• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.18 no.8
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• pp.262-271
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to identify the aspect of the single-parent family discourse in the TV documentary. Considering the fact that the normal family myth shows limitations in reality, it is necessary to expand the single-parent family research based on various analysis subjects. For this purpose, the study conducted a narrative analysis of KBS1's documentary 'Gong-gam' (2015), which deals with single daddy and single mom's stories at the same time. Single daddy and single mom are commonly described as overcoming the 'deprived situation'. However, asymmetric description was outstanding in that single daddy is depicted as performing the role of mother as well whereas the single mom appears to be unable to perform even the mother's role. Also, the narrative in the documentary compares broken family with normal family and reproduces the fixed sex role, which considers the problem an individual area. Such description can be seen as a process of persuading them into a "modified normal family myth". However, as the fundamental problem is the absence of new discourse, the role of the media to reproduce and expand the conflicting family discourses will be important.