A Blip from Class this Week...

This week in class we took a short look at the changing marital and family trends in television over the last seventy years. Let me tell you, TV has changed drastically, even just in the past 15 years. Way back in the 30's, 40's and even the 50's shows were in black and white and were very wholesome, meaning you could let your three year old watch it and not worry about what they heard or saw. There were Shakespeare's plays and other old classics like The Ed Sullivan Show, The Lone Ranger, I Love Lucy, and The Twilight Zone were all aired and watched across the country. These shows all reflected the morals of the times. Men were coming home from war, and everyone got married.

Entering the 60's and 70's, the new series were fairly wholesome with The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Brady Bunch, MASH, Happy Days, and later Three's Company. This is when we notice a significant change in the media. The era of revolution and individualism was well on its way. The role of family and family relationships were being portrayed much differently in Three's Company than in I Love Lucy.

Then the 80's, 90's and early thousands hit! Cheers, Family Ties, The Cosby Show, Married with Children, The Simpsons, Roseanne, The Wonder Years, Seinfeld, Friends, That 70's Show, ER, 7th Heaven, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Home Improvement, Frasier, Everybody Loves Raymond, Gilmore Girls, Law and Order, CSI, Scrubs, The Office, Two and a Half Men, Modern Family, Downton Abbey, The Big Bang Theory, I could go on and on. 

Not only has the focus dramatically changed, the diversity of the families on the TV shows have changed, as have the way our society views family. I'm not saying that TV has caused these variations, but the way our modern families are and how they are portrayed on television are very correlated. Comparing the stats from earlier in the twentieth century, the average age of men and women when they are married has increased, the number of children a couple has has decreased, divorce has increased, birth rate has decreased, cohabitation has increased, abortion has increased, and the number of children in daycare has increased. I find these trends very interesting and I believe they will have a very profound influence on the direction our society goes in the near future.