Can We Talk 2

Family TV

         One of the best lines I've heard on TV in a long time: "I know I've said this so many times, it's beginning to lose it's meaning. But our kids have destroyed our lives." This is said by an intelligent lower middle class mom to her history professor husband. They are all about family and raising decent well-rounded kids. Child-rearing is an all-out, time-consuming, life-altering job which they take very seriously and voluntarily The show is American Housewife. They have real life problems, and the leading lady is a slightly overweight average mom. It's all so believable.

         Another family show which is not such an everyday family is Speechless. This one brings attention to a special needs family, and shows how each member of the family suffers or prospers because of the one with the challenge (disability is not a cool word to use these days). But it's a slightly wacky family. It's not your normal, calm or even uneducated family. I guess a wacky family is a good way to introduce the concept of treating physically challenged young people fairly. Not all mothers of children with challenges are perky, energetic, brave, defiant, and as strong as this one.

         I see the kids in my family and others and don't see them reflected on TV. The extended family drilled them on the meaning of July 4. Their parents constantly remind them of please and thank you. Apologies that are meaningless abound. They're enforced anyway; maybe someday they'll be sincere. There's visiting with and sharing with cousins. There's the homework problems. One man I know tried to help his kid with math. He ended up copying the problems, taking them to work and having a coworker there show him how to do the process. Then he could help his kid catch up with his schoolwork.


         I remember when my baby brother was struggling in high school. I had never read A Tale of Two Cities, which he was working on. I went to the second hand book store to get my own copy. I read it and we had discussions about it. That encouraged him to keep at it, and he did well in class. When he had to do a term paper on World War II, I took him to the library and showed him how to do research, keep note cards, and do a bibliography. Somehow he didn't get that in school. He did such a good job with his own outline (different from my suggested one), that the teacher thought he had plagiarized it. I told her to give him a verbal test; he knew the material well. But things like this are never shown on family TV shows. It might give parents a good idea of what their job entails, and even pass along some learning things to kids.

         Every show has its own agenda, more about the working parents, or the decade, or the extended family, or to showcase a particular star. American Housewife and Speechless do the best at showing what a hard job parenting really is. It consumes a person(s). And both shows do it without making it look like the world's worst job.