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In this paper I report on an investigation of discoursal asymmetry in parentcraft texts, in terms of the ways in which the father is represented and backgrounded. In particular, I suggest that it is possible to see one dominant, overarching discourse: `Part-time father/mother as main parent'. This dominant discourse can be seen as being `shored up' (as well as, to an extent, challenged) by other, usually complementary, discourses: `father as baby entertainer', `father as mother's bumbling assistant', `father as line manager', `mother as manager of the father's role in childcare', and `mother as wife/partner'. These discourses are characterized by recurring and non-recurring linguistic presences - and, importantly, absences (Van Leeuwen, 1995, 1996). Looking in particular at the following linguistic items from three different semantic fields - mother/father/wife/husband/partner; play/fun/help; and share - I illustrate how different discourses, with their salient linguistic presences and absences, can organize a text in supporting and potentially destabilizing ways.

She teaches 'Gender and language', as well as other undergraduate and postgraduate courses, and is the Director of Studies of the new 'PhD in Applied Linguistics byTltcsis and CourscworW programme. Her main research interest is gender and language, both inside and outside the classroom, and she is currently looking at different ways of researching language and gender in literature written for young children. She is also working on a research project concerned with how doctoral students become members of their ncu> academic discourse community.

Many magazines devoted to the topic of the care of babies and young children now have titles which include some variation of parent rather than of mother (e.g. Parent and Child rather than Mother and Baby). This corresponds to evident new directions in social practices, and suggests a desire of the publishers to appeal to female and male readers. Whether both mothers and fathers are addressed and represented in the magazines makes these magazines particularly interesting sites for the study of fatherhood discourses. In this study, three magazines ( Parents, Parenting and Baby Years) were analysed in terms of the extent to which the language of their advice features addressed women and/or men, and whether they could be seen as promoting ‘shared parenting’, ‘hands-on’ fatherhood, or at least a father-friendly environment. An examination of linguistic representation (in particular, of fathers), visuals, ‘voices’, gendered stereotypes and gendered discourses of parenting suggested that fathers are in fact not being fully addressed. These magazines may be lagging behind current social change and practices in ‘Western’ parenting.

Social identity theory assigns self‐esteem a central motivational role in intergroup discrimination. There are two corollaries: (1) successful discrimination elevates self‐esteem, and (2) depressed self‐esteem motivates discrimination. Previous research yields contradictory findings which may partly be attributable to failure to conduct appropriate tests of the hypotheses. The present experiment tests both corollaries under conditions designed to overcome some of these limitations. Social categorization and prior transitory self‐esteem were manipulated in a 2 (group/individual) x 2 (success/failure) minimal group study. Additional control subjects run simultaneously with experimental subjects provided pre‐test self‐esteem measures to compare with experimental subjects' post‐test self‐esteem. Corollary 2 was upheld: lower self‐esteem subjects who were explicitly categorized discriminated significantly more than subjects in other conditions. Corollary 1 was not upheld: greater discrimination was not associated with higher post‐test or greater increase in self‐esteem. Some implications of these findings for the self‐esteem hypothesis in social identity theory are suggested.