CERGAS Seminar "Reframing gendered parenting scripts in digital parenting ecologies"

Digital parenting ecologies are understood as digital ecosystems comprising apps, websites, social media platforms, and generative AI tools through which parents learn and negotiate knowledge, strategies, and pedagogical orientations concerning their parental role, caregiving practices, and their children’s development and well-being. These environments also participate in shaping the gendered expectations through which parenting roles are understood, evaluated, and legitimised.
The presentation develops this argument through two empirical illustrations drawn from Italian digital environments: the satirical feminist initiative Mammadimerda (“Shitty Mom”) and the Super Papà (“Super Dad”) app. Through satire, metaphors, and followers’ testimonies, Mammadimerda makes the pressures of intensive motherhood visible, legitimises maternal ambivalence, and challenges the moralised figure of the “good” mother. Super Papà, by contrast, promotes paternal involvement through checklists and monitoring practices that encourage fathers to oversee maternal behaviour, health, and decision-making. Fathers are consequently positioned less as equal co-caregivers than as guided supervisors, with paternal participation framed through managerial forms of responsibility.
Taken together, the two illustrations show how digital parenting ecologies can both question and ratify gendered parenting scripts, shaping how caregiving responsibilities are understood and distributed.

Speaker:

Davide Cino is a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor of General and Social Pedagogy at the Department of Human Sciences for Education, University of Milano-Bicocca. His research focuses on family and digital media, lifelong learning, and informal education. He is the Principal Investigator of DigiPE - Digital Parenting Ecologies: Evolving Landscapes of Parenting and Caregiving Practices in the Age of Digital Media and Generative Artificial Intelligence, funded by the Italian Science Fund (Fondo Italiano per la Scienza – FIS 3).

Link zoom:

https://unibocconi-it.zoom.us/j/96861114519?pwd=Q51nXkCAN0IIO5YR0GMb71IDKaH94U.1

Meeting ID:

968 6111 4519

Passcode: 

949389

Lunch at the end of the meeting: for those willing to participate in person, click here before the 30th of October.