioned. Are YOU next? Probably!