Tag Archives: parenting

Babies

Title: Babies

Date: 2010

Media type: Documentary

Category: Families in Society

Keywords: Parenting, Human Growth and Development, Families in Society, Cultural Influences, Infant Development

Rating: PG

Audience(s): College Age, Adults, Parents, Couples, Families

Language: Little verbal dialogue

Film/Episode Summary: This documentary/film follows four children, each from different countries (Namibia, Japan, Mongolia, and the USA), from birth through the first year of life. With the guidance of a facilitator and/or written prompts to consider while viewing, it helps to illustrate the following concepts that are commonly discussed in family science: cultural and other environmental influences; diversity within diversity (every child in these specific countries will not be raised in exactly the same way); universal aspects of development; context-specific aspects of development; the multiple systems of the bioecological model; personal biases related to human development, parenting, and other family dynamics; operant learning; and infant social, cognitive, and physical development. The entire film allows for a discussion of many topics, but many clips are also helpful for illustrating specific concepts during a lecture.

Places to view: focusfeatures.com/babies

Contributor: Erica Jordan

This Is Us

Title: This Is Us

Date: 2016

Media type: Television

Format: Episode

Rating: PG – Parental Guidance Suggested

Audience(s): College Age, Adults, Parents, Couples, Families

Language: English

Source: Hulu, NBC

Film/Episode Summary: An American TV Series that is aired weekly on NBC, characters in a family find themselves venturing through experiences from childhood to adulthood, all the while trying to define what “family” truly means.

Comments or Recommendations for Teaching: The show introduces a family in the mid seventies, a white American couple who decided to start a family and ended up pregnant with triplets. Unfortunately, the couple lost one of the babies during the delivery. When the father was looking over the two who were healthy, he saw that one African American baby was next to them, and asked who he might be. When the father found out he was just dropped at the hospital, abandoned by his biological father, he took matters into his own hands and adopted the child as their “third.” When the family took the three newborns home, they decided to call them “The Big Three” one of the first types of dynamics within the family that the parents subconsciously implemented.

Source: Hulu, NBC

Contributor: Lillian Wiener

This is Us

Title: This is Us

Date: 2016

Media type: Television

Format: Episode

TV Season-Episode: Season, Episode 1-4

Rating: PG 13 – Parents Strongly Cautioned

Audience(s): High School Age, College Age, Adults, Parents, Couples, Families

Language: English

Film/Episode Summary: This television show follow the lives of a couple, Rebecca and Jack, and their three children. Two of them, Kevin and Kate, are twins. They were triplets but one died in child birth. The third sibling, Kyle but later Randall, was adopted and is a child of color. We see how Rebecca and Jack raise the children and who they become as a result. The series shows us flashbacks of the past and tells the story in the present to have a better understanding of the family.

Comments or Recommendations for Teaching: I suggest discussion questions related to adopting a child of color, raising more than one child together, family communication, and how death of a family member impacts the family.

Places to view: Vudu, Hulu

Contributor: Linda Thao