Ed Vitagliano

AFA Journal news editor

May 2001 – Mom and Dad. Not many subjects on television get as much air time as parents or parenting, since the family is one of the core institutions around which many storylines revolve--especially sitcoms. 

When Hollywood presents its image of the family, how are the parents portrayed? How do they act around their children, and how do they interact with them? With a slew of media outlets dominating more and more of our spare time as a nation--especially television--it is critical that Christians understand how Mom and Dad are portrayed by Hollywood. 

To be sure, television has had some respectful presentations of parents--like Home Improvement, Boy Meets World, 7th Heaven and both the NBC and CBS versions of actor Bill Cosby's sitcoms. On such programs, Mom and Dad are not only portrayed as being present and accounted for, but they are good, decent people who act like adults, and who, in their imperfect wisdom, set boundaries for their children and expect respect--without being dictators. 

However, such parents are often the exceptions to the rule. More often than not, if parents are portrayed on prime time television at all, they are shown to be rude individuals, childish buffoons, or losers who have no control over their lives, their homes, or their children. 

Opening the floodgates 
Perhaps no sitcom in television history was worse in this regard than the Fox hit series Married...With Children. Spearheading Fox's prime-time schedule as the new network's first show ever, Married...With Children ran for 11 seasons until 1997, when it mercifully ended its run as the anti-family progenitor. 

For 258 episodes, Al and Peggy Bundy, along with their two perverted teen children, Kelly and Bud, razed to the ground every worthwhile attribute of the traditional family. 

Some television critics see Married as being a trendsetter for a new brand of family sitcom which was more crude, more full of sexual innuendo, and more detrimental to the TV image of parenthood than any other show in history. 

"The show introduced early in prime-time more sexual innuendo than we had seen before, and that seemed to influence everything," said TV critic John Leonard. 

Others in the entertainment industry rejoiced at the show's contempt for traditional values. William Miller, a minister who was a Nick at Nite television critic at the time, praised Married for being "Hollywood's answer to the religious right." 

"When it came on, it was the height of all the talk of the need for a Father Knows Best approach to families," Miller said. "And here was this fabulous satire saying, 'We'll give you a traditional family where the father works and the mother stays home, and looks at the poison.'" 

The bane of fatherhood 
If the traditions of Western Civilization place the father as the head of the household, Hollywood appears determined to knock Dad off his pedestal. Married's Al Bundy made fathers look like drooling, lust-filled morons, and to this day dear ol' Dad, when he is even included in a prime-time show, is often a less-than-savory character. 

In its 1999 report, the National Fatherhood Institute issued the results of its in-depth examination of parenting, as portrayed by TV's prime-time dads. Of the 102 shows surveyed, only 15 fathers appeared as characters. Of those 15, however, only four were shown to be caring, competent and good role models for their children. As parents, the remaining dads were duds. 

At least Bundy was present in the home, even as worthless as he was. In a recent episode of Third Watch (NBC), Bobby, a grown man who is a firefighter on the series, confronts his father, who left the family when Bobby was just a boy. 

The older man explained his abandonment: "I had to be happy. I had to live. We got married so young and then all the babies came and I just wanted a life of my own." 

Even worse, the father never takes responsibility for his actions, never admits he was wrong, and never apologizes. 

Rude and crude 
TV parents often have a lot for which they should apologize. They are frequently shown to be the worst sort of people, whose boorish behavior inevitably rubs off on their children. 

If the children were sexually perverse on Married, for example, they were simply chips off the old blocks. Both Al and Peggy Bundy were obsessed with sex--Peggy continually complained about Al not having sex with her, while Al lusted after everything and anything female. In one episode, Dad even charged money for vulgar old men to watch as daughter Kelly danced seductively for them. 

Not all the poor parental role models are as cartoonishly bad as the Bundys. Some are just plain irresponsible. In a 1994 episode of the sitcom The Good Life (NBC), for example, the father is concerned that his 15-year-old son Paul spends too much time with his siblings and is not "raising hell" like a "normal" teen. To cure this problem, Dad calls in sick to school on his son's behalf and takes him to the mall to meet a calendar "pin-up" girl. 

In a hotel room on Fox's new comedy Grounded for Life, Mom finds out that 15-year-old daughter Lilly and two of her girlfriends have been calling for room service so they can talk to the cute young man that the hotel keeps sending up. 

Rather than model any sort of decency before the teenage girls, Mom actually asks the young man to get up on a chair to check a light bulb so all four of the ladies can lust after him. 

Dad sees nothing wrong with his wife's behavior. Later he tells Lilly that she can be proud to have a mother who would help her daughter and friends "sexually harass" a young man. "How cool is that!" he insists. 

Then there are the rude, insulting parents--a trail blazed by Married and perfected by ABC's Roseanne. Week after week Dan and Roseanne Conner's brand of abusive sarcasm was shown as an indispensable part of a parent's repertoire. 

Actor Stacey Keach's character on Titus (Fox) is even worse as a parent, having absolutely no redeeming qualities. He is verbally abusive, sadistic and cruel to everyone, especially to his grown son, Chris, who is the sitcom's lead character. The father is portrayed in virtually every episode as an obnoxious alcoholic who was an unrepentant serial adulterer when his two sons were growing up. 

In the February 27 episode Chris tries to reconcile with his father by saying "I love you and forgive you" for past abuses. Dad says that, rather than hear words like that, he'd prefer the state police bring home "your head in a bag." 

Disrespected 
Of course, parents don't have to be rude oafs to provoke disdain in real-life teens. However, while the fact that teenagers sometimes resent their parents' authority is not exactly a news flash, on television that authority is often scorned in the most contemptuous manner. 

In one 1991 episode of Roseanne, for example, Roseanne tells her 14-year-old daughter Darlene to pick up the new dress she had thrown to the floor. "No!" Darlene screams at her mother, and proceeds to hurl a shoe at Roseanne and slam the door in her face while the mother is still talking. Roseanne does not challenge Darlene's outburst. 

Similarly, an episode of the popular drama St. Elsewhere (NBC) in the early '90s had the defiant child/passive parent storyline as well. When Mom tells her 12-year-old to get ready for school, an argument ensues. The child ends the debate with "I'm not going! Period!" 

Grounded for Life's teenage terror Lilly has a habit of letting out a rage-filled screech whenever she doesn't get her way, and this attitude has the effect of intimidating her parents. While certainly a caricature of teenagers, Lilly is nonetheless a rude, self-centered and obnoxious person. 

The parents, meanwhile, are pathetic and often powerless to enforce their wishes on their child. In a recent episode, Dad tells Lilly she cannot spend the night at a friend's house. She insists she is going out, and that he can't stop her. Rather than demand respect for his authority, the only way he can enforce his edict is to lock Lilly in her room. 

Later, Lilly storms downstairs and announces that she's dying her hair blue. Rather than confront her daughter and tell the teenager what the rules of the house are, Mom pleads in a whiny voice, "Honey, please don't dye your hair blue--please!" 

In another episode, Lilly's tirade is even more offensive. While arguing with her dad, Lilly explodes because her father just doesn't seem to understand her feelings. She throws a pillow at him and shouts, "It's like talking to a fricking brick!" Dad, of course, says nothing. 

More and more, television's prime-time parents aren't ready for prime-time parenting. Not only don't these parents know best, they usually don't know anything at all. Stupid, rude, and woefully weak, if this is TV's version of Mom and Dad, perhaps real-life moms and dads ought to turn off the TV. If they dare.