Destroy the Myth of the Traditional Family

The myth of the Traditional American Nuclear Family, at its simplest a couple and their dependent children, has played out on the small screen since the 1950s. The Cleavers of Leave It to Beaver (1957-1963) exemplify the original idealized American family and the “family values” allegedly inherent to this nostalgic notion (Coontz,1992): they live in suburbia, behind a white picket fence. Ward is a veteran of World War II who married his high school sweetheart and works an unspecified white collar job; June is a housewife who spends most of her screen-time in her immaculate kitchen. They have two sons, Wally and Theodore, better known by his nickname “Beaver”.  Nothing bad ever happens. Fifty plus years later the series represents a “simpler time” when family took precedence over outside distractions or ambitions. In those same fifty plus years, the televised concept of the Traditional American Nuclear Family has expanded to include combinations of people beyond white middle class suburbanites — for example, blended families (The Brady Bunch), blacks (The Cosby Show), the working class (Roseanne),  gays (Modern Family), and immigrants (Fresh Off the Boat) —  but its core has remained fundamentally the same: two parents and their children who live together, embodying family and home, which provide stability, security, and satisfaction.

Expanding the myth to be more inclusive is progress, but not necessarily progressive. The Brady Bunch (1969-1974), introduced a blended family but the parents are both widowed, not divorced. Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (1990-1996) presented Philadelphia as an inner city that had to be fled. The incredibly successful series The Cosby Show (1984-1992) and Modern Family (2009- ) brought previously marginalized populations into America’s living rooms but in both cases the parents are upper middle class professionals far better off than the majority of their audience. New hits Blackish (2014- ) and Fresh Off the Boat (2015- ) celebrate diversity but do nothing to shake up the status quo. Home and happiness are achieved via family and family is defined via biology or legal contract.

The reality of many American families is not reflected in these popular sitcom families. Marriage is the majority but not the default. A 2014 census report (census.gov) shows that almost half of adults do not live with a spouse. While the divorce rate continues to hover around 50%, half of all the children living with only a mother are being raised by women who never married. 10% of all children live with a grandparent. Moreover census data fails to adequately measure family situations that don’t follow bloodlines or legal contracts, there are few check boxes for voluntary, or chosen, kin. Idealizing the Traditional American Nuclear Family, on or off screen, not only marginalizes and/or ignores anyone who does not fit into its narrowly defined borders, it delegitimizes their alternative family groupings. And unlike the Cleavers, the Bradys, the Huxtables, and the Pritchett-Delgados, their audience’s families exist outside a television studio.

The idea of the Traditional American Nuclear Family, and the values it represents, was not just introduced to television in the 1950s, it was invented in the 1950s (Coontz, 1992). While families had to rely on extended family networks during the Great Depression and World Wars, in the more prosperous fifties it was considered old fashioned to live with or near older generations. Simultaneous with this physical movement away from home sharing and extended family was an emphasis on the single family unit that reflected the trend toward isolationism that took over the nation as a whole. The family became the main or only source of emotional intimacy and stability. (D’emilio, 1993) “The emphasis on producing a whole world of satisfaction, amusement, and inventiveness within the nuclear family had no precedents.”  (Coontz, 1992) This elevation of the nuclear family was made at the expense of women, queers, the elderly, racial minorities, immigrants, and the poor to promote capitalist society and post-war nationalism (Coontz, 1992; D’Emilio, 1993)

“It doesn’t help matters when primetime TV has Murphy Brown, a character who supposedly epitomizes today’s intelligent, highly paid professional woman, mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it just another lifestyle choice.”

The above quote is from a campaign speech given May 19, 1992 on the topic of the racially charged “Rodney King Riots” in Los Angeles, by then Vice-President Dan Quayle to support his thesis that “In a nutshell, I believe the lawless social anarchy that we saw is directly related to the breakdown of the family structure”. (Quayle, 1992). The comment drew national attention as part of an ongoing social and political discussion of “family values”. The television series addressed the controversy, and Quayle, on screen when it returned the following Fall, after which the uproar died down, and the situation was filed away as an interesting pop culture moment (Cohen, 2008).

Murphy chose to bear her child, a son she named Avery after her late mother, alone, but she was not without family. She had a close knit group of friends and a live in house painter who also acted as a housekeeper and eventual nanny, all of whom provided emotional support. They shared holidays, called each other by pet names, and supported Murphy through her battle with breast cancer. They were a family not by blood or law but by choice. Quayle called out Murphy Brown because she depicted an alternative to the Traditional American Nuclear Family that was otherwise prevalent at the time on series such as Home Improvement, Roseanne, and Family Matters

Voluntary kin relationships take different forms (Braithwaite, 2010). In Full House (1987-1995) Danny Tanner asks his best friend and his brother-in-law to move in with him to help raise his three daughters following the death of his wife. In this example, the voluntary kin overlap with the blood kin, an occurrence Carol Stack considers standard in the poor Black neighborhoods she studied for her book All Our Kin (1974). In the Flats, kinship is determined by the active acceptance of responsibility for a child.

“The chain of sponsored parent-child connections determines the personal kindreds of children. Participants in active units of domestic cooperation are drawn from personal kinship networks. How a particular individual say a mother, works to create the active networks which she depends on for the needs of her children, depends largely on sponsorship or parental links. Commonly, the mother’s personal domestic network includes the personal networks of her children, who are half siblings with different fathers. Each child will grow up into a slightly different personal network from his brothers and sisters.” (Stack, 1974)

These personal kindred networks are complex and can be difficult to navigate — indeed, Stack wrote they “constitute the main activity of daily life for these women” (Stack, 1974)— but they exist in the interests of the child. In one example Stack describes how one mother’s boyfriend became “play daddy” to her children, and remained so even after the couple broke up (Stack, 1974). Children establish close, even ‘parental’ relationships with aunts and uncles, grandparents, step-parents and significant others, including platonic friends, of their parents and the relationships are maintained as kin by consensus. As kin networks expand and contract the child’s needs are better met by focusing on the big picture rather than the specificity of blood lines or legal ties. It’s difficult to explain how Danny Tanner’s college roommate is ‘related’ to the twin sons of Danny’s late wife’s brother and his wife, Danny’s longtime co-worker — unless the word ‘family’ is allowed to suffice.

In the Disney Channel series Jessie (2011- ) the titular character is a live in nanny to four children. The seldom seen parents have one biological daughter and three adopted children; Jessie is their main caregiver, along with the butler who cooks, cleans, and acts as a kind of eccentric uncle to both the kids and Jessie. This is an example of voluntary kin relationships that substitute for absent kin, in this case parents. In 2012, about 1.3 million people held child care jobs in the United States and 29% of those were self-employed, working either out of their own home or the family’s home (census.gov). That’s approximately 377,000 “substitute” mothers the likes of Dan Quayle and June Cleaver would shake their head at. But what if it’s not a zero sum situation — what if instead of the nanny replacing the mother (or father) relationship, she is supplementing it, like the personal kindred relationships in the Flats?

Neither the impoverished Welfare populations in Stack’s book nor the wealthy professionals represented in Jessie should be punished for putting their children’s care in the hands of people ready, willing, and able to take on the responsibility. The better argument is for publicly funded daycare and a system for the division of labor based on who wants to perform it rather than which gender has “traditionally” done so.

Another insidious aspect of the Traditional American Nuclear Family as introduced in the 1950s and idealized through the present is their residence in a picture perfect single-family home in the suburbs. The Cleavers’ white picket fence existence was not universal in its day: “A full 25 percent of Americans, forty to fifty million people, were poor in the mid-1950s” (Coontz, 1992). And poverty continues to be a significant issue; in 2014, an estimated 16 million children, or about one in five, received food stamp assistance in the United States. As for the home itself, while more than two thirds of White households own a home, less than half of Black or Hispanic households do (census.gov). This translates to poorer families relying more on domestic networks than bio-legal relationships and picket fences. “Much more important for the creation and recruitment to personal networks are the practical requirements that kin and friends live near one another.” (Stack, 1974)

Three series typify voluntary kin networks created by location and circumstance. Seventeen years before Murphy Brown annoyed the vice president One Day at a Time (1975-1984) featured a divorced mother raising two daughters by herself — but, like Murphy, not entirely alone. In addition to the sometimes seen ex-husband/father, there’s the super of the building they live in who takes on many masculine or paternal coded duties and a progression of semi-long term boyfriends, one that involves a son moving in with the family. In the end the mother and both daughters are married, the younger generation sharing a house, and the building attendant moves away to raise his sister’s children. In this way the series moves to the “happy ending” of a Traditional American Nuclear Family cluster but it’s created by engaging in a combination of voluntary and bio-legal kin relationships.

A divorced mother is also the apex of the voluntary kin network in Disney’s The Suite Life of Zack and Cody (2005-2008). Carey is a lounge singer who moves her twin boys into the Boston hotel where she works. As with One Day at a Time and Jessie, nearby employees, in this case the concierge of the hotel and a teenage girl who works at the lobby candy-counter, become voluntary kin to the twins and their mother as well as the daughter of the hotel owner who also lives in a (much larger) suite. They resemble, even reenact, a Traditional American Nuclear Family with two parents (Carey and Moseby, the concierge), two girls (Maddie the candy girl and London the owner’s daughter), and two boys (twins Zack and Cody) — but it is made up of voluntary kin related more by proximity than biology.

And in Jane the Virgin (2014- ), unmarried and pregnant Jane is supported by a kin network made up of her mother and grandmother, the father of the baby and his family who own the hotel she works at, and a handful of people who come and go such as her friends and co-workers, her own father who she has only just met and his family, her former fiancé, and her baby-daddy’s former wife. The wide cast of characters are loosely related by blood, law, proximity, and situation, but most of all by Jane and her baby.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, out of about 12 million single parent families in 2014, more than 80% were headed by single mothers and 51% of them were divorced, separated or widowed (census.gov). These limited statistics do not adequately capture the number of single mothers cohabiting with the child’s father or another partner, or with extended family or voluntary kin. But they make clear this is a large, diverse, and vibrant population of families who are marginalized by the idealized sanctity of the Traditional American Nuclear Family. And that stigma leads to direct economic consequences: the median income for families led by a single mother in 2013 was $26,000 compared to a median income of $84,000 for married families (census.gov). Single parents can’t work as long hours as married parents, can’t afford flexible child care, and must live and work in a society that is biased against them. When surveyed, single-mothers overwhelmingly agree that “Government should set a goal of helping society adapt to the reality of single-parent families and use its resources to help children and mothers succeed regardless of their family status.” (Halpin, 2014) Adapt to the reality that family takes many forms instead of clinging to a “tradition” that never really existed in the first place.

Friends (1994-2004) was neither conceived nor marketed as a series about family, however it is an excellent example of a voluntary kin network in media. The series revolves around six friends: Ross and Monica are brother and sister, Chandler is Ross’s best friend and Rachel is Monica’s, Joey is Chandler’s roommate and Phoebe was absorbed into the group at some point prior to the pilot. During the series Rachel dates both Ross and Joey, and Monica and Chandler marry. Rachel and Ross have a baby but not while they are together, Phoebe is surrogate mother to her brother’s triplets, and Monica and Chandler adopt twins in the final season. Ross has an older child with his ex-wife, now in a lesbian relationship, and Phoebe eventually marries outside the group. Again, the series ends with most of the cast enacting Traditional American Nuclear Family but their foundation is an interconnected borderline polyamorous supplemental voluntary kin network.

Polyamorous families range from triads or vees that consist of three people in an ongoing and concurrent emotional and/or sexual relationship with each other in some combination, but otherwise exclusive, to intimate networks that may include twenty people interdating who may or may not live together (Sheff, 2014). Many poly families include children — both natural born to members or from previous relationships and adopted or fostered by one or more members of the group. There is no sitcom equivalent to a poly family; the closest in specificity is HBO drama Big Love (2006-2011) about Bill Henrickson, a polygamist, his three wives, and their nine children. Big Love was controversial, Emmy-nominated, and the subject of studies published in various journals of Law.  But it is not representative of the entirety or even the majority of polyamorous individuals or families.

Benefits to and disadvantages of a polyamorous family are similar to those of the personal kindred networks described by Stack. In both instances the children grow up with more attention, more generosity of affection, more honesty and open discussion, and more options for role models. But they also grow up with less space, less privacy, possibly less stability, and most damaging, their norm is stigmatized by the society they live in (Barker, 2010).

June 26, 2015 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that same sex couples have a fundamental and constitutional right to marry. This was a long awaited victory for many LGBTQ political activists and organizations and their allies. It was also a victory for marriage as an institution and for the government’s right to define which relationships have guaranteed rights. Kath Weston wrote in 1991 “If legal representation is achieved for some aspects of gay families at the expense of others, it could have the effect of privileging certain forms of family while delegitimizing others by contrast.” (Weston, 1991) This decision does not guarantee anything for Murphy Brown, Phoebe Buffay, Bill Henrickson or any of the real American citizens who choose to live within voluntary kin networks.

Many polyamorists, like many gay activists before them (Weston, 1991; D’emilio, 1993), are not advocating to gain mainstream and legal recognition because they consider their anti-establishment counterculture as part of their identity (Aviram, 2010). Nor would extending marriage to include polygamy and polyandry or just general ‘group marriage’ affect voluntary kin networks that do not include or revolve around sexual encounters and romantic engagements. Unfortunately, it is easier to validate certain relationships that mirror tradition — such as same-sex marriage — than to ask why the rules about who is having sex with whom and when matters at all (Weston, 1991).

It’s easier to prop up the Traditional American Nuclear Family and “perpetuate the family as a nodal point through which individuals are ‘attached’ to disciplinary structures on the basis of a range of moral and legal codes surrounding families that mandate for families to actively enforce social norms” (Riggs, 2010) Alternative family models threaten the assumption that the nuclear family is an inherent, rather than a constructed, seat of power. The ‘traditional’ white heterosexual middle-class suburban biological nuclear married American family was never the norm, so why was it elevated to mythic levels and why is it perpetuated? To sell the American Dream, and quite a few kitchen appliances (Coontz, 1992; D’emilio, 1993). The myth of the Traditional American Nuclear Family is not only inaccurate and limiting, it is harmful to anyone in a nontraditional family, particularly children. The answer is not to broaden the definition of ‘traditional family’ until all ‘strangers’ are assimilated or exiled; rather abandon the myth and reconfigure the law to protect and promote personal autonomy, which would allow opportunities to create family units howsoever the individuals involved wish to do it.

Anika Dane
Weiss
SOC 601 Anthropology of Sexuality
August 13, 2015


Appendix

The following one question survey was asked on three social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr) August 10, 2015.

Question: Tell me your favorite television series about family (however you want to define it)

Answers:

  • The Americans*
  • Angel
  • Arrested Development
  • Battlestar Galactica (2003)*
  • Beverly Hills: 90210
  • The Big Bang Theory
  • Big Love
  • Boy Meets World
  • Breaking Bad*
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer*
  • Charmed
  • Cheers
  • The Cosby Show*
  • Daria
  • Doctor Who*
  • Dr. Katz
  • The Fosters*
  • Fresh Off the Boat
  • Friends
  • Fringe*
  • Gilmore Girls*
  • Girl Meets World
  • Glee
  • The Honeymooners
  • JEM
  • King of the Hill
  • Lab Rats
  • Leverage
  • Madam Secretary
  • Mama’s Family
  • Married with Children*
  • M.A.S.H.
  • Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries
  • Once and Again
  • Orphan Black*
  • Parenthood
  • Penny Dreadful*
  • Roseanne
  • The Simpsons*
  • Sisters
  • Six Feet Under
  • Soap
  • The Sopranos*
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
  • Star Trek: Enterprise
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation
  • Star Trek: Voyager
  • Steven Universe*
  • The Suite Life of Zack and Cody
  • Supernatural
  • Veronica Mars*
  • The West Wing
  • Xena: Warrior Princess

*indicates answers given by more than one respondent

References

Aviram, H. (2010). Geeks, Goddesses, and Green Eggs. In Barker, M. (Ed.) Understanding non- monogamies. New York: Routledge.

Braithwaite, D., Bach, B., Baxter, L., Diverniero, R., Hammonds, J., Hosek, A., . . . Wolf, B. (2010). Constructing family: A typology of voluntary kin. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 388-407.

Cohen, M. (2008). Live from the campaign trail: The greatest presidential campaign speeches of the twentieth century and how they shaped modern America. New York: Walker

Coontz, S. (1992). The way we never were: American families and the nostalgia trap. New York, NY: BasicBooks.

D’Emilio, J. (1993). Capitalism and Gay Identity. In Abelove, H. (Ed.) The Lesbian and gay studies reader. New York: Routledge.

Coresident Grandparents and Their Grandchildren: 2012. (Updated 2014, October 22). census.gov Retrieved August, 2015.

Families & Living Arrangements. (2015, July 13). census.gov Retrieved August, 2015.

Halpin, J. (2014, January 12). A New Force for America’s Families.

One in Five Children Receive Food Stamps, Census Bureau Reports. (2015, January 28). Retrieved August 14, 2015.

Riggs, D.W. (2010) Developing a ‘Responsible’ Foster Care Praxis: Poly as a Framework for Examining Power and Propriety in Family Contexts. In Barker, M. (Ed.) Understanding non- monogamies. New York: Routledge.

Sheff, E. (2014). The polyamorists next door: Inside multiple-partner relationships and families. Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.

Sheff, E. (2010). Strategies in Polyamorous Parenting. In Barker, M. (Ed.) Understanding non- monogamies. New York: Routledge.

Single Mother Statistics – Single Mother Guide. (2012, March 23). Retrieved August, 2015.

Stack, C. (1974). All our kin: Strategies for survival in a Black community. New York: Harper & Row.

Weston, K. (1991). Families we choose lesbians, gays, kinship. New York: Columbia University Press.

Media

Bensfield, D. et al. (Producer). (1975). One Day at a Time [Television series]. Los Angeles, CA: Columbia Broadcasting System.

Connelly, J. and Mosher, B. (Producer). (1957). Leave It to Beaver [Television series]. Los Angeles, CA: Columbia Broadcasting System.

Crane, D. (Producer). (1994). Friends [Television series]. New York City, NY: National Broadcast Company.

Eells O’Connell, P. (Producer). (2011). Jessie [Television series]. Burbank, CA: Disney Channel.

English, D. (Producer). (1988). Murphy Brown [Television series]. Los Angeles, CA: Columbia Broadcasting System.

Franklin, J. (Producer). (1988). Full House [Television series]. Los Angeles, CA: American Broadcasting Company.

Kallis, D. (Producer). (2005). The Suite Life of Zack and Cody [Television series]. Burbank, CA: Disney Channel.

Snyder Urman, J. (Producer). (2014). Jane the Virgin [Television series]. Burbank, CA: The CW Television Network.