Disney is recognized as producing powerful cultural products that make major contributions to many forms of children's media. While it has been suggested that mothers are marginalized in Disney films, there has been no extensive research exploring the pathways of marginalization and contexts of marginalized mothers. Furthermore, research examining parenting more generally including mothers, fathers, and other-parents has been neglected in the current literature. This study explores narrative subtexts surrounding mothers by systematically examining feature length, animated Disney films. A sample of 15 films was analyzed; the films were purposefully sampled using specific family-related criteria. Results indicate that mothers are marginalized either through their absence or their relatively minor roles, and fathers and other-parents are a significant part of many of the films. This is interesting given a wider cultural context that emphasizes biological mothers as key nurturers, and disconnect between parenting in Disney films and societal context is discussed.
This research investigates whether the capacity of parity status to predict disability onset varies by race among older women. Data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) (1998–2008) was used, and a series of discrete-time event-history models were estimated using multinomial logistic regression. Disability onset was constructed from five common Activities of Daily Living (ADL) measures (i.e., difficulty dressing, bathing, eating, getting in/out of bed, and walking). The initial risk group was old-old women (i.e., born before 1925) without disability in 1998 (N=2,229). Nulliparous and high parity Black women born before 1925 were more likely to develop disability onset compared to White women with the same parity status. The results suggest that parity status among Black older women may be a salient risk factor for disability onset.
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