Too old to parent? Discursive representations of late parenting in the British press

Abstract

Focusing on a corpus of 90 UK newspaper articles (2008–2013) on late parenting (40+), this study examines the framing via different dimensions of age in the press coverage of such parents and parenting. Five main frames emerged: social change, personal frame, risks of late parenting, older continued parenting and reproductive technology–enabled parenting. The relationship of these framings to the discursive construction of ageing and late parenting reveals varying positionings of older parents, which tend to reinforce, but also at times challenge, conventional expectations of ‘age-appropriate’ timing of reproduction, especially regarding women. Media framing analysis, critical discourse analysis and a social constructionist orientation to age(ing) and lifespan identity are drawn on in the analysis. The study also highlights how framing, as a concept from communication theory, together with different perspectives on ageing and different dimensions of age, can complement discourse analysis of news texts.