Vol. 2 No. 3

Research Articles

From “Growth” to “Healing”: Emotional Communication Strategies in Dad in Charge (Baba dangjia) Season 5

Published 2026-09-30

  • Jiaqi Guo

Jiaqi Guo
Tianjin Normal University image/svg+xml

Abstract

In 2026, Mango TV aired the fifth season of Dad in Charge under the theme “Dad in Charge: Give Yourself a Hug.” While continuing the narrative of men’s growth through childrearing, the season shifts the focus of emotional communication from validating fathers’ parenting competence toward accepting parental exhaustion and imperfection, marking a turn from a growth narrative to a healing narrative. Taking the documentary footage, observation-studio segments, and danmu comments concerning the season’s four families as its objects of analysis, this study examines the narrative configuration and communication mechanisms underlying this shift. It finds that, through differentiated family samples—dual-income households, a large extended family, and a cross-cultural sojourning family—the program offers viewers four affective positions: guilt, uplift, clumsiness, and ease. Through affective triggering in the documentary footage, mirroring guidance in the observation studio, and social diffusion via danmu comments, the program completes a communication chain that runs from individual emotion to public discussion. The healing turn responds to the emotional needs of childbearing-age families in a low-fertility context and performs a function of sociocultural mediation; media consolation, however, cannot substitute for resolving structural difficulties in childrearing, and the healing narrative also risks the superficialization of emotion.

Keywords

Observational reality show, Parent–child variety show, Emotional communication, Healing narrative, Empathy

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