The TV Family, Onscreen and Off (1970s–Present)

This Chapter Discusses the Following Source Document: Alexander, Alison, and Yeora Kim. “Television and Family—The Social Uses and Influences of Television on Families.”

Even more so than the media—telephone and radio—that Americans adopted earlier in the century, TV became an integral part of the lives of many viewers. Especially for people with limited social exposure, i.e. elementary school children, the elderly, stay-at-home moms, TV offered a world of screen characters and experiences that allowed them a vicarious life. As a result of such influence, TV shaped the values that have come to direct our culture, including the emphasis we place on the importance of the family. From early shows like Leave It To Beaver and The Brady Bunch, to the more contemporary Modern Family and Roseanne, TV has helped transform public opinion on accepting the changing views of what a family is. In addition, a natural consequence of TV’s influence in American society included is its expanding role in socializing younger generations.

Topics covered in this chapter include:

When the first television sets were introduced in the 1950s, they were marketed as a new form of family entertainment. Very quickly, they became commonplace. Initially, families tended to have a single television set, and many gathered to watch programs together. This arrangement laid the groundwork for a bonding experience that would increase the connection among family members. However, due to its immediate popularity and the high sales volumes of TV sets, prices of TVs dropped. As a result, many families were able to buy multiple sets, encouraging a pattern of factions within the family—family members could each watch what they wanted, making connecting over their shows less feasible and less common. By contrast, much of the programming offered on television, especially before the advent of cable TV, accentuated family togetherness and values.

With the advent of digital media, individualized entertainment has become a more pervasive feature of the media environment, and this had made scripted television less of a family feature and more of an independent feature. The advance of social media has, again, encouraged members of families to engage in their own media environments disconnected, to some degree, from other members of their families. Critics of modern media have raised the concern that Americans’ increasing obsession with virtual social networks may be supplanting traditional relationships and family bonding, but this opinion is far from being a proven conclusion or a determinate end result of the social media evolution. Television, too, came under fire for its impact on the American family, and from the 1950s to today, there have been many different opinions and arguments made about the ways in which television facilitated familial togetherness or, alternatively, threatened family bonds and the adoption of mainstream family values.

A Complex Picture

The impact of television on the family has been explored through several lenses. How portrayals of families on TV affect the worldview of audiences, especially children, is a question that has long been debated by academics, and there is evidence that such portrayals can reinforce gender stereotypes and other kinds of prejudice. The viewing patterns of families and how members interact with each other while watching television, either together or apart, is another branch within this broader field of research and activism. For others, the amount of time that individuals spend engaging with television (or technology in general) is another area of concern that has been the subject of numerous studies.

The following article provides an overview of academic studies on the issue of how television is impacting family life, beginning in the 1970s and progressing through the early 2000s. Issues like “parental mediation” and “coviewing” demonstrate how parents are negotiating media consumption with children, whereas issues like “family image” explore how depictions of family might impact self-image and attitudes about family for developing children.

Modeling Families and Family Roles

From its earliest days, most TV shows centered on family life, and the treatment of families on early TV shows conveyed a message that home and family, marriage, and romance are central and essential aspects of American life and culture. Home was presented as the domain of women, and, in general, proportionately more women than men were portrayed as married, as having children, as being involved romantically, and as being interested in family-related issues. Such programming reinforced gender stereotypes, with women engaged in homemaking and child rearing while fathers worked outside the home but engaged with children when it was time for male guidance on masculine issues, or in cases where discipline was needed. Examples of this trend include sitcoms like The Donna Reed Show, Leave It to Beaver, and Father Knows Best, the title of the latter alone directly reflects how deeply gender role stereotypes were integrated into the programming of the era.

As women started becoming more independent in the ’60s, primetime programming did not initially add programs that spoke to their changing lives. However, unusually, there were a comparatively large number of popular series in the 1950s and 1960s that depicted the lives of single fathers raising children in motherless households, such as the sitcoms My Three Sons and The Andy Griffith Show, or the western serials Bonanza, and The Rifleman.

The 1970s brought about more nuanced depictions of non-traditional families, divorced parents, and other types of families that were common in the American population, but rarely shown on TV. It was during this time that the first non-white families took center stage in television as well, as TV executives made important early steps towards increasing the diversity of programming. During the 1990s, images of dysfunctional families began to appear—from comedic portrayals of working-class family conflicts on sitcoms like Roseanne and The Simpsons to the extremely popular sagas of wealthy, powerful families featured on the evening soap operas Dallas and Dynasty.

“Leave It to Beaver,” a popular primetime 1950s television show, portrayed a traditional nuclear family. Cast (left to right): Hugh Beaumont, Tony Dow, Barbara Billingsley, and Jerry Mathers, c 1959, ABC Television, via Wikimedia.

My Three Sons portrayed a family headed by a single father, c1962. The depiction of families on television began to be more diverse in the 1960s. ABC Television, via Wikimedia.

The 1970s introduced racial diversity in the portrayal of TV families. Cast of The Jeffersons c1975: Mike Evans, Sherman Hemsley, and Isabel Sanford, CBS Television, via Wikimedia.

The types of families and family dynamics featured on television also varied according to the time of day, because television executives chose programming based on beliefs of the types of people more likely to view television programming at specific times. Saturday mornings were typically slated for children’s programming, whereas primetime slots were typically reserved for series meant to appeal to entire families, with characters and situations that spoke to the perceived common experience of men, women, and children. Daytime television was, for many years, aimed at women and thus featured programs that focused on romance or family drama.

The effort to program for women created the phenomenon of the “soap opera,” including series like All My Children or As the World Turns. These series looked to present programming that spoke to the fantasies that largely male television executives attributed to woman, such as dramatic love affairs, and to the roles that women were required to play in society, as dutiful wives and loving mothers.

Gender roles and gender stereotypes were not limited to television feature programming but are even more evident in the types of advertisements that appear on television as well. Media researchers have written prolifically about the pervasive sexism and gender stereotypes in 1950s and 1960s advertising. Writing about the issue in the Atlantic in 2011, journalist Derek Thompson described some of the sexist slogans that companies used in both television and print in the 1950s, including, “The harder a wife cooks, the cuter she looks,” or “Christmas morning, she’ll be happier with a Hoover,” demonstrating the way that advertising reinforced the gender roles of the era.² By equating femininity with child rearing and domestic maintenance and portraying males as the household leaders, advertisements help to cement ideas about gender than continue to influence the way people imagine societally appropriate roles for both men and women.

Vintage ad for Kellog’s Pep Cereal from the 1930s. Photo credit: Daily Mail.

Realistic depictions of men and woman began to become more common in the 1970s and each decade since has advanced more nuanced and genuine depictions of families and family roles. However, gendered programming and advertising continues to influence the way that television evolves and the way that individuals learn about their own place within their families and society at large. Though sexism and gender stereotypes have, in many cases, become less overt, they are still present in twenty-first century media and advertising. To cite one of many examples, a 2016 article in Huffington Post described how lingerie company CEO Heidi Zak protested the Calvin Klein company after the company installed a billboard featuring what Zak felt was a sexist depiction of gender roles. The billboard, displayed in New York, featured photos of a woman and a man, with the phrase “I seduce in #mycalvins” displayed over the image of the woman, while the phrase “I make money in #mycalvins” was displayed over the male. Depictions like this that reinforce stereotyped depictions of male and female roles influence the way that individuals view gender and, in some cases, may limit the way that individuals approach their lives or careers based on the perceived need to emulate masculinity or femininity within their society.³

Structuring the Family around TV

There is evidence, from decades of research, suggesting that television viewership has had a significant impact on family life. Market data from Nielsen suggests that the average American spends 11 hours per day interacting with screens in general, and 4 hours and 46 minutes per day watching television.⁴ Some parents, educators, and family-health advocates have opined that the increasing dedication to “screen time” has left insufficient time for family interaction. Whether or not this is the case is still being debated and studied by academics in the field, but it appears that the advent and spread of screen-based entertainment and engagement has reduced time that was previously dedicated to face-to-face interaction among family members.

Whereas television advertisers initially promoted the television as an outlet for the entire family to enjoy together, ostensibly increasing family time, the degree to which this may have initially occurred is unclear. Anecdotal evidence as well as years of television viewing statistics indicate that different family members tend to have different viewing preferences and tastes, and that the cohesion of families around the television was, more realistically, an artifact of converging factors, including an overall lack in diverse programming and the need to share the device when families could typically only afford a single television per household.

As the cost of televisions decreased in the 1960s, thanks to competition and the entrance of new electronics companies, families more often bought multiple television sets, and this most likely helped to eliminate whatever family-centric bonding the single television per family era had encouraged. In 2013, University of Florida researcher David Ostroff told Becky Striepe, for HowStuffWorks, that since the 1970s, Americans have increasingly chosen to watch television on their own, rather than with other members of their family, though empirical data on this trend is lacking.⁵

Technology and mass media, whether in the form of cell phones, television, computers, or even video game consoles, is neither negative nor positive on its own. Whatever positive or negative impacts such technology has on the lives of individuals or the function of families is a product of how such devices are used. When used in specific ways, mass media and technology can function to bring individuals and families together.

For instance, though the habit may no longer be common, families can schedule time to watch television shows or movies together, perhaps followed by social interaction as members of the family discuss their shared experience. Video games, while often maligned for sapping the attention of the youth, can also have a social aspect. Since the introduction of home video game technology, with the pioneer video game “Pong,” many games have been designed for social play. Parents and their children Page 178  |  Top of Articlemay even bond over shared interest in playing cooperative or competitive games, and this tendency may increase as America’s first generation of video game aficionados have their own children and determine how such recreational activities will feature in the families that they create.

Some research on this topic has shown that, especially for young people, television viewing has remained at least a semi-social activity and that siblings within families tend to watch television together, though less often with their parents. By contrast, the use of computers, cell phones, and mp3 players tends to be a private activity, and this may increase a sense of isolation experienced by members of a family.

At the same time, research from the 1970s and 1980s showed that the more hours the television is turned on, the higher the level of potential family tension. This held true for both large and small families but was particularly pronounced in larger households. As siblings often watch together, it is not surprising that researchers found most of the conflicts and arguments that arise about viewing—such as disagreements over what programs to watch—occur between siblings.⁶ It is unclear whether these findings still had merit by the 1990s.

Sony PlayStation with DualShock controller and Memory Card. Although the topic is debated, video games appear to bring a sense of connectedness to some families. By Evan-Amos, via Wikimedia.

Modern-day teenagers interacting, by Prakash Neupane, via Wikimedia.

In many modern American households, parents use (or allow children to use) media as a way of organizing their busy lives. Television may play a role in time management, allowing families to plan various activities around certain shows, or use recognized and patterned programs to serve as anchors for schedules. For instance, a family might plan dinner so that some or all members of the family can watch a certain program, or different programs, before, during, or after eating. For some parents, directing children towards television or movies is a way to occupy children and thus to provide time for parents to rest or engage in uninterrupted work.

There is some evidence to suggest that television can serve as a vector for socialization, the processes by which individuals learn to socialize with others and/or their roles within larger social structures. Research into this Page 180  |  Top of Articlearea has identified several different modes of socialization that can occur within a family, including:

Some have suggested that television can take the place that would be otherwise occupied by family members in terms of providing avenues for socialization. In such a way, the television can be seen as an invisible but ubiquitous family member that can also serve to provide examples of social behavior, provide patterns and reinforcement for various social behaviors in a variety of theoretical situations, and can provide examples of the rewards and/or punishments a person is likely to experience for exhibiting certain types of social behavior.⁸

Television and Family Values

The source document in this chapter points out that early TV delivered the message that families are good and that it is fundamentally more desirable to be in a relationship than to live a single life. Since the 1980s, researchers have suggested that television influences the life choices and values of viewers, but the degree to which this may occur and the relationship between television viewing and the development of values, is unclear. There have been few legitimate studies linking television exposure to changes in family values.

It is often echoed in popular culture that television influences the way that individuals (especially adolescents and children) develop attitudes about aspects of human life like the importance of marriage and/or having children, however, evidence for this is limited and conflicting. Part of the reason for this lack of clarity is that the development of values and beliefs is influenced by so many aspects of a person’s life that it is difficult to determine the relative weight of one influence in comparison to another.

What is clear is that television reflects the values of television creators, executives, and advertising agencies that contribute to its creation; it also reflects the changing values of the human population as the success of certain content relative to other content gradually changes the nature of the average content that is available. For young Americans, in the process of developing their own values, television and other media undoubtedly has a significant influence, but so, too, do the viewing choices of each consumer guide the evolution of the medium. The next chapter takes the discussion of media’s influence from family values to literacy.