Essay 1
Have you ever thought about life once you have a family? What kind of parent
would you would be, and how you would raise your children? Families back in the 1950s
are nothing like the families we see and hear about today. Back then, television created an
illusion of what the concept of an ideal family was like. They showed how happy,
carefree, and relaxing the daily life of an average family was like. This encouraged
people to attempt to imitate that lifestyle. Even Gary Soto, in his story, “Looking For
Work,” talked about how he wanted to live life like in the TV show, “Leave It To
Beaver”. That however, started to dramatically change after the 50’s. Today, I am going to
talk about the representation of family life back in the 1950s compared to the
representation of family life now through contemporary television programs such as That
70’s Show, How I Met Your Mother, and New Girl, and how greatly things have changed.
In her story, “What We Really Miss About the 1950s”, Stephanie Coontz depicts
the families from that 1950s as the type of family that everyone ideally wants: the
breadwinning father, the obedient homemaker wife, and their wonderful biological kids.
At that time, divorce rates had dropped highly, and husbands were finally able to spend
quality time with wife and kids. More jobs were being created, and wealth was at its
peak, where only one person in the family had to work, which was the breadwinning
father.
In the TV sitcom, That 70’s Show, it portrayed the exact opposite of the nuclear
family. The father, Red Foreman, lost his job when the power plant shuts down and was
unemployed for a very long time, while his wife, Kitty, was an alcoholic bread winner
who worked double shifts just to keep the family stable. Their biological kids were
nowhere near the ideal children of the 1950s. The daughter, Laurie was the known as the
town’s whore who had no plans for the future and slept with others to get herself out of
trouble. And the son, Eric, was more of a daughter than he was ever considered a son. He
was a skinny, weak, not athletic boy who dated the typical girl next door, Donna, who
was far too masculine for Eric, and was often joked that she was the man in the
relationship rather than Eric; basically everything that Red and Kitty could ever want
