For the week of 5.15.06   

Throughout human history, no institution has been as honored as motherhood. The reasons for this are obvious: everyone has a mother, and because mothers gave life to each and every individual, nurtured and protected and loved them, instinctively it was understood that a mother is a person worthy of love and respect. For millennia this was accepted; but in recent times, motherhood has joined the many other institutions which were once universally praised and respected but now are denigrated and mocked by the "entertainment" media. Television is particularly notorious in this regard.

It was not always so. In television's earliest years, the program Mama (based on the novel Mama's Bank Account and subsequent 1948 film I Remember Mama) set a tone which would be followed for many years thereafter. Peggy Wood played "Mama" Hansen, a loving, intelligent and competent mother who cared for her family and held them together, dispensing common-sense wisdom and moral lessons. This model of a strong yet compassionate mother was followed in other family drama programs such as The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best, Leave it to Beaver and The Donna Reed Show. In today's more "sophisticated" age such portrayals are sneered at; but nevertheless they did inculcate in young viewers respect for their mothers, respect which was and is deserved.  

This pattern of respect for mothers continued throughout the 1960s and 1970s in programs such as The Brady Bunch, Happy Days and Eight is Enough. The respectful depiction of mothers as an integral component of a strong family was particularly emphasized in programs such as The Waltons or Little House on the Prairie, which took place in eras when family unity and maternal competence was crucial to a family's survival.

Thereafter (reflecting real-life trends) motherhood was shown taking a variety of forms. Some programs, such as The Cosby Show or Family Ties, continued to depict mothers as part of traditional two-parent families. Often in such shows, the mother characters were increasingly shown as more competent than the father, capable of humorous put-downs of their spouse; but the mothers themselves were treated with respect.  Other shows like One Day at a Time, Alice and Kate & Allie showed the struggles with which single mothers were forced to cope. But in all cases it was shown that the mothers could cope, did do well for their families and children, and were deserving of (and were treated with) respect. While today there are still lingering traces on television of this positive portrayal of motherhood, such as Reba or Everybody Hates Chris, such a depiction has largely been replaced by one far more negative.

In 1987, this universally respectful treatment of motherhood began to be replaced by an attitude of contempt. In that year Married with Children debuted on the then-fledgling Fox network.  In this program the family's mother, Peg Bundy, was portrayed as shallow, vapid, incompetent at domestic chores (and everything else) and obsessed with sex.  Dressed to resemble a prostitute, the Peg Bundy character also seemed to act and think like one. The constant put-downs directed at her by the crude, moronic husband character were excelled only by similar but more intense contempt from her lascivious and sophomoric children.

And just as it was the Fox network that began this trend, so too it is Fox that today wallows in the most degraded besmirching of motherhood. Fox' Sunday night "comedy" lineup demonstrates misogyny towards mothers. In nearly every case, mothers are shown to be irresponsible and sex-crazed. When they do endeavor to work outside the home or achieve some success, they are swiftly denigrated by their children, who view them as inept, or their husbands, who believe women should be sex slaves and nothing more. Added to the mother characters' own promiscuity and drug use, an unflattering, indeed hateful, picture of motherhood emerges.

Examples of such treatment on Fox abound. On The Family Guy, a friend of husband Peter suggests that a method for Peter to regain the love of his wife Lois is for all the men present to "get her drunk and take turns having sex with her." Meanwhile, Lois herself is shown to desire sex with her dog Brian, telling the animal that she will push their beds together and "take him around the freaking world" (9/18/2005). Later episodes depict Peter informing his wife of her "duties," describing her in vulgar terms (bracketed language is bleeped): " You know you're lucky you're good at [sucking] my [dick] or I'd never put up with ya, you know what I'm talking about, when you put the lubed up toothpaste on my [ass] while you [suck] on my…" (11/06/2005). Other episodes depict baby Stewie making incestuous remarks about feeding from his mother Lois' breasts, and Lois and her daughter drilling a hole in a shower wall to spy on other men.

Fox's American Dad is similar, depicting wife and mother Francine as a woman who had sex with an adult male teacher as a high school student (2/06/2005), had sex with rock musicians (and once with an entire band) for money (1/29/2006), and who joins a women's club which requires all of its members to commit adultery (12/18/2005). Her husband Stan, when not denigrating Francine's desire for a career, suggests that Francine have sex with her father-in-law, saying "...you should be having sex with him right now, he'd do you right." (10/02/2005).

Nor is such treatment limited to animated programs. Fox's live-action The War at Home takes a similar tack, with husband Dave talking about his wife Vicky, asking the viewer directly, "Did you check out the rack? Nice, huh?" Vicky frequently references her promiscuous past, in one episode reminiscing both about having sex in the backseat of a car while a teenager and the large number of men with whom she has had sex (9/11/2005), and in later episodes recalling her lesbian love affair with her college roommate and having a threesome with two other men (2/26/2006), telling her husband "I didn't feel guilty at all about the affair," and urging him to have sex by saying "Looks like I'm gonna have to pretend to care about his feelings and emotions if I'm going to get any tonight…honey do you think you're actually going to get in the mood? Because I just got another offer," (3/26/2006), and battling her husband for his marijuana stash and getting stoned (9/25/2005).

Although Fox is still the most prolific employer of such scurrilous attacks on mothers, the poison is slowly spreading to other networks. The ABC network airs Desperate Housewives, a program featuring such positive maternal characters as Betty, who keeps her axe murderer son locked in a cell in the basement and contemplates poisoning him, or Bree, an alcoholic parody of the traditional suburban mother.  Programming on other networks has also demonstrated the trend.

Shows such as Leave it to Beaver and The Donna Reed Show today are denigrated as unrealistic and naïve; but today's depictions are actually far less true to reality and encourage, even celebrate, a disrespectful portrayal of mothers as depraved and worthless. One cannot help but wonder whether the mothers of these program's writers are flattered by their children's depiction.

Mothers are human, and so of course no mother is perfect; but all mothers are deserving of esteem and respect for the tremendous material and emotional sacrifices, the hard work and the constant love, the tears and the concern that they lavish on their families and children. The Parents Television Council extends its heartfelt thanks to all the mothers who have done, and who continue to do, so much to make their children's lives better; and we commit ourselves to defending their good name against those in the "entertainment" media whose only attitude is one of mockery and contempt.

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The Parents Television Council - www.parentstv.org