1.Introduction

Parenthood research has become of interest to professionals (e.g., midwives, doctors, and psychologists) to assess fathers and mothers, especially those married couples expecting a baby, or having a new baby. Thus, we analyze website texts as a source of parenting information addressed to heterosexual parents. Such texts would be a fruitful source on addressing and representing gender’s different roles, relations, and practices. As a general note, this article will not explore parenthood texts targeting gay parents or the single mother or single father.

Rashley (2005)Rashley, Lisa 2005 “ ‘Work It Out with your Wife’: Gendered Expectations and Parenting Rhetoric Online”. NWSA Journal 17 (1): 58–92. claims that parenting education on the internet is not only giving information about childcare but also conveying gendered expectations about parents’ roles. In the past, Arab new parents tended to seek childcare information from elder people, relatives, and friends. As the result of massive cultural and technological change, a lot of young parents have been separated from their extended and immediate families and started to lose familial support. Consequently, young parents have depended on different sources of parental and family life education such as websites, given that these sources are based on experts’ opinions and medical professionals. New parents can seek different kinds of information from medical information, child-rearing, breastfeeding, and family life education (FLE). According to The National Council on Family Relations (NCFR)National Council on Family Relations (NCFR) www​.ncfr​.org. Retrieved in October 2020., FLE has the function of “equipping and empowering family members to develop knowledge and skills that enhance well-being and strengthen interpersonal relationships through an educational, preventive, and strengths-based approach”.

Parental roles and how they are constructed in different cultures are not static but dynamic interactional processes. They are constantly constructed and reshaped according to the historical and cultural context (Brandth and Kvande 1998Brandth, Berit, and Elin Kvande 1998 “Masculinity and Child Care: The Reconstruction of Fathering”. The Sociological Review 46 (2): 293–313. ). Traditional parents’ roles in the past decades were almost constant, where the mother is the main caregiver for the baby and the father is the financial supporter of the family. The discourse of motherhood describes mothers as ‘selfless’ and ‘sacrificial’, focusing exclusively on their children’s care rather than on their desires and needs because children require intensive and constant attention (Warner 2005Warner, Judith 2005 Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety. New York, NY: Riverhead Books.). This tendency also applies to employed mothers who are reported by an Australian study (Craig 2006Craig, Lyn 2006 “Parental Education, Time in Paid Work and Time with Children”. British Journal of Sociology 57: 553–75. ) to continue their attentive role to children by reducing their personal care time, in contrast to fathers, who devote less time even though when they are fully responsible for childcare (Silver 2000Silver, Cynthia 2000 “Being There: The Time Dual-Earner Couples Spend with their Children”. Canadian Social Trends 57: 26–29.). Fathers also tend to spend time with their children for enjoyment, whereas the mother is more attentive and responsive to the children’s needs during the time of enjoyment spent with them (Such 2006Such, Elizabeth 2006 “Leisure and Fatherhood in Dual-Earner Families”. Leisure Studies 25 (2): 185–99. ). According to Shaw (2008)Shaw, Susan 2008 “Family Leisure and Changing Ideologies of Parenthood”. Sociology Compass 2 (2): 688–703. , motherhood is mainly attached to intensive mothering where the mother is responsible for the child’s physical needs and concerned with his/her emotional and psychological needs as well as the other household work, whereas the father’s role is limited to bringing income and being the head of the family.

In the Arab world, the sense of equality for both genders, though it has not been achieved, encourages women to study and have a career, whereas the men are not encouraged to have some house holding and childcare responsibilities (Abu-Baker 2005Abu-Baker, Khawla 2005 “The Impact of Social Values on the Psychology of Gender among Arab Couples: A View from Psychotherapy”. Israel Journal of Psychiatry and Related Studies 42 (2): 106–115.). The masculine values, according to Abu-Baker (2005)Abu-Baker, Khawla 2005 “The Impact of Social Values on the Psychology of Gender among Arab Couples: A View from Psychotherapy”. Israel Journal of Psychiatry and Related Studies 42 (2): 106–115., are still conservative in Arab society, as women who demand gender equality are perceived as home racers. Instead, they should maintain the image of the good mother who is selfless and whose life is devoted to her family.

However, the growing literature indicates a changing nature of fatherhood in Western society; fathers have become more involved in childcare and in their children’s lives because of a change in ideologies. Recently the number of fathers who want to be more involved in the day-to-day care of children is increasing (Dienhart 1998Dienhart, Anna 1998 Reshaping Fatherhood: The Social Construction of Shared Parenting. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, Inc. ; Gatrell 2006Gatrell, Caroline 2006 “Interviewing Fathers: Feminist Dilemmas in Fieldwork”. Journal of Gender Studies 15 (3): 237–51. ). This new attitude has amended the idea of the ‘one-parent’ participation in the development of the infant (Bentenuto and Venuti 2019Bentenuto, Arianna, and Paola Venuti 2019 “From Supporting to Co-Parenting: The New Roles of Fathers”. Parenting: Science and Practice 19: 30–33. ; Brandth and Kvande 1998Brandth, Berit, and Elin Kvande 1998 “Masculinity and Child Care: The Reconstruction of Fathering”. The Sociological Review 46 (2): 293–313. ). Fathers have become directly involved, spending much more time with their children, and increased their co-parenting (Bentenuto and Venuti 2019Bentenuto, Arianna, and Paola Venuti 2019 “From Supporting to Co-Parenting: The New Roles of Fathers”. Parenting: Science and Practice 19: 30–33. ).

The different parents’ roles and practices and how they are constructed and reshaped by socio-cultural ideologies in different cultures are the foci of this piece of research. It purports to investigate the differences and similarities between Arabic and English parents’ role in Arabic and English parenting website texts and the linguistic exponents used to address parents and signal their roles, and to find out the socio-cultural ideologies that have given rise to variations in gender roles.

2.Theoretical framework

Starting from the evidence that fathers have become or can be more involved in parenting and childcare as the result of a change of ideology, recent studies have highlighted the importance of fathers’ role not only in taking part in childcare but also in supporting mothers, providing a “reduction of distress and increasing their mental health and general well-being” (Bentenuto and Venuti 2019Bentenuto, Arianna, and Paola Venuti 2019 “From Supporting to Co-Parenting: The New Roles of Fathers”. Parenting: Science and Practice 19: 30–33. , 2). Given the universality of childcare (Sunderland 2000Sunderland, Jane 2000 “Baby Entertainer, Bumbling Assistant and Line Manager: Discourses of Fatherhood in Parentcraft Texts”. Discourse & Society 11 (2): 249–274. ), parentcraft texts have been thought of as a reflection of the construction of a range of parents’ responsibilities and a representation of motherhood and fatherhood’s specific social practices. Despite the universality of parenthood, parents’ responsibilities vary cross-culturally in terms of parents’ roles and their responsibilities to parentcraft. In light of this, the present study drew on a critical discourse analysis (CDA) framework to figure out how parenting roles and identities have been constructed through parenting discourse. In what follows, we shed light on the studies that have utilized a CDA framework to illustrate how parenting discourse portrays parental roles and identities (e.g., Lazar 2000Lazar, Michelle 2000 “Gender, Discourse, and Semiotics: The Politics of Parenthood Representations”. Discourse & Society 11 (3): 373–400. ; Sunderland 2000Sunderland, Jane 2000 “Baby Entertainer, Bumbling Assistant and Line Manager: Discourses of Fatherhood in Parentcraft Texts”. Discourse & Society 11 (2): 249–274. , 2006).

Drawing on Van Leeuwen’s (1996)Van Leeuwen, Theo 1996 “The Representation of Social Actors”. In Texts and Practices: Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis, edited by Caldas Coulthard & Malcolm Coulthard, 32–70. London: Routledge. theoretical framework, Sunderland (2000)Sunderland, Jane 2000 “Baby Entertainer, Bumbling Assistant and Line Manager: Discourses of Fatherhood in Parentcraft Texts”. Discourse & Society 11 (2): 249–274. explored how fatherhood and gendered identities are constructed in a collection of parentcraft texts. She identified a ‘part-time father/mother as the main parent’ as a single complementary dominant discourse, being two sides of the same coin, running in parallel. Within this overarching discourse, she identified three fatherhood sub-discourses: ‘father as a baby entertainer’, ‘father as a line manager’, and ‘father as mother’s bumbling assistant’. Lexico-grammatical exponents, like ‘play’ and ‘fun’ represent ‘father as a baby entertainer’. The ‘bumbling assistant’ discourse is recognized by the imperative verb ‘remember’ to remind the father of what to do. Likewise, ‘father as line manager’ discourse is realized by verbs like ‘ensure’, ‘stop’, ‘limit’, etc. positioning the father as the patriarchal head of the family; this discourse is sometimes accompanied by a similar parallel discourse called ‘mother as manager of the father’s role’.

In a further study of the representation of parenthood in written media magazines, Sunderland (2006)Sunderland, Jane 2000 “Baby Entertainer, Bumbling Assistant and Line Manager: Discourses of Fatherhood in Parentcraft Texts”. Discourse & Society 11 (2): 249–274. drew on CDA to find out to what extent the linguistic features of these magazines addressing father and/or mother represent or exclude either of them in parenting, and what kind(s) of parenting they promote (e.g., shared parenting, and/or ‘hands-on’ fatherhood). A variety of linguistic representations of fathers and gendered discourses were detected, such as material and mental processes and their related social actors signalled by pronouns and lexical items. However, some social actors were found to be excluded by being suppressed or backgrounded. The results of her study showed that fathers are neither directly addressed nor stereotypically represented. More importantly, Sunderland found that neither shared parenting nor fathers have been fully addressed in the articles analysed. Likewise, Cameron (2013)Cameron, Christina 2013 A Critical Discovery Analysis of Gendered Language in Online Parenting Education. MA Thesis. Halifax, Nova Scotia. showed that the greater number of American parenting websites address mothers, whereas the father’s role in parenting is almost absent. The author also noted that some articles suggest that mothers teach fathers how to express their feelings to their children. Such a finding agrees with Sunderland’s ‘mother as manager of the father’s role’.

Drawing on CDA, Lazar (2000)Lazar, Michelle 2000 “Gender, Discourse, and Semiotics: The Politics of Parenthood Representations”. Discourse & Society 11 (3): 373–400. identified two kinds of discourse reflecting gender relations in a national campaign in Singapore: egalitarian, and conservative gender relations. According to these discourses, each parent was represented in two different ways. In the egalitarian discourse, motherhood has dual participation in public and private spheres, having a successful career and being a good mother at the same time. That is, parenthood is presented as symmetrical between mothers and fathers, and men are seen in the domestic sphere as cooperative and sensitive emotional fathers when playing with their children. In contrast, the conservative discourse revealed gender asymmetry in the representation of the parents’ divergent roles and identities inside the house and in public and private spheres. Men are represented as the centre of the family, bringing income, being executor actors, whereas mothers are portrayed as the main caregiver, ‘drying children after bathing’, ‘cooking for the family’ and ‘taking care of the kids’ safety’. Such findings indicate that a mother’s career and her family are two conflictual things that subvert the findings of egalitarian discourse and agree with Sunderland’s (2000)Sunderland, Jane 2000 “Baby Entertainer, Bumbling Assistant and Line Manager: Discourses of Fatherhood in Parentcraft Texts”. Discourse & Society 11 (2): 249–274. ‘part-time father/mother as the main parent’ discourse.

Since the present study aims to investigate the representation of parents as social participants and their parenthood practices as social actions, it drew on Van Leeuwen’s (2008)Van Leeuwen, Theo 2008 Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. framework. Van Leeuwen’s notion of process and social participants is borrowed from Halliday’s (1994)Halliday, Michael. A. K. 1994 An Introduction to Functional Grammar, 2nd edition. London: Edward Arnold. experiential meta-function of language which is realized by the material, mental, verbal, and relational processes and the participants related to each process. His framework is also an extension of CDA for analysing social actors and social actions. CDA is used to reveal stated and hidden values, beliefs and perspectives that are not always stated explicitly in the text (Paltridge 2006Paltridge, Brian 2006 Discourse Analysis: An Introduction. London: Continuum.). Such a framework enables the researchers to figure out how gendered identities are being constructed through parenting discourses. Van Leeuwen (2008)Van Leeuwen, Theo 2008 Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. examines the allocation of participants’ roles in terms of ‘agent’ and ‘patient’ and in what social context they are represented. He bases his analysis on the assumption that meanings are related to culture more than to language as the latter only realizes the processes and the participants’ roles. Moreover, we found that it is necessary to use Sunderland’s (2000Sunderland, Jane 2000 “Baby Entertainer, Bumbling Assistant and Line Manager: Discourses of Fatherhood in Parentcraft Texts”. Discourse & Society 11 (2): 249–274. , 2006) studies, which follow Van Leeuwen’s model of analysis, as she examined the linguistic exponents in parenting texts realizing parents’ different roles. Accordingly, Sunderland identified parental social actors’ roles like ‘part-time father/mother as the main parent’ as a main dominant discourse and other three parallel sub-discourses: ‘father as a baby entertainer’, ‘father as a line manager’ and ‘father as mother’s bumbling assistant’.

3.Method and procedure of data analysis

To meet the purposes of the study, the data analysis was based on family life education articles selected from two Arabic and English parenting websites. The texts selected were limited to those representing the father and gender-neutral parenthood for the mere reason that the mother’s role is too obvious in the texts addressing her. A group of 40 articles were selected, 20 articles from the Arabic parenting advice website ʕa:ʔilati: “My Family”, and 20 from the English ‘Baby Centre’ website. These two websites are considered the highest visited by internet users. The former has 5,777,170 followers, whereas the latter has 2,633,031 followers. These two provide similar family life contents including free advice for parents. The Arabic website is active in the UAE and Lebanon; it is divided into sections according to topics: infants, parentcraft, pregnancy and health advice; each section includes a wide range of topics. BabyCenter (babycenter​.com) is an American website owned by Everyday Health Group and Everyday Health Media LLC in San Francisco, CA, USA. It is known as the ‘world’s number one digital parenting resource’, available in nine different languages. The website is divided into sections, including articles on childcare, parenthood and other topics.

Regarding the procedure of data analysis, we utilised CDA, as it reveals inequality, power domination and hidden underlying ideologies (van Dijk 2003Van Dijk, Teun 2003 “Critical Discourse Analysis”. In The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, edited by Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen, and Heidi Hamilton, 352–371. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers.). We have drawn on Van Leewuen’s (2008) analytical tools that work best for analysing the participants’ gender roles and practices. We analysed each individual text by identifying its genre and focus. Taking the clause as the basic unit of analysis, we analysed each clause to isolate the different types of processes and the social participants related to each process in order to identify the role of each parent in parenthood and to figure out the active and passive participants and their power relations in the social interaction. We identified the different types of address terms used to refer to each participant, and the processes related to their social roles and actions. We isolated the various parenting discourses that surfed in the Arabic and English texts to compare them and find out the ideologies promoted in these texts.

4.Data analysis

4.1Representing social actors and social actions in the English texts

This subsection presents the frequency of occurrence of the different social participants, ‘father’ and ‘mother’ or both, and the processes representing parenthood. The social participants are involved in social interactions, realized by the material, mental and verbal processes.

4.1.1Social actors in the English texts

Table 1 exhibits two types of address terms: lexical items and pronouns; they can be categorized into terms related to the mother, others that relate to the father, and some that are gender-neutral addressing both parents.

Table 1.Frequency of English address terms

Address terms	Mother			Father			Gender-neutral			Total
	No	%		No	%		No	%		No	%
lexical terms	14	1%		84	7%		74	6%		172	14%
Pronouns	58	5%		269	22%		729	59%		1056	86%
Total	78	6%		353	29%		803	65%		1228	100%

Table 1 demonstrates that the gender-neutral address terms addressing both parents in the English texts constitute 65%, in contrast to 29% and 6% addressing fathers and mothers, respectively. ‘Father’ as a social actor is represented with 7% by lexical items like father, dad, daddy and husband, while the lexical items mother, mom and mommy stand for ‘mother’. Gender-neutral terms are realized by lexical items like ‘parent(s)’. The pronouns utilized make up 86% of the total of English address terms. The gender-neutral pronouns constitute 59% of the total pronouns, whereas the frequencies of pronouns addressing fathers and mothers are 22% and 5%, respectively.

The following instances exemplify the lexical items used to represent the social participants:

(1)

“Many parents don’t have a choice; they need to work outside to support their families.”

(2)

“Most fathers take vacation time or sick days when their children are born.”

(3)

“Breastfeeding continues the exclusive relationship the mother and infant experienced during pregnancy.”

The following examples represent the pronouns used as social participants in the English data.

(4)

“When the baby is finished nursing so you can be the one to rock her back to sleep.”

(5)

“But you don’t have to back off just because she’s taken care of the baby’s food.”

To illustrate, the gender-neutral pronoun ‘you’ in Example (4) addresses no specific gender; this makes ‘mother and father’ equally addressed in this social practice in contrast to ‘baby’ as a goal, which behaves as a passive participant in this process. On the other hand, ‘mother’ in the second clause of Example (5) is represented as a social actor by the feminine singular pronoun ‘she’, who participates in the material process, ‘take care’, whereas ‘father’ as a social actor is referred to by the second person pronoun, ‘you’, in the first clause of the same sentence.

The text analysis revealed that ‘father’ has been represented as an active participant, having different roles. He takes parental leave to help his wife as in Example (2) and a caregiver, having the function of the actor of ‘to rock the baby back to sleep’ as is shown in 4. On the other hand, the mother is given the role of breastfeeding as in Example (3). Her role in this situation is dominant as she is the direct and active addressee due to her physical nature. Concerning the gender-neutral lexical items and pronouns related to them, mothers and fathers have equal roles, as the genderless lexical item ‘parent’ is used to address both in the context of working outside the house, as shown in Example (1).

4.1.2Social actions in the English texts

We found the following types of social processes: material, mental and verbal. As shown in Table 2, the frequency of English processes related to gender-neutral participants is the highest (68%) in comparison to those related to fathers (24%) and mothers (8%).

Table 2.Frequency of English processes

Processes	Mother			Father			Gender-neutral			Total
	No	%		No	%		No	%		No	%
Material	25	5%		80	16%		233	45%		338	66%
Mental	15	3%		29	6%		75	15%		119	23%
Verbal	1	0%		12	2%		42	8%		55	11%
Total	41	8%		121	24%		350	68%		512	100%

The material processes are those of doing and happening; they include action verbs such as ‘give’, ‘work’ and ‘play’. Table 2 illustrates that the material processes that relate to gender-neutral participants make up 45%, whereas the father’s material processes make up 16% and the mother is represented in 5% of the material processes. The following exemplify the material processes:

(6)

“Some parents are fortunate to be able to choose whether they stay at home with the kids or to work outside the home.”

(7)

“California was the first state to offer paid family leave laws. (If you work in that state you may be able to take up to six weeks at partial pay to care for your new baby).”

(8)

“Dads have a really important role to play in breastfeeding. Here are a few ways you can help; take on your partner’s chores and help out whenever you can. When she is breastfeeding bring her a pillow or a glass of water or offer to burp your baby when he’s done eating.”

(9)

“On nights when you don’t have to work the next day, have your partner wake you up when the baby is finished nursing so you can be the one to rock her back to sleep. Or take turns getting up for feedings.”

As shown in Table 2, the dominant discourse is that of ‘shared parenting’ which is exemplified in 6, ‘stay at home with the kids’, or ‘work outside house’, both of which reflect equal parenting opportunities. The processes related to fathers constitute 24%, most of which (16%) are material verbs like ‘help out’, ‘bring’, ‘burp’, ‘rock’ and ‘take on’ as in Examples (8) and (9). The actor of these processes is the father, whereas the goal is either the mother, who is not directly mentioned but referred to by the process of breastfeeding, or the baby, who is referred to in the context of processes like ‘burp’ or ‘rock’.

Mental processes, on the other hand, are reactions rather than actions; they carry with them “the emotions and attitudes that belong to these actions” (Van Leeuwen 2008Van Leeuwen, Theo 2008 Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. , 56). These verbs have two participants, senser and phenomenon. The following examples demonstrate this social process.

(10)

“Remember to ask for leave and getting approval early in the pregnancy.”

(11)

“This is true of a lot of dads I know. They enjoy the time spent playing with their children in the moment, while mom sits worrying in the background.”

(12)

“My wife really appreciates everything I do for them.”

As it is shown in Table 2, mental verbs have the percentage of 23% of the total processes, 15% of which relates to gender-neutral participants, whereas 6% and 3% are associated with fathers and mothers, respectively. In Example (10), the senser of the gender-neutral mental process, ‘remember’, is the implicit second person generic pronoun ‘you’, which refers to both parents. The mental verb ‘enjoy’ in Example (11) has two participants: ‘dads’ as a ‘senser’ and ‘their children’, the phenomenon. Instance 12 exemplifies the mother’s mental reaction, ‘appreciate’, to the phenomenon ‘everything the father does for the children’.

Processes related to verbal interactions constitute 11%, most of which (8%) are gender-neutral processes addressing both parents equally, as exemplified in the following:

(13)

“When your pre-schooler’s time out is over, talk about actions that put him there in the first place.”

(14)

“Nearly two-thirds of dads say they’re more involved in the physical aspects of caring for their children – changing diapers, making meals, giving baths – than their dads were.”

The data analysis revealed that the frequency of English gender-neutral shared parenting processes is the highest (68%) in comparison to the processes assigned to fathers and mothers individually (24% and 8%, respectively). This indicates that the discourse of shared parenting is actively drawn on in the English parenting texts. The English genderless lexical item ‘parent(s)’ is used in the context of working outside the house as shown in Example (6). This indicates that ‘mother’ and ‘father’ in the English texts have equal opportunities to work outside the house and support their families or to ‘stay at home with the kids’. What further supports the dominance of ‘shared parenting’ is the high frequency of material processes (45%) related to childcare such as ‘raise’, ‘nurture’, ‘feed’, ‘care’ and ‘take turns’; housework (e.g., ‘clean up’, ‘work’, ‘prepare’ and ‘cook’); or others associated with parental leave (e.g., ‘stay with the kids to take care of’ and ‘work outside house’, as in Examples (6) and (7)). Paternity leave discourse gives rise to the appearances of two other types of discourses: ‘the involved father’ and ‘mother working outside the house’. The idea of the former is inspired by the discourse of ‘the modern father’ (Stoppard 2007Stoppard, Miriam 2007 The New Baby Care Book: A Practical Guide to the First Three Years.‏ Dorling Kindersley (DK) Publishing.) who is encouraged to be a competent full-time parent following the mother’s steps. The English texts encourage fathers to be involved in childcare actions like ‘changing diapers’, ‘making meals’ and ‘giving baths’ since the ‘mother who works outside the house’ is compensated by the ‘involved father’ discourse that presents fathers as doers of mother’s actions, as in Example (14). Mothers, on the other hand, are represented as doing untraditional tasks, which were restricted to fathers such as working for money and having a career, as shown in Examples (1), (6) and (9). Such a tendency is in contrast with the traditional division of labour which presents the father as the financial supporter in contrast to “the naturalness of the practices associated with the ‘Mother as main parent’” (Sunderland 2006Sunderland, Jane 2006 “ ‘Parenting’ or ‘Mothering’? The Case of Modern Childcare Magazines”. Discourse & Society 17 (4): 503–528. , 524).

Our analysis has shown that ‘father’ has been represented not only as a financial supporter but also as an agent having another minor role in the context of the mother’s breastfeeding. His role is signalled by interactive processes like ‘help out’, ‘care’, ‘burp’ and ‘rock’, as shown in Examples (8) and (9). However, this partial role is sometimes refined by the ‘mother as the manager of the father’s actions’ as exemplified in (9), where the mother is responsible for the father’s actions related to the baby. Though this father’s role is partial, the mother ‘appreciates’ what the father does (see Example (12)); such appreciation indicates that the father seeks evaluation of his partial role. In a text entitled ‘Dads Today’, the author stated the top three things to be done by dads, one of which is cleaning the home (mopping, sweeping, tidying up). These things present fathers as doing the work of mothers and give them a degree of competency in contrast to Sunderland’s incompetent parent discourse, ‘father as a bumbling assistant’.

4.2Representation of social actors and social actions in the Arabic texts

This subsection presents the frequency of occurrence of the different social participants in the Arabic texts, and the different types of social processes the participants are involved in.

4.2.1Social actors in the Arabic texts

Table 3 shows that 44% of the address terms in the Arabic texts relates to ‘mother’, while 30% addresses ‘father’ and 26% represents gender-neutral terms addressing both parents.

Table 3.Frequency of Arabic address terms

Address terms	Mother			Father			Gender-neutral			Total
	No	%		No	%		No	%		No	%
Lexical items	31	4%		103	14%		63	8%		197	26%
Pronouns	292	40%		121	16%		137	18%		550	74%
Total	323	44%		224	30%		200	26%		747	100%

The lexical items addressing fathers are realized by ʔab ‘father’ or its plural ʔa:baa:ʔ ‘fathers’, whereas gender-neutrality is expressed by lexical items like ʔahl and wa:lidayin ‘parents’, and those related to mothers are signalled by ʔum ‘mother’ or its plural ʔumaha:t ‘mothers’, as exemplified in (15) and (16).

(15)

yalʕab-u al-ʔabu dawran ʔasa:siyyan fi: taʕli:m-i ʔaţfa:li-hi il-ʔinḑiba:ţ-i wa- lʔistiqla:liyyah

‘The father plays an important role in teaching his children discipline and independence.’

(16)

tasarufat-u al-ʔahli ʔama:m-a l-ʔaţfa:l-i tuţbaʕu ħaya:ta-hum.

‘Parents’ behaviour in front of their children affects their lives.’

As can be seen in the examples above, al-ʔab ‘the father’ and the gender-neutral participant al-ʔahl ‘parents’ are the social actors in Examples (15) and (16), respectively, whereas ʔaţfa:li-h ‘his children’ and al-ʔaţfa:l ‘the children’ are the goals, respectively, in the same examples.

Arabic pronouns, on the other hand, constitute 74% of the address terms used. The following examples illustrate pronouns as social participants in Arabic:

(17)

man qa:la ʔanna al-ʔaba la: yumkinu-hu ʔan yahttamma bihim wa- yamnaħahum ħana:na-hu wa- yuxaşişa waqtan liyalʕaba maʕahum.

‘Who said that the father can’t take care of them, give them attention and assign some of his time to play with them?’

(18)

ʕalim-a: ţifla-kuma: aş-şalata wa-ku:n-a: al-qudwata al-şa:liħata lah-u fayara:-kuma: tuşaliyy-a:n-i wa tumaʒidd-a:n-i l-xa:liq

‘Teach your child how to pray, be a good model to him so he sees you pray and praise the Creator.’

The father as a social actor is referred to in Example (17) by the third person singular masculine attached pronoun, -hu ‘he’, whereas the third person plural pronoun hum referring to children is the goal. In Example (18), the gender-neutral second person dual pronoun -a: represents both parents.

4.2.2Representing social action in the Arabic texts

Table 4 displays the frequency of processes that were used in the Arabic texts. The processes related to ‘mother’ constitute 47%; those related to the father are 28%, and the gender-neutral processes comprise 25%.

Table 4.Frequency of Arabic processes

Processes	Mother			Father			Gender-neutral			Total
	No	%		No	%		No	%		No	%
Material	109	36%		69	23%		53	17%		231	76%
Mental	27	9%		12	4%		12	4%		51	17%
Verbal	7	2%		4	1%		9	3%		20	7%
Total	143	47%		85	28%		74	25%		302	100%

Table 4 indicates that the processes related to ‘mother’ are the most frequent, constituting 47%. The following exemplify the material processes:

(19)

al-ʔumu tahtamu biʔiţʕa:m-i ţifli-ha as-şaɣi:r…, tasharu ʕalyyihi il-lya:li:

‘The mother takes care of feeding her baby…, and stays up the nights for him.’

(20)

ʔalmustaħsan ʔan tahtami:na da:iman bidirasat-i ţiflik-i.

‘You would better always take care of teaching your child.’

(21)

mina al-muhimi ʔan tusa:ʕid-i: ʃari:kak-i ʕala: ḑabţi ʔaʕ şa:bih-i: fi il-marati il-muqbilah.

‘You must help your partner to control his nerves the next time.’

(22)

ʔamma al-ʔabu faɣaliban ma: yufaḑilu ʔawla:dihi yaʃtari: lahum ma: yuri:du:n, yadʕamuhum fi il-ʕamal-i wa yuʃaʒiʕuhum ʕala at-taħali: biθiqah.

‘When it comes to the father, he often prefers children, he buys them what they want, encourages and supports them to work and have confidence.’

(23)

yaka:du yanħaşiru dawru al-ʔabi fi: dafʕi il-fawa:ti:r-i wa- taʔmi:ni il-madxu:li il-ma:diy

‘The father’s role can be restricted to paying bills and providing income for the family.’

(24)

yaqu:mu- zawʒuk-i bi-ʔxði il-ʔaţfa:li fi: nuzhah.

‘Your husband takes the children on a picnic.’

The material process exemplified in (19)–(21) reflect the different roles assigned to ‘mother’ in the Arabic texts. They include childcare realized by tahtam ‘takes care’, It̼ʕa:m ‘feed’, tusa:ʕidi: ‘help’, tashar ‘stay up’, and husband care signalled by ‘help your partner to control his nerves’. This is in addition to her responsibility about housework (e.g., cook, clean up, tidy, prepare). On the other hand, the processes related to fathers as social participants constitute 28%, most of which (23%) are material verbs like yaʃtari: ‘buy’, yadʕam ‘support’ and yuʃaʒiʕ ‘encourage’ as in Example (22); dafʕi il-fawa:ti:r ‘pay the bills’, taʔmi:ni il-madxu:l ‘provide income’ as in 23; and ʔaxða ‘takes’ as in (24). Some of these verbs are interactive like ‘play with children’. Gender-neutral participants make 17% of the total material processes. As shown in Example (18), verbs like tuşaliy-a:n ‘pray’ and ʕalim-a: ‘teach’ are used to express this social shared parenting process.

Mental processes, on the other hand, constitute 17%; those related to ‘mother’ are 9%, whereas father and gender-neutral participants’ processes constitute 8%, divided equally. The following are examples of this:

(25)

ʔar-raʒulu l-mutafahim-u huwa alað: yuqadiru zawʒata-hu: wa yatafahamu z̧uru:fahaa

‘The man who understands well is the one who appreciates his wife, and understands her conditions.’

(26)

likuli wa:lidayni namaţun xa:şun yattabiʕ-a:ni-hi fi: tarbiyati ʔaţfa:li-hima: wa yuʔmin- a:ni bi-faʕʕaliyyati-hi

‘Parents follow special methods to raise their children and they believe in their efficiency.’

Examples (25)–(26) illustrate gender-neutral mental processes like yuʔmin-a:ni ‘believe’, yatafaham ‘understand’ and yuqadir ‘appreciate’ related to fathers.

Regarding the verbal processes, they are infrequently used (7%). Gender-neutral participants are represented in 3% and the mother in 2%, whereas the father has 1%. The following are some examples.

(27)

taħadaθ-a: maʕa ʔţfa:li-kuma ʕani illahi wa al-di:ni wa ħubi il-ʔaxar.

‘Talk to your children about God, religion, and loving others.’

(28)

yumkinu lil-ʔabi ʔan yuxbira ʔibnata-hu qabla ʔan tanama qişatan

‘The father can tell his daughter a story before she goes to bed.’

Example (27) presents gender-neutral processes like taħdaθ-a: ‘talk’; the sayers are parents who are referred to by the dual gender-neutral pronoun –a:, whereas the receiver of the process is ʔaţfa:li-kuma: ‘your children’.

Even though none of the titles of the Arabic texts selected has any reference to mothers as social participants in childcare, the results of Arabic text analysis show a high discrepancy in frequency between the social processes representing mothers’ actions (47%) and fathers’ practices (28%), whereas the genderless participants’ processes constitute 25%. Such discrepancies in frequencies of the social practices reveal how motherhood and fatherhood are constructed differently in the Arabic texts.

The high frequency of processes related to ‘mother’ indicates that she is the most active social participant, who frequently has the agent’s role in parenting practice. It also indicates that she has been taken as a standard reference not only for childcare, but also for husband care and family care. She is also addressed as the manager of household affairs to the extent that she is primarily identified as ‘housewife’. Further, mother is presented as the primary caregiver who is expected to feed the baby and stay up the nights with him. These multiple social roles are expressed by linguistic signals like ‘care’ in contexts like ‘Takes care of feeding’ and ‘stays up the nights for him’ (Example (19)), and with regard to take care of her child’s teaching as in Example (20), “You better always take care of teaching your child”. In other words, the cornerstone of parenthood in the Arabic texts is the mother, who can be considered as ‘other-centeredness’.

A further role given to the mother is to please her husband and reduce his stress. Pleasure can be elicited by taking care of cooking as a good way to win her husband’s affections, following the Arabic saying, “The quickest way to a husband’s heart is through his stomach”, as indicated in one of the articles that advises mothers to please their husbands by “preparing his favourite dish as a surprise”. Likewise, she is also directed to alleviate her husband’s stress by prompts like “You must help your partner to control his nerves the next time” (see Example (21)). Such roles assigned to ‘mother’ give rise to a new type of discourse; that is the mother as ‘the manager of the father’s mood’. This stands in contrast with what is normally expected of the father who is supposed to support his wife by reducing her distress and increasing her mental health and general well-being (Bentenuto and Venuti 2019Bentenuto, Arianna, and Paola Venuti 2019 “From Supporting to Co-Parenting: The New Roles of Fathers”. Parenting: Science and Practice 19: 30–33. ). Playing multiple roles, including childcare, feeding, staying up the night for the children and managing the father’s mood and family give rise to a new discourse that can be called ‘mother as the manager of family life’, through which the mother helps and guides everyone in the home.

Regarding fathers’ roles, being a good father is almost associated with generating income. The father is the one who is supposed to pay for all the family necessities such as paying bills, providing family income, and buying children and the mother what they want (see Examples (22) and (23)). Thus, fathers find their identity in activities away from home and in ‘material security’ for the family but not in child care giving practices.

The Arabic dataset revealed that the fatherhood discourse running through the Arabic texts is less than the ‘part-time father’ parenting discourse discussed in Sunderland (2000)Sunderland, Jane 2000 “Baby Entertainer, Bumbling Assistant and Line Manager: Discourses of Fatherhood in Parentcraft Texts”. Discourse & Society 11 (2): 249–274. . Asking questions like “Who said that the father can’t take care of them, or give them attention…?” (Example (17)) presupposes that fatherhood and childcare are incompatibly matched. That is, such a question can only be asked based on the presupposition that it is problematic for fathers to take care of children. However, there are marginal roles assigned to fathers realized by the verb ‘help’. Such roles surfaced on the margins of childcare “…dealing with children’s problems”. Thus, it is apparent that the father’s involvement in childcare is covertly minimal.

Furthermore, the Arabic texts demonstrated that fathers could provide care in two ways, one of which is entertaining children outside home. This is signalled by material and transactive verbs like ‘play’ and ‘takes the children on a picnic’ (Example (24)) together with transactive verbal processes such as ‘telling bed-time stories’ in Example (28). In contrast, mothers have no energy left to do such a work because of the tedious childcare and housework they are engaged in. Fathers can also provide care by supporting and encouraging their children and teaching them independence, discipline and confidence (see Examples (15) and (22)). This in turn agrees with Brandth and Knvade’s (1998)Brandth, Berit, and Elin Kvande 1998 “Masculinity and Child Care: The Reconstruction of Fathering”. The Sociological Review 46 (2): 293–313. view that masculinity is associated with independence, as mothers tend to be too close to their children and worry much about them; this, in turn, could “affect the child’s ability to be independent” (303).

It was also found that shared parenting in the Arabic texts constituted 26%. It is signalled by lexical exponents like al-ʔahl ‘the parents’ and wa:lidajin ‘parents’, and pronouns relating to them. At first sight, the neutering in the use of such terms suggests symmetrical mutual sharing of social roles. However, considering our analysis, the apparent de-gendering continues to gloss over unequal sharing of roles as much as before, with the exception of intermittently mutual tasks that are irrelevant to childcare (e.g., “to talk to their children about ethics, religious issues, Allah and love for all”). They are admonished to teach them prayers and urged to play the role of a good model to be followed by their children, as it is explicitly stated in Example (18). What seems bizarre is that sometimes the apparent sharedness evinced in addressing both genders in the gender-neutral texts, immediately shifts to directly address mothers only, suppressing the father’s role in all situations as exemplified in the following instance:

(29)

ʒami:ʕuna: naʕlamu ʔanna aţifla yuħa:wilu: taqli:da taşarrufa:ti il-ʔahli ka:fatan. li ða:lika ʕalayki ʔann tantabihi: ʔila: taʕaţi:ki maʕa zawʒuki

‘We all know that a child tries to imitate all his parents’ actions and behaviour, so you have to be careful about the way you deal with your husband.’

In this example, the author starts addressing parents using the gender-neutral participant, parents. The anonymous reader expects that it is an invitation to view parenthood as being shared. However, the author immediately shifted to address mothers only, suppressing the father’s role. Such a radical suppression presumably suggests that the authors of these articles presuppose that the only possible reader for these texts is the mother given that motherhood is a default job in the Arab world.

5.Discussion

The analysis of the two sets of data revealed two opposing types of discourse operating in the domain of parenthood, each of which regulated gender relations differently. The former was a parenting discourse encouraging gender equity, evident in the English texts; it almost presents gender equality not only in parenthood but also in other aspects of life within the private and public spheres. The Arabic texts, on the other hand, reflected a conservative discourse, which specified the traditional roles and responsibilities to be fulfilled by each gender. The latter portraits men as money providers who have career commitments outside the house but do nothing for the essentials of childcare as such a role is restricted to mothers in the home front.

It can be argued that these parenting discourses are mainly influenced by the socio-cultural and ideological aspects of each society. The English texts promote a kind of egalitarian parenting discourse that is concerned with gender parity in public and private spheres. This shared parenting type is evident in 68% of these texts and further emphasized by the gender-neutral terms representing mother and father symmetrically and equally, encouraging a non-traditional division of labour. Disrupting traditional gender stereotypes, mothers in the English texts have a strong presence in the workplace, which has been traditionally reserved for men, and men, on the other hand, are seen in private spheres, doing household tasks and children rearing, which have been traditionally reserved for women. Marsiglio (1995)Marsiglio, William 1995 “Fathers’ Diverse Life Course Patterns and Roles: Theory and Social Interventions”. In Research on Men and Masculinities Series: Fatherhood: Contemporary Theory, Research, and Social Policy, edited by William Marsiglio, 78–101. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, Inc. and Deinhart (1998) point out that marriage and divorce, patterns of employment and work hours have given rise to a change of parenting responsibilities. Authors of the English texts try to respond to such a change by assigning additional roles for the father in order for him to be more involved in parenting and encouraging him to take paternity leaves to look after the new child if his/her mother has a career outside home.

Although most of the English texts encourage a symmetrical relationship between both parents and advocate a fair division of paid labour, such views do not represent all English societies and cultures’ perspectives. For example, one of the texts analysed encourages mothers to stay at home if the family does not need the mother’s salary:

Such a statement invites both parents to look at parental roles as being compatible rather than equally divided between them. Likewise, there are other western conservative movements that have a similar discourse that opposes the one advocated in the English texts. For example, Spiteri and Fitzjerald (2016)Spiteri, Lachlan and Isobella Fitzjerald 2016 The Importance, Structure and Role of Family in Amish Culture. Lachlan Spiteri. point out that parents in Amish society in the United States have distinct traditional responsibilities and roles in the family. The man is considered the head of the family and the main breadwinner. Amish mothers, in contrast, have different roles to fulfil as well. They are the household managers, responsible for raising the children and cooking their food.

Unlike the English texts analysed, the Arabic ones present a different picture of mothers and fathers’ roles. They portray women in the domain of household, childcare, and husband-concern spheres. A woman’s success as a mother is measured in relation to how much she sacrifices or her self-effacement for the sake of family members’ pleasure. The father, on the other hand, is portrayed in a very traditional image, which has nothing to do with the essentials of childcare; his role is limited to generating income and entertaining children. This, in turn, agrees with Such (2006)Such, Elizabeth 2006 “Leisure and Fatherhood in Dual-Earner Families”. Leisure Studies 25 (2): 185–99. , who points out that the man’s role is represented in spending time and having fun with his family, whereas the mother’s part is to spend her time with them to respond to their needs. The Arabic texts also demonstrate that the father does not have a role to play after the birth of a new infant. What supports this finding is the absence of linguistic signals that relate to ‘paternity leave’ and to ‘the mother who works outside the house’ in Arabic discourse in contrast to the English texts, which promote seeing mothers in paid labour force contexts. In short, the Arabic texts encourage the idea of the intensive mother, who is stereotyped as the selfless parent who makes sacrifices for the life aspects of the child, on the one hand, and as a default carer for the family and household labour, on the other. The Arabic texts also stereotype fathers as significantly not involved in childcare and household domestic affairs, but only in responsibilities outside the home.

Such a prevalent traditional discourse of parenting overwhelmed by gender stereotypical roles assigned to mothers and fathers in the Arabic texts can be attributed to the social construction of the Arab family and socio-cultural and religious traditions since culture has a major role in structuring parenting practices and can transmit guidelines about parenting (Dwairy and Sakleh 2006Dwairy, Marwan, and Inaya Sakleh 2006 “Parenting Styles in Arab Societies”. Journal of Cross-cultural Psychology 37 (3): 1–18. ). The Arab family, in general, is characterized by being collective and paternalistic, whereby preference is given to males (Abu-Baker 2005Abu-Baker, Khawla 2005 “The Impact of Social Values on the Psychology of Gender among Arab Couples: A View from Psychotherapy”. Israel Journal of Psychiatry and Related Studies 42 (2): 106–115.; Al-Ali 2006; Joseph 2000Joseph, Suad 2000 Gender and Citizenship in the Middle East. New York: Syracuse University.), whereas women in religious traditions are regarded as subservient to men (Mahmood 2012Mahmood, Saba 2012 “Sectarian Conflict and Family Law in Contemporary Egypt”. American Ethnologist 40 (1): 54–62. ). Consequently, man is mostly presented in the Arabic text as the head of the family who is accorded a primary status in the struggle outside the house domains to safeguard his family and secure its living, whereas he plays a marginal role with respect to childcare. In contrast, the wife does almost everything related to this role herself. The optimal mother, according to Arab traditions, is characterised by closed involvement, willingness and devotion to make sacrifices for childcare and her husband’s comfort. At the same time, she should suppress her pain and problems caused by her husband following the Arabic folk saying, “women’s mouths are for eating but not for talking”, as her success is measured by her ability to cope with these problems. She is also encouraged to endear herself to her husband and be obedient to him.

However, this does not mean that the traditional conservative discourse is the absolute homogeneous ideology dominant in Arab culture, or that the egalitarian discourse is the only ideology prevalent among Western culture, but there are other competing discourses in each individual culture. Unlike the traditional discourse advocated in the Arabic texts, some Arab scholars (e.g., Abu-Baker 2005Abu-Baker, Khawla 2005 “The Impact of Social Values on the Psychology of Gender among Arab Couples: A View from Psychotherapy”. Israel Journal of Psychiatry and Related Studies 42 (2): 106–115.; Al-Kaa’ki 2000Al-Kaa’ki, Nahla 2000 “ khitaan al?inaah [Circumcision of Females]. Al-Sehah Al-Nafsiyah” 20: 17–18.; Mahmood 2012Mahmood, Saba 2012 “Sectarian Conflict and Family Law in Contemporary Egypt”. American Ethnologist 40 (1): 54–62. ) have opposing views and promote gender equality in most aspects of life within the private and public spheres and consider women as victims of socio-cultural traditions. For example, Al-Kaa’ki (2000)Al-Kaa’ki, Nahla 2000 “ khitaan al?inaah [Circumcision of Females]. Al-Sehah Al-Nafsiyah” 20: 17–18. blames Arab women who tend to identify with the traditional norms even though they are sometimes the victims of some of these norms. Abu-Baker (2005)Abu-Baker, Khawla 2005 “The Impact of Social Values on the Psychology of Gender among Arab Couples: A View from Psychotherapy”. Israel Journal of Psychiatry and Related Studies 42 (2): 106–115. questions Arab inconsistent calls for equality between men and women indicating that although there have been calls for equality in the Arab world after Arab women were given the opportunity to pursue higher education and work to serve their family, there have been no parallel calls for men, neither for sharing in the responsibility for raising children nor for changing their values in the division of labour. She criticised Arab sociocultural traditions that warn women not to emphasize their professional and financial achievements for fear of threatening their husbands’ face and controlling them. Likewise, some Muslim scholars like Al-Ghazali (2005)Al-Ghazali, Mohammed 2005 Al-Haq Al-Murr, Part 1, 7th edition. Cairo: Dar Nahdhat. oppose those who think that women’s job is to cook, respond to the husband’s lust and fatten the children. Ibn Al-Qayyim (2007Ibn Al-Qayyim 2007 Islam web. Fatwa no. 86406. https://​www​.islamweb​.net​/en/. Retrieved in October 2020.) also stated that it is not compulsory for the wife to do the housework, but if she does such an act, it is rather an act of noble manners.

Regarding the role of religious traditions, we need to call upon the pre-Islamic historical context to explain some ideologies since “all social practices are tied to specific historical contexts and are the means by which existing social relations are reproduced or contested” (Janks 1997Janks, Hilary 1997 “Critical Discourse Analysis as a Research Tool”. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural politics of Education 18 (3): 329–42., 329). Before the coming of Islam, Arab males used to oppress women and despise femininity; women were not allowed to work outside and move in public alone due to the false conception that anything related to the woman is ‘awrah ‘bare and exposed’. This attitude has its roots in the prominent worry among Arabs that if a woman is not supervised and is working independently of the males, she is open to an approach by other men (Al-Ali 2006Al-Ali, Mohammed 2006 “Religious Affiliations and Masculine Power in Jordanian Wedding Invitation Genre”. Discourse and Society 17 (6): 691–714. ). Unfortunately, some of these practices and conceptions continued after Islam to the extent that some Arabs have come to regard them as native to Islamic traditions although they bear no relation to Islam because they are incompatible with the Quranic and Prophetic teachings, which advocate that what forms family life is mutual respect and understanding and urge men to be kind to their wives in many verses, like “Consort with them in kindness” (The Holy Qur’an, iv: verse 19). Likewise, the Prophetic sayings have laid down sound standards to judge a man (e.g., “Best amongst you is he who is good to his wife”). Moreover, Islam has given women the right to work outside in institutional services like nursing, female education, medical treatment, etc.

Some other Arab scholars think that Islam itself has accorded woman a secondary status and has not given her equal rights in comparison to men. For example, Asad (2003)Asad, Talal 2003 Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press. and Mahmood (2012)Mahmood, Saba 2012 “Sectarian Conflict and Family Law in Contemporary Egypt”. American Ethnologist 40 (1): 54–62. argue that Islamic religious traditions have given authority to men over women, constrained people’s freedom and accorded a secondary status to women. Asad (2003)Asad, Talal 2003 Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press. thinks that religious beliefs are founded on constraints; this, in turn, has posed danger to the freedom of oneself and others. Mahmood (2012)Mahmood, Saba 2012 “Sectarian Conflict and Family Law in Contemporary Egypt”. American Ethnologist 40 (1): 54–62. thinks that Muslim family law is unfair to women in matters like divorce and child custody and considers woman as subservient to man. She assumes that if these laws were secularized, they would yield greater gender equality. However, there is another opposing view among other Arab and Muslim intellectuals (e.g., Qutub 2006Qutb, Muhammad 2006 Islam the Misunderstood Religion. English edition 2 . Riyadh: IIFSO.) who maintain that Islam endorses the equity of rights between men and women and treats the two sexes as equal component parts of humanity who are entitled to equal rights although it differentiates between them regarding their distinct functions in life, such as woman’s specialized functions of conceiving and nurturing. This conception of equal rights does not mean similar rights. Rather, there is a kind of labour division and equity in roles and obligations between men and women toward family and society in Islam which eventually ends up with equal rights.

6.Conclusion

As stated earlier, the aim of this study was to investigate the representation of fatherhood in Arabic and English articles devoted to parental childcare. The analysis has identified two major opposing types of discourse, the egalitarian and traditional discourses, and a minor intermediate part-time one, each of which represents the contribution of fathers and mothers in the domain of parenthood but regulates gender practices differently. The first presents the mother and father equally in almost all aspects of family life except the function of breastfeeding where the mother is privileged. The traditional parenthood discourse amounts to a kind of patriarchal division of labour placing the father in only one position which is that of the family supporter, while the mother is responsible for the house holding and childcare. The minor discourse represents the father with some partial roles to play such as ‘father as the baby entertainer’. However, the father’s role in the Arabic texts is not that significant to the extent that it falls short of achieving Sunderland’s (2000)Sunderland, Jane 2000 “Baby Entertainer, Bumbling Assistant and Line Manager: Discourses of Fatherhood in Parentcraft Texts”. Discourse & Society 11 (2): 249–274. ‘the part-time father/mother as the main parent’ discourse. In contrast, the writers of the English texts promote an almost equal shared parenting discourse that has been extended beyond Sunderland’s father discourses’ boundaries promoted two decades ago.

These parenting practices are constructed unequally according to different cultural settings (Messner 1993Messner, Michael 1993 “ ‘Changing Men’ and Feminist Politics in the United States”. Theory and Society 22(5): 723–737. ; Segal 1990Segal, Lynne 1990 Slow Motion: Changing Masculinities, Changing Men. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.) as the roles given to either parent are influenced by the ideology of that culture (Short 2005Short, Patricia 2005 “Conclusion: Reflections on Motherhood.” In Motherhood: Power and Oppression, edited by Andrea O’Reilly, Mary Porter, and Patricia Short, 285–94. Toronto: Women’s Press.). The English articles promote a parenting discourse encouraging gender equity, whereas the Arabic texts have reflected a conservative discourse overwhelmed by gender stereotypical roles that can be attributed to the social construction of Arab families and their socio-cultural affiliations. According to Sunderland (2006)Sunderland, Jane 2006 “ ‘Parenting’ or ‘Mothering’? The Case of Modern Childcare Magazines”. Discourse & Society 17 (4): 503–528. and Althusser (1984)Althusser, Louis 1984 Essays on Intertextuality. London: Verso., socio-cultural ideologies have given rise to the ‘naturalness’ or ‘obviousness’ of the parental practices and roles associated with each gender in various cultures. However, these conclusions about socio-cultural parent practices can be valid for the websites analysed but cannot be generalized for the entire Arab or English culture. That is because there is no absolute homogeneous ideological discourse dominant in each culture, but there are competing discourses running in each individual culture.

Based on the data analysed, it is recommended that the authors of the Arabic texts produce a more balanced discourse by avoiding gender stereotypes and inequalities so that more individuals can be reached and benefit from parenting websites. The results of this study can benefit family life educators and childrearing professionals in providing content that concerns both parents. Furthermore, parents who seek childcare information should read the content of these websites critically in order to be aware of the gender roles provided in parenting education texts (Cameron 2013Cameron, Christina 2013 A Critical Discovery Analysis of Gendered Language in Online Parenting Education. MA Thesis. Halifax, Nova Scotia.), to identify inequalities and to be liberated from gender oppressive information (Brookfield 2005Brookfield, Stephen 2005 The Power of Critical Theory: Liberating Adult Learning and Teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.).