My undergraduate major was Sociology. In one of my classes we were asked to write a paper on “The Family.” We could go in any direction we liked, a blessing indeed, and that it didn’t require any research, merely observation, even better.
I chose to look at the “The Television Family” with an emphasis on Father Knows Best, Leave it to Beaver, and The Donna Reed Show. I should have switched the title to “TV Families . . . ZZZzzz” in that all three had so much in common that they could be interchangeable. For all intents and purposes all three were past their prime, literally. If I recall, they were no longer aired during what we now call “prime time,” and I’m not sure they even began their reruns. It would take a while for a new style of family series to appear, and when All in the Family shocked American viewers in 1971, the era of family reality blossomed and would do so until this very day.
But let’s get back to “mom-in-a-dress” TV.
What did I know about any family other than those three programs? They were just like my family: mother baked, cooked, cleaned, made the beds, got the kids ready for school, made sure they did their homework, while father went to work, read his newspaper, and had an occasional poker game with his buddies. On the other hand, TV mom wore heels and a dress when all these chores were handled, while TV dad wore a suit and tie while sitting in his easy chair. My father didn’t wear a tie while watching TV and never played cards. My mother only began to play canasta in her 60s because she finally put her foot down and told dad that was what she was going to do. After all, dad ruled the roost—sort of—while mom (theirs and mine) wanted the kids and dad to believe “father knows best.” As one overarching description conveyed, “[mother] was portrayed as a voice of reason, [while father] was thoughtful and offered sage advice in response to his children’s problems.” So true in just about every TV family series back then!
That was pretty much the case in those television series; they reflected the 1950s post-war, pre-turbulent 60s America. Suburban housing developments seemed to be images of each other, as were the houses themselves; and if there were any family issues, they could be solved in a calm, methodical fashion. Of course, what occurred in the privacy of the home was not aired, especially not on the television programs created to portray the “typical” American family.
I received a good grade on that paper. Why not get an A? There was so little to write about; just adding “ditto,” “ditto,” “ditto” would have sufficed. But here’s the thing. Another review of Father Knows Best posited that the Andersons were a “truly idealized family, the sort that viewers could relate to and emulate.” Note, the family name was “Anderson,” not “Rodriguez,” “Wojcik,” or “Cohen,” the point being obvious: they were of European stock (Western European, of course), and, of course, all Americans could “relate” to that. And if not “relate” then certainly wish to “emulate.” Really? Hard to believe the Rodriguez, Wojcik, or Cohen families could relate back in the 50s, but, boy, could they relate when Archie Bunker made fun of his son-in-law, Michael “Meathead” Stivik, and had many negative things to say about minorities in general. And remember Archie’s face when Sammy Davis, Jr. turned and kissed him? Now THAT was something most of us related to in terms of what was happening in America . . . here was a bigoted, (probably WASP) guy being kissed by a Black, one-eyed Jew, someone he did not want in his neighborhood!
From then on, we began seeing a variety of families. By necessity we had to ask, “Which one?” Indeed, which family reflects “THE Family?” If I wrote that paper today and focused on what I saw family life was like on 21st century TV, there would be a plethora of models. Just commercials themselves are not what laundry soap ads were like decades ago. We have families consisting of mixed-race couples, gay and lesbian couples, single moms and dads, every conceivable combination one might think of. And just take a walk in the park and you’ll see precisely that, and that—precisely—is the American “family” today . . . there is no defining it!
I attended a seminar on Jewish values as one of my electives in rabbinical school. There, too, we had to hand in a paper before the term ended. As was the case years before, it was more observational than academic. I told the instructor I was going to tweak the one I wrote for my sociology class which was fine with him.
“Of course,” he said, “I’ll have to grade it the way I see it, not the way it was graded back then.” I had no problem with that, inasmuch as I added far more up-to-date examples and worked it so that “Jewish” values would be included. Remember, this was early 1970s America; we still talked about Jewish values. But just as there is no monolithic family—Jewish or otherwise—there were then, and are today, no monolithic Jewish values . . . 10 Jews, 11 opinions. How much the more so today if I or someone else would venture into the world of “The Family.”
Modern Family, the series that ran for 12 years, ended in 2020. I believe I watched no more than a handful of episodes, if that many. It’s not that I was offended by anything (I rarely get offended), I just do not like what they call a “mockumentary.” To me the differences were unreasonably highlighted. I suppose that is necessary for a contemporary television program. Nevertheless, the situations were complex enough, not requiring emphasis on cultural, religious, racial, and gender differences.
Let us remember that while the “modern family” of 2024 consists of the mixture I mentioned, they are trying to overcome difficulties the TV families of the 50s were often also trying to handle. Therefore, portraying stereotypes as it did, the show is true to its category of a “mockumentary.” Families face enough problems that television shows don’t have to stress the obvious and mock the characters, thereby minimizing the shared concerns of families of the 20th and 21st centuries.
What will family shows of tomorrow portray? No doubt, there will be changes. But we have to be empathic to every family regardless how they are portrayed.
