was originally reported by Chabeli Carrazana of . .

Vicki Shabo had spent more than a decade advocating for a federal paid parental leave in the only rich country that doesn’t have it. Then in 2021, just when it seemed like it might happen, lawmakers and sent it tumbling back down the list of priorities.

Shabo wracked her brain: Why was this issue that continuously discarded as a nice-to-have and not a need? Advocates had tried so many strategies to help lawmakers understand, but there was one, she realized, that hadn’t yet been tapped.

Politicians kept treating paid leave and other care policies as expendable because our culture treated them like that. And what are some of the best tools to change cultural attitudes? TV and film.

“As a person who grew up in Los Angeles and has always sort of felt the parasocial engagement with favorite television characters and television shows, I was fascinated by the ways in which other issues and causes had used on-screen storytelling to move forward changes in culture and in policy,” Shabo said.

The concept of a “designated driver,” for example, was popularized through American TV shows and films in the late 1980s in an effort to reduce alcohol-induced accidents. Like with paid leave, the policy effort had stalled, so advocates worked to get messages into that featured characters abstaining from drinking if they were driving. From 1988 to 1992, the number of deaths tied to alcohol-related car accidents dropped 25 percent thanks to stricter laws and enforcement, but also a marked that was furthered by on-screen representation.

There was also a meteoric rise in representation of LGBTQ+ characters on screens in the years leading to 2015, when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage equality. A found that 34 percent of adults who had recently shifted their views on LGBTQ+ people said they viewed them more favorably because of characters they watched on TV. Shows like “Modern Family,” “Will & Grace” and “Glee” all played a meaningful role in , . By 2015, Bob Greenblatt, the chairman of NBC Entertainment, said the TV industry “ in advancing the conversation” on LGBTQ+ rights.

That idea gripped Shabo, who realized depictions of caregiving, gender and family dynamics on screens were often still playing on old tropes like the . Data from the Geena Davis Institute, which analyzes gender representation in media, shows that men are still depicted as the breadwinner on screen when in real life it’s more evenly split. Women are often shown either at home or at work but . Child care is rarely mentioned.

Helping viewers see that issues related to work, family and care are not theirs alone to bear, but that other families are dealing with them, too, and systemic support can also help could lay the groundwork for policy shifts, Shabo said. Changing how the public thinks about solutions could be what pushes policymakers to place issues like parental leave higher on the priority list.

“I just thought about the ways in which television and film are representing people’s lives as it relates to work and family obligations, but rarely doing so in a way that reveals the structural components of the individual struggles that people are facing, and often tends to invisibilize and kind of keep private — in the way that people do — challenges with work and family,” she said.

So in 2022, she started to build out , her entertainment initiative with the Washington, D.C.-based progressive think tank New America, to provide research, resources and tip sheets to writers, producers and other creatives about how and why they should shift the caregiving and gender narratives they bring to the screen. The initiative’s newsletter reaches more than 400 creatives, executives, media researchers and others, and Shabo regularly presents her research to Hollywood creatives at public speaking events.

by the initiative shows that 92 percent of viewers say realistic work, family and caregiving themes are important to see on screen, and 65 percent would be more likely to subscribe or keep subscribing to a streaming service that carries programming that shows authentic care and family stories.

“There’s a business case, a creative case and a social impact case to make these stories more visible,” Shabo said.

But moving an entire industry on an issue that lawmakers are still grappling with is a challenge, and an even bigger one at a time of political division. The right has more vocally expressed views on caregiving in recent years, from Vice President JD Vance advocating for to taking over Instagram feeds. Finding child care, taking parental leave or figuring out elder care for an aging family member are viewed by many conservatives as private family problems.

Writers and experts told The 19th that in this political climate studios are nervous about making content the Trump administration may disagree with. And even though Hollywood is largely liberal, executives are risk adverse and less likely to support projects that center authentic gender portrayals. A show like “Jack Ryan,” about a CIA analyst, has a better chance of getting made than a show about women’s health care.

“There is this perception that audiences just want pure entertainment and there are tried and true formulas,” Shabo said.

Kirsten Schaffer, the CEO of Women in Film, an advocacy organization fighting for gender parity in film and television, said there is “definitely” a contraction taking place both in terms of the kinds of stories told and gender representation in the industry because of the administration’s stance on issues related to gender and diversity, equity and inclusion.

“In times of abundance there is more getting made and more openmindedness. In times of scaling back everybody is more risk adverse,” Schaffer said. “Now women in the industry will say to me, ‘That executive who was so committed to having 50 percent women on every director, writer list that they sent out are now relieved that they don’t have to do that anymore.’”

Sasha Stewart, a writer on “Dying for Sex,” a limited series about a woman with Stage IV breast cancer who leaves her husband to explore her sexuality, said she and writer Keisha Zollar initially tried to sell a show about women’s health care that would focus on issues including reproductive care and menopause in a more documentary style. It ultimately was not greenlit.

“It was mostly that all the female execs loved it and then they had to go pitch it to their male bosses,” Stewart said.

“Dying for Sex,” she said, “was packaged in this super marketable sex adventure” and was the show that execs backed. But Stewart said the team worked hard to pull from personal caregiving experiences to build out the story, including talking to oncologists and patient advocates. One advocate they consulted even played a nurse on the show. Stewart, a cancer survivor, leaned on her own experience and that of her husband, who was her primary caregiver.

The story follows protagonist Molly on her journey, but flips some traditional scripts to also focus on her best friend Nikki, who steps in to be her primary caretaker. In the third episode, Nikki is fired from an acting job due to the demands of navigating health insurance, appointments and providing care for Molly.

The writers room for “Dying for Sex” was made up of six women, one nonbinary person and one man, plus two women showrunners. Because so much of the cast and crew were also mothers, the team worked hours that allowed everyone to get home to their families, Stewart said. All of those elements mattered in what ultimately made it on the screen.

“I would love it if somebody in Congress watched the show, or any state or local government,” Steward said. “Maybe more people would try to pass paid family medical leave and other important issues.”

But “Dying for Sex” was the exception. For most writers, Stewart said, the goal is to get on whatever job they can, and then if it’s possible they may try to put caregiving storylines in.

The industry has long been unsustainable for women, women of color and caregivers, an issue that took center stage during the 2023 when creatives walked out of their jobs in response to growing disparities in the industry. Streaming has reshaped TV, especially, leading to smaller writers’ rooms, more limited opportunities and dwindling pay and benefits that have made it more difficult for writers to stay in the business.

As more diverse writers are shut out, it becomes harder for authentic stories about care, gender and family to make it on to screens. Writers of color and women are on TV and film sets. Only about 28 percent of showrunners were women in 2024 and just 8 percent were women of color, the lowest share of women in five years according to . And according to the Writers Guild of America’s , the share of women screenwriters dropped from 45 percent to 33 percent in just one year, from 2023 to 2024.

On screens, some caregiving storylines have cut through, both on streaming and network television. HBO’s medical drama “The Pitt” delves into the often invisible challenges family caregivers face around end-of-life care. On ABC’s “High Potential,” the protagonist is a single mother of three who, in the show’s pilot, negotiates a job contract to ensure it includes child care for her kids.

“Do you have any idea how expensive child care is these days?” she says.

In film, too, one of the year’s big superhero epics, “Fantastic Four: First Steps,” was at its core a that centered not Mr. Fantastic, but Sue Storm, who early in the movie donned a maternity spacesuit without anyone fussing over her or asking her to rest.

Care is on screens more than we realize, it just isn’t often directly addressed, said Zollar, who was also a writer on “Dying for Sex.”

There are still “a lot of people who just aren’t thinking about it, who it’s more out of sight out of mind and it’s not centered in how they build stories,” she said. But more directly referencing issues of family and gender on TV and film can shape attitudes, including those of legislators — the majority of whom are older men — who may not be thinking about topics like paid leave and child care.

“Beacuse we don’t label it or we don’t remind [viewers] that it is an essential part of the story, we can forget its existing in stories. We are not seeing how essential it is to the story itself,” Zollar said.

In Shabo’s work talking to writers about the ways in which they can , she said she’s found that many of them frame their work as thinking about their characters rather than thinking about issues. Luckily, “our set of things we want to see on screen are well positioned because they are so human and personal, and it’s not a stretch to get a story line of somebody trying to navigate work and family,” she said.

It’s medical shows that acknowledge that patients can be workers, too — are they missing work and need leave? It’s workplace shows that don’t shy away from the realities of biases that affect wages and conditions. It’s pregnant characters or parents who wrestle with securing child care to work, men also taking leave and parents who name the caregiving solutions they need.

In Shabo’s view, care and gender issues aren’t “the broccoli to hide” in shows and films. Instead, her research is helping to make the case that “this is actually the meal that audiences want to see.”

That’s what grabbed Jaison Noralez when he visited the downtown high school last year. A sophomore this fall at Roybal’s celebrity-backed Film and Television Production Magnet program, he’s training to become part of the next generation of behind-the-scenes movie professionals: sound and lighting technicians, make-up artists and other production staff who never appear in front of a camera.

On a recent Wednesday, he and classmate Aiyanna Randolph worked on a concept for a post-apocalyptic science fiction feature set in the year 2053.

“It’s not writing a script. We’re designing the set, make-up, hair and costumes,” he said about their assignment in Brittany Hilgers’s first period film production class. “She wants us to understand how those aspects could affect the movie. If you’re in a horror movie, you wouldn’t wear a bright dress or something. That wouldn’t match up.”

Launched last fall, the program opened with the fanfare of a blockbuster premiere, with Los Angeles Unified Superintendent Alberto Carvalho joining actors George Clooney, Don Cheadle and Mindy Kaling. Studios, networks and streaming services like Amazon and Disney have put up $4 million to launch the program, but leaders know that to keep it going, they’ll need sustainable public funding.

The goal is to give Black, Hispanic and Asian students who might lack the right connections to break into Hollywood a pathway into good-paying jobs in the industry and make them “part of the machinery of storytelling,” said Bryan Lourd, Clooney’s agent and an executive at Creative Artists Agency. 

Traditionally, in entertainment, “it’s who you know and who … gives you just enough of a vocabulary to get into it,” said Lourd, a member of the magnet program’s advisory board. “George called me and said, ‘Shouldn’t we do something?’ ”

Before he resigned in 2021, then-L.A. Superintendent Austin Beutner connected them with Roybal Principal Blanca Cruz and her staff. At the time, the school had a fledgling music and film production magnet program, but lacked resources to give students real-world experience.

“We wanted to do something that wasn’t available in the immediate area,” Cruz said, “We knew nothing about the industry.”

But now she exposes students to those who do. During Hilgers’s first period class, Cruz popped in to announce that the following week, students would spend the day at the Universal Studios Hollywood backlot and tour the local NBC affiliate.

“You can see what behind the scenes of a broadcast looks like,” she said.

The school’s faculty includes teachers with strong industry credentials. Hilgers is a former production assistant and screenwriter whose resume includes movies like “Jerry McGuire” and seven seasons of the comedy-crime drama “Psych.”

In her lesson for the day, she told students they could make a diorama, digital presentation or moodboard — a poster that displays the setting and feel of a film — to display their concepts for a story set after a catastrophe wipes out most of civilization. She offered an example of a moodboard from the Netflix period drama , a collage with photos of furniture and clothing styles typical of the early 1800s.

“This designer probably researched that time frame quite thoroughly,” she told them.

This year, students made fake movie trailers and wrote, produced, filmed and edited a horror adaptation of “The Wizard of Oz.” In the process, they learned technical skills such as cinematography and where to position a boom mic to pick up voices.

Next year, the school will add a studio, courtesy of , an editing software company. Post-production is one of three concentrations students can pick for 11th and 12th grade, along with technical and craft areas.

The school will match students with mentors in the industry and eventually develop an apprenticeship program to give them early experience in their chosen field. The goal, said Deborah Marcus, who manages education efforts at Creative Artists, is for graduates to not only land their first job on a crew, but their second and third as well. 

Aiyanna applied for the program after her mother saw an article about it.

“She was like … ‘I’m gonna sign you up right now.’ I guess she wanted me to have something going for me,” she said. “The people who run it, like the actors Mindy Kaling and George Clooney, those are like big people.”

‘A lot of hard work’

Those already in the field know students’ future success hinges on more than technical knowledge or creative ability.

“I tell production assistants all the time: ‘Half of your position is personality. The other half is skill,’” said Frankie Pagnotta, first assistant director of “Abbott Elementary,” the hit ABC sitcom about teachers in a Philadelphia school.

Pagnotta graduated from , a Los Angeles nonprofit that runs a private school with a mission similar to Roybal’s — diversifying the entertainment industry. Now, she mentors young Black production assistants, urging them to be early on set, know their way around the city and not get distracted by talking to friends on the job.

She said she’s worked with a range of young people, from those who balk at menial tasks like passing out call sheets to children of successful directors who are still hungry to prove themselves. 

“It’s a lot of hard work,” she said, “and someone is not going to just hand you a career.”

The magnet program generated lots of favorable buzz at Roybal this year, but like many film characters, the school has a complicated backstory.

The former Belmont Learning Complex sits between two major Los Angeles freeways, atop an abandoned oil field and an earthquake fault. Beset by numerous delays and investigations over potential health and safety hazards, the cost of the project ballooned to nearly . 

The fiasco prompted then-mayor Richard Riordan to support a slate of school board members who ousted the superintendent. When it finally opened in 2008, more than 10 years after construction began, the school was renamed for Edward R. Roybal, the first Latino city councilman in Los Angeles who later served 30 years in Congress. Other programs at the school focus on careers like social work, business and computer science.

Today, the boxy green and tan facility — with its grassy quad and views of the city’s skyscrapers — figures prominently in student-made videos. U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona holds up the new magnet program as a model for other districts. 

“I’m asking superintendents … to learn Roybal’s example,” he said in March during a panel discussion . He visited the school in January with second gentleman Douglas Emhoff and said he wants schools in production hubs like New York, Chicago, Miami, Atlanta to replicate the magnet’s model.

In California, magnet schools don’t receive more funding than traditional schools, despite higher costs for specially trained teachers and industry-specific equipment and facilities. At Roybal, the initial funding from Amazon Studios, Fox Corp., Paramount and other entertainment companies pays for a managing director who serves as a liaison between the school and the studios. A program coordinator plans events like field trips and master classes taught by professionals. 

The partners also hired a curriculum consultant and are developing online lessons to share with students around the world. But in another year, they’ll need to secure future funding. Cardona noted that the Biden administration’s includes $200 million to support “career-connected learning.” 

For now, Jaison and Aiyanna are soaking up as much as they can. Jaison is an aspiring animator who already knows how to edit manga panels — the comic book style that originated in Japan. 

Aiyanna said she’s “sampling” and wants to learn all aspects of the business, but is leaning toward writing.

Despite its entertainment focus, the program doesn’t ignore traditional high school content. Hilgers and an English teacher collaborated on a project inspired by The History Channel in which students researched female poets and made 30-second documentaries about their work.

“Say you’re doing a horror film, and [a character has] a deep cut. You want to have the right body parts in place,” he said. “You need to know about science to make a science film.”

When Lourd and Clooney visited the school, they observed a math lesson based on production budgets and the daily cost of making a film like “Black Panther.”

Lourd said, “George and I were standing there saying, ‘I wish I’d gone to this high school.’ ”

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