Parenting Through Pop Culture

With the ever-increasing amount of media children are consuming, it has become important for parents to learn how to help them navigate this consumption productively. All too often, the only approach to screen time by parents is a question of limiting how much and what kind. Instead, if parents and educators can adopt a more nuanced relationship to media and education, adults and children can come together in order to engage with and deconstruct the messages that are embedded in popular culture. This enables children to become more informed citizens. This collection seeks to do just that by providing a series of essays on strategies to engage children with varying topics and programming to ensure that media consumption is an active process that promotes social and political awareness instead of apathetic entertainment.

Parents often feel at a loss with popular culture and how it fits in with their families. They want to love their children well, but it can be overwhelming to navigate the murky waters of television, movies, games, and more that their kids are exposed to every day. Popular culture doesn’t have to be a burden. The Pop Culture Parent equips mothers, fathers, and guardians to build relationships with their children by entering into their popular culture–informed worlds, understanding them biblically, and passing on wisdom. This resource by authors Ted Turnau, E. Stephen Burnett, and Jared Moore, provides Scripture-based, practical help for parents to enjoy the messy gift of popular culture with their kids. By engaging with their children’s interests, parents can explore culture while teaching their children to become missionaries in a post-Christian world. By providing realistic yet biblical encouragement for parents, the coauthors guide readers to engage with popular culture through a gospel lens, helping them teach their kids to understand and answer the challenges raised by popular culture. The Pop Culture Parent helps the next generation of evangelicals move beyond a posture of cultural ignorance to one of cultural engagement, building grace-oriented disciples and cultural missionaries.

"This is an academic look at the contribution of popular culture to the loss if innocence in today's children."--Publisher.

The definitions of fatherhood have shifted in the twenty-first century as paternal subjectivities, conflicts, and desires have registered in new ways in the contemporary family. This collection investigates these sites of change through various lenses from popular culture - film, television, blogs, best-selling fiction and non-fiction, stand-up comedy routines, advertisements, newspaper articles, parenting guide-books, and video games. Treating constructions of the father at the nexus of patriarchy, gender, and (post)feminist philosophy, contributors analyze how fatherhood is defined in relation to masculinity and femininity, and the shifting structures of the heteronormative nuclear family. Perceptions of the father as the traditional breadwinner and authoritarian as compared to a more engaged and involved nurturer are considered via representations of fathers from the US, Canada, Britain, Australia, South Africa, and Sweden.

With clarity and humour the author addresses why pop culture is an irresistable lure to kids, by confronting the issues which both plague and challenge parents and educators today. The book examines questions such as: is Saturday morning TV as bad as it seems? Should I give my daughter a Barbie? and How is violence affecting kids?

Describes the power peer groups and pop culture have over teens and explains how this power has affected the classic family dynamic and changed the traditional American family.

Children teach us patience and offer us a fresh perspective on life. As parents, we unconditionally love our children and would do anything for them. Oh, and we swear we will never lick a napkin and then wipe our childs face off with it. Oh, but the best laid plans?Ǫ Still, even with all of our parental wisdom, adults can learn a thing or two from kids. The literal and honest way children look at the world is often refreshing and preferable to the suspicious way adults can see things. With complete innocence, children can cut to the quick and do so in a way that is not condescending or adversarial. From this seed comes Pop Goes the Culture: A Father and Sons Take on the World. Both father and son have written brief essays on 52 diverse topics. Many are kid-related: Burger King?«, Elmo?«, Icees?«, and school uniforms. Some are not: Autumn, going to church, records, and love. While the father tries to craft droll commentaries replete with esoteric pop culture references, his son presents very literal takes on the same topics. Note that all author royalties from Outskirts Press will be going to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

Take a stunning journey through American motherhood as portrayed in pop culture--magazines, advertisements, cartoons, television, music, movies, and more. This lavishly illustrated book goes decade by decade, from the origins of Mother's Day, to iconic TV moms, to moms of the White House, the workplace, and cyberspace. These captivating images, along with inspirational quotes, fun facts about famous moms, and sidebars, paint a story of an evolving America--and of the fierce, adaptable American woman.