I’m a huge sitcom fan. I usually spend my late night evenings watching reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond, Roseanne, Home Improvement and even everybody’s favorite cartoon family, The Simpsons. This selection of sitcoms constituted a good portion of my television habit when I was growing up in the nineties and I’m sure that many of you would agree. Growing up in the nineties provided us the opportunity to watch some fantastic (and hilarious) sitcoms. The best shows came out in the 80s and 90s and the newer sitcoms today tend to showcase a similar family dynamic.
But what is this shared family dynamic between sitcom families? When thinking about what I was going to blog about this week, I was hit over the head with a topic when indulging in my late-night TVLand binge of Everybody Loves Raymond. Sitcoms are just swarming with notions of gender roles—what are “feminine” traits for females and what are “masculine” traits for men. I was watching an episode where Deborah thinks Raymond isn’t spending enough time at home with the kids. When she finds out that some of the other sports writers work from home, she forces Ray to work from home, so he can hang out with the kids. Surprise surprise. Raymond stays home and takes care of the kids for one afternoon while Deborah does errands and messes everything up. The kids destroy the house; he can’t find his twin boys, etc. etc.
And this is generally the trait in many sitcom families. In this article that I read by Sarah Macarelli , she explores how much sitcoms have changed the “dad” vision over the years. We have steered away from the caring, competent dads of The Brady Bunch era and into the era of sitcom dads who “are either ‘dead-beat dads’ or the funny, clueless type.” The sitcom father generally has very few parenting skills and will often mess everything up, if he is left to care for the kids. It is then that “supermom” sweeps in and makes everything better. Sitcoms today tend to showcase a self-indulgent father, who is much more concerned with getting his beer at night than talking to his kids.
Check out this clip from Everybody Loves Raymond:
Deborah had asked Ray to accompany her and the children to Happy Zone (a play place for kids) as a family outing, but Ray makes some excuse not to go and raids the fridge instead. But even though the woman is supposed to have more power as “supermom,” it is obvious that she submitted to her husband’s wishes by allowing him stay home instead of going to the play place with their children. The father still calls the shots.
What kind of message is this sending to children who are watching the show? That their father doesn’t care about them, or that he’s just supposed to sit at home watching TV and mom is there to take care of them? Macarelli explains that a “supposedly harmless skit on tv can be internalized by a child and help shape their view of fathers and men.” In H. Leslie Steeves’ article “Feminist Theories and Media Studies,” she discusses cultivation studies done with children concerning gender roles and feminism in media. The children were remarkably perceptive and created visions of the “man” and the “woman” easily. She says, “Interviews with children indicated that even at a very early age they bring considerable knowledge of gendered behavior to the viewing situation and use this knowledge to interpret and embellish what they see” (397). The “masculine” father comes home from work, cracks a few jokes then sits down to watch the game and drink his beer. The "feminine" mother nags him, complains and takes care of the house.
In his article “A ‘new’ Paradigm,” Zoonen says, “…the definition of femininity present content: submission, availability and compliance are characteristics held up as ideals, and consumption is presented as the road to self-fulfillment” (48). Even today, these traits are still present in sitcoms. The mother does everything because the father will mess it up, but by doing that, she is preventing the father from learning how to be a caring dad. She is submitting to him instead of teaching him and she may be doing that because she wants to prove her own self-worth—she is the only one who can get the job done and women do matter. Female characters may now be able to do anything that a man can do, but they’re still being displayed as possessing original feminine traits.
Has feminine advancement really been made in how sitcoms portray women? Do you think that children really are internalizing how mothers and fathers respectively are supposed to act and what roles they play in their lives? Is a child going to approach their mother for everything they need and think of their father as a statue on the couch? What kind of negative ideas might they be forming about their mothers and fathers? Gender roles and the wide expanse between masculinity and femininity are easily seen through the mother and father characters on sitcoms. This light and entertaining television genre may be imposing lasting effects on children today.