I know that many fathers already knew that being the primary parent means being interrupted all the time, but I'm sure some men are discovering this right now. Here's a thread about early television, motherhood, and interruption: (1/n) https://twitter.com/LarrySnyder610/status/1262571638266236929

Early daytime TV genres were invented on the premise that most ppl watching were women, most women watching were mothers, and all mothers are interrupted by their kids all the time. (2/n)

Therefore, all the main daytime genres -- magazine shows (that combine lots of diff info/types of presentation, like Today and The View), talk shows, and game shows -- all consist of short segments that contain a ton of previewing and recapping, lots of repetition (3/n)

So that a women viewer could leave the room, or be distracted (by an interrupting kid for example), and not miss anything major. A daytime TV show could always be picked up at any point. (4/n)

Soap operas were the most interesting response to motherhood & interruption, b/c (as Tania Modleski noted in early soap scholarship) their very premise reflects mothers' reality, of having multiple people to care for equally, (5/n)

each character's storyline "interrupting" every other's. In a way, the different soap characters vying for a woman viewer's attention/sympathy is very much like siblings fighting w/ each other & the mother can't always take sides easily, she sides w all of them. (6/n)

(It's no accident that one of the greatest soaps of all time was titled All My Children.) (7/n)

An important thing to note about motherhood & interruption & distraction & daytime TV was that daytime TV, and by extension ALL TV, privileged sound over video. B/c distracted women viewers (TV producers thought) probably LISTEN more than they watch (8/n)

and rely on AUDIO CUES to tell them when an important moment is coming up. That's why game shows have so many ding-ding noises and magazine&talk shows have so much intro/outro music and audience response and soaps have music that swweLLLLLS up to a big dramatic moment. (9/n)

Whenever film wants to parodize TV, they always mock these over-the-top sonic conventions, making the sounds of esp daytime TV seem really obnoxious and extra, but there were REASONS that the sound design of daytime TV is so extra (10/n)

and the reasons were that at-home moms were a) looking down at their chores, like their scrubbing or ironing or folding, all the time, so they only mostly HEARD TV, or b) listening to a child, so needed a sound cue that told them what had happened/was abt to happen on TV. (11/n)

TV was built mostly on radio's example, and millions of moms listened to radio programs for decades b/f TV came along. But TV execs/producers were *worried* that with visuals added, moms might prioritize looking at the TV screen over doing chores (12/n)

or minding their babies ("oh NO! what if TV makes women BAD MOTHERS?!?!" said 1950s network execs). So, daytime TV was specifically designed as firstly an audio medium, secondly a visual one, so that moms could still mom WHILE watching TV. (13/n)

So just remember: there was a time when new media (television in the 50s) recognized that motherhood - let's just say "parenthood" - meant constant interruption, and ppl SHAPED THE MEDIUM taking this fact of life into account. (14/n)

I am not a parent, but I sense that many parents today are hyperaware that the (relatively) new medium of all-day teleconferencing definitely DOES NOT take into account that stay-at-home parenting = nonstop distractions and interruptions. (15/n)

This contrast between the design of 1950s TV and 2020s Zoom meetings shows us that there is nothing deterministic about new media & their sociocultural impact. New media can be designed/shaped better or worse for people's lives & for social outcomes. (16/n)

Philosophies and beliefs and understandings about gender, family dynamics, leisure time, attention, media preferences, and labor all factor into how new media are developed and the expectations set on them re: how they will function & how they should be used. (17/n)

This has been brought to you by New Media Studies writ large. Thank you for your attention. (/end)

Btw, credit to amazing television history scholars Lynn Spigel (my mentor and advisor at Northwestern), Marsha F. Cassidy, the aforementioned Tania Modleski, and Martha Nochimson for teaching me most of the above (/end+1)