this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2024
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Science Memes

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submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 67 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Anyone else find it weird how articles often tend to add the parental status of the subject in the title?

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Only if it's about a mother though.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

I guess being a mother is considered an important life achievement, while being a father is not.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

I think it's more that, for some, becoming a parent is their only life accomplishment, so "reader engagement" is literally, "hey, overlap these two circles, or the middle won't buy our crap."

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

You do get to be a father in news articles. Mainly when they talk about you being deceased though.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I guess it's bait for people who like to judge. The idea could be: it's not responsible to quit science for this and being a mother makes irresponsible choices even worse. That's not my point of view, but I know people whose life seems to be so empty that they feel a constant need to look down on others and the "mother" information gives them at least 5 more minutes of talking shit about how this is a terrible decision.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

I see it the other way around. Older people eat up clickbait news, and older people tend to be parents, so identifying the woman as a mother makes them go “she’s someone like me” while identifying her as a scientist is less likely to resonate. It helps some people imagine themselves in her shoes.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

It's been this way since the inception of the news paper. To sell papers they needed to get people invested in the subjects of the paper. That included giving information about the subject of the articles that other people might relate to. If you're a mother you're more likely to be inspired by a mom of 3 who went for a degree in science and ended up becoming a "Trebuchet Master".