Why is there so little diversity in parenting magazines?
by Anti-Racist Parent columnist Sue Lyons-Joell
As of this writing, I’m going the distance waiting for my first child to be born… so that means I am sorting, cleaning, shopping, and otherwise being as unprepared as any newbie parent. In the course of the nesting frenzy, I paged through the various pregnancy and childcare-related magazines I’ve collected over the last 10 months, deciding whether to clip articles and such. I came to one big conclusion. Diversity in parenting magazines is about as bland a landscape as the average fashion rag, and probably for the same reasons.
Now I can’t claim to have done any sort of official study, and the magazines I have are definitely not a great sample, but my science brain kicked into gear and said, “Oh Yeah? Prove It!” My starting criteria were:
- I would try to count visible minorities in a sampling of the magazines I had on hand. I excluded ads and cartoons (not that there were any minorities portrayed in the latter);
- I would try to identify them, as the average American, would by rough ethnic/racial category;
- If a model appeared in the same article more than once, I’d count them only once;
- I’d separate child vs. adult models and solo vs. group shots;
- ’d take magazine size into account – more pages = more photo ops
Now for the disclaimer: I used my own opinions as to the ethnicity of the models. I included an “unknown/ambiguous” category for models that I couldn’t immediately eyeball; that category may include Latinos, as well as multiethnic folks. It goes against my principles to tell someone, even in my head, what ethnicity they are… but that’s what happens every day, and I won’t pretend that those first impressions aren’t significant.
The magazines I had around were American Baby, BabyTalk, Fit Pregnancy, and Parents. I grabbed magazines from October or November of last year. Parents and American Baby are from the same publishing group, The Meredith Corporation, which also publishes Better Homes, More, and Family Circle. Fit Pregnancy is published by American Media, Inc., whose magazine family includes Country Weekly, Star, and the National Enquirer (home of BatBoy). Babytalk is published by The Parenting Group, who is also responsible for In Style, Real Simple, and Essence. Remember that last one – it’ll be important later.
I originally wanted to look at all the rags I’d collected…but I got too discouraged. Here’s how my sample turned out (V.M. = Visible Minority):
At first blush, Parents seems to be the clear winner from a diversity standpoint – 10% of the pages had a visible minority in a photo. Perhaps because the magazine covers a range of ages and topics, and is well established and respected (and has a bigger budget) it may be easier for them to find diverse subjects, models, and stories. Or it may be a conscious decision on the part of the managers and staff – I really have no idea. One thing I also noted, but didn’t table, was the types of articles in which minorities appeared. In this issue of Parents, minority representations were scattered throughout the table of contents, regular columns, special features, and the cover stories.
The clear loser was BabyTalk – given, a magazine with a short length and even shorter focus: infancy and toddlerhood. That said, I must confess that I had to change which issue of BabyTalk I used. The first issue I grabbed from my pile, March 2007, had no visible minorities. None. So I was forced to find another issue, and on the third try, I was able to use last November’s. In this issue of BabyTalk, minority representations were present in the cover stories and columns. However, almost all of the appearances (4/5) were for clothes or a baby carrier. No visible minorities were in the medical, health, or childcare articles, except for one child’s picture (of 4 on the page).
What about the breakdown of Visible Minorities? Well, only one magazine, Fit Pregnancy, seemed to portray Latinos (although to be fair, I may have missed several, or they may be in the “unknown” category). I also may have just hit on a good issue, as 3 of those 5 Latinos were in a blurb about a former cover model’s family – and I was able to tell ethnicity from their last names. African-Americans appears to be well represented in Parents and American Baby, but were conspicuously absent from BabyTalk. Actually, every minority group was absent from BabyTalk, except for Asian/Pacific Islander.
So why should I even care? They’re just selling products and blurbs of information ripped from the latest parenting trends and pediatric journals, right? Maybe – except that magazines usually want to either reflect their ideal reader, or make a reader want to be as cool and as happy as the people in the articles (and therefore want to buy the products to achieve that state). Or they tell stories of medical miracles, relationship interventions, and behavior problems that both give advice to readers and let the readers go “There but for the grace of God…”
But if art imitates life, and life in turn imitates art, what we see can easily influence how we see the wider world, even when intellectually we know better. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but if magazines usually reflect who their target audience is, or who their audience would like to be, I am obviously not the target audience for most of these magazines. If it’s not too much to ask, I’d like family magazines in particular and print media in general to recognize that their typical reader may not be so typical after all.
Sue Lyons-Joell is a wetlands scientist near Philadelphia, PA. Also known as Lyonside, she has been active in various multiethnic groups and online forums since college. She’s more of a blogging fan than an actual blogger. Sue and her husband are expecting their first child in February 2007.
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of 
Meera Bowman Johnson wrote:
Thanks for calling attention to an important issue that many readers overlook, unless it directly affects them.
I used to work in the magazine industry and know first hand that it’s not uncommon for sittings editors to be told the are using “too many” of a certain type of model, even at parenting magazines.
Such was the case at one of the mags listed above, where a friend of mine is the sittings editor. It still doesn’t stop her from representing a diverse group as best she can (better than most, actually). But she found it very odd that the editor in chief, a white mother of an Asian child, would have a problem with it to begin with.
Slowly, as more editors of color (and others who are sensitive to this issue) climb up the mastheads, the pages will begin to reflect the publications’ true readership.
Until then, the best we can do is make a point to buy the issues that feature VM’s on the cover…to let the powers that be know they’re on the right track.
Posted 27 Feb 2007 at 7:14 pm ¶
daddyinastrangeland wrote:
Meera, you didn’t link to the letter you reprinted by another blogger berating Cookie for its homogeneity!
http://ourkindofparenting.blogspot.com/2007/01/what-do-you-want-cookie.html
Posted 27 Feb 2007 at 7:33 pm ¶
Kim wrote:
Wow, daddyinastrangeland, and Meera:
I was just going to talk about Cookie, and how I was truly incensed to receive a promotional invite to subscribe. I had just gotten back from New York, opened the huge stacks of mags and catalogs, and went fuming around the house, mag-in-hand.
Lyonside: you are so…thank you for all you do here, lady. It is really good to see the numbers associated with the rates at which ‘visible minorities’ are used in actual articles (more so than ads, even), for reasons of who the mag seeks to reach and the audience it is willing to cater to.
I worked for two of the mags above, American Baby and BabyTalk (briefly, when they were both owned by Cahners Publishing), and can say that on the mornings when the open calls for Mommies and their babies rolled around, there were NEVER any women or children who looked like me. My supervisor, to whom I mentioned this (”Oh, really?) suggested I tell other women about the open calls. (Boy, did I ever. Think it scares people, though…stranger talks about going outside of the insular little comfort zones people have, and going “downtown” to have ‘other’ people assess your new baby’s beauty, and possibly reject you both?!)
Obviously, (and, yes, I will extrapolate the ’study’ to be representative of the year-long position and offerings of the publications highlighted here), not much has changed.
Posted 28 Feb 2007 at 1:52 am ¶
a wrote:
This is the most retarded thing I’ve ever seen. How many of the magazine pages had pictures? In those pictures what percentage only included whites?
Don’t you take into account the target audience of the magazine. How many white people are in Jet magazine. Precious few I imagine, does that make them racist?
Posted 28 Feb 2007 at 11:25 am ¶
daddyinastrangeland wrote:
“a”– So, um, parents of color aren’t part of the “parent” demographic? Your example is a specious one–the target demographic of Jet is racially/ethnically/culturally based, while parenting magazines’ target audience is based on the cross-racial category of “parent.” So why shouldn’t parents from different backgrounds want or expect to see themselves and their families reflected back from magazines dedicated to selling them stuff?
Posted 28 Feb 2007 at 11:49 am ¶
Kim wrote:
a:
When the masthead for the baby magazines clearly states that they are seeking to reach and celebrate WHITE families, showcasing their place and progress in society, Blacks and others will not look for representation in those mags.
Who needs Whites to be the sole model/face in the pics? How can the target audience for a parenting magazine NOT be the full spectrum of that crazy nesting, overly indulgent, hyper-careful and concerned, group of parents EVERYWHERE?
The sway the image has on the viewer is powerful, and placing onesself squarely in the midst of others who ‘do what you do, and as you do,’ which in this case in parent with care, concern and STUFF, lets you see the common ground, the similarities that exist between you and the next person. The absence of these images-in-common perpetuate the idea that ‘they do it differently,’ - and perpetuates the myths, fears and misunderstandings that permeate the pre-school classroom, the playground and Mothers’ groups, etc.
Breaking through the psychological barriers of class and race can begin right here, when the next generation is in its infancy, in its inception. And who transmits the ideology of the Anti-Racist?
It has to be the Anti-Racist Parent.
Posted 28 Feb 2007 at 11:55 am ¶
Nina wrote:
a: This article speaks to the lack of diversity in mainstream parenting magazines. Sure Jet magazine, Ebony, Essence etc. are not filled with white faces, but why do people of color have to go to niche magazines to see reflections of themselves. And are you suggesting that the target audience of the magazines listed above is exclusively white parents of white children? Perhaps you have never had to look very far to find people who look like you. If you had, then you would understand where this article was coming from.
While not a magazine, The GAP, an incredibly mainstream company, does a great job of presenting all types of diversity in their advertisements. In fact how many of you with children of mixed-race have been told “oh your child should be a GAP baby.” GAP Baby has almost become a tagline for mixed-race children.
Finally as a parent of a 3 year old let me tell you that the parenting magazines repeat their info over and over much like bridal magazines so buy a few if you must, subscribe for a year even, but that’s it. It is all the same information year after year.
Posted 28 Feb 2007 at 12:22 pm ¶
Mrs. J wrote:
Oh, a. Retarded? This is not a sixth grade lunch table.
We’re discussing magazines about parenting…not “white” parenting. If that’s what you thought they were, then perhaps you should start your own. Or get a subscription to Cookie.
Feel free to remain ignorant if you want, but I truly hope you’ll return to this site and get a better understanding of why the issues we discuss are important. Maybe not to you, but to many.
Posted 28 Feb 2007 at 1:46 pm ¶
Shermari wrote:
Peoplel like ‘a’ really piss me off. They spew ignorance and know nothing of history. Black magazines and newspapers came into existence because White magazines and newspapers did not depict Black people. If they did it was often insulting or even threatening.
Magazines like Jet arose from a time when it was legal to have places designated for Whites only. So Blacks had to have their own businesses or whatever so that they could be served. When legal segregation ended, Blacks gladly began patronizing the formerly White only establishments. Many Black owned businesses unfortunately disappeared after that.
In much of the media today, you don’t find adequate or balanced representation of Blacks. Magazines like JET are (unfortunately) still needed. And even though I’ve never seen any magazine on a newstand proclaim that they are for “White” people, they really don’t have to. It becomes evident when you see or read it. Same for TV shows/stations too.
Posted 01 Mar 2007 at 12:57 am ¶
Lyonside wrote:
Thanks all for the comments (yeah, even “a’s”).
The worthwhile part of “a”’s comment is one I wrestled with while doing the count: the ratio of “white” models to “VM” models, and (a seperate issue) the ratio of number of models to number of pages.
Honestly, for the first issue, I just didn’t tally the number of white-appearing models because my focys was not to pit WHITES against NON-WHITES, per se, but to show presence or absence. If this were to be truly scientific, I would have to count the number of ALL models.
However, this brings me to the second issue - if you have ever seen any fashion, parenting, or entertainment magazine, you know that pictures are the number one thing in the magazine, amd that there is at least 1 person pictured for every article or features (including cartoons, which I excluded for this). It isn’t Popular Mechanics or Sci Am, after all
It’s parents, babies, and everything in-between.
Posted 05 Mar 2007 at 7:58 pm ¶
Lyonside wrote:
Yay! Troll!
*mutter* Don’t tell me Carmen has to start moderating ARP posts too? *sigh* Like she has nothing better to do…
Hopefully “Demonica” (was there ever a more appropriate tag?) is a drive-by and won’t lurk under our bridge.
Posted 20 Mar 2007 at 5:40 pm ¶
Kim wrote:
Oh, Demonica!!!!
My beautiful, blonde, silken haired beauty is…a Black child. Would you like to see a picture?
Don’t cry, baby, it’s alright, it’s alright.
Hey, Ly…got a tissue?
Posted 20 Mar 2007 at 5:43 pm ¶