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Family Portraits

© Kim Imdieke

In a new study entitled Ask the Children, researcher Ellen Galinsky asked children for their views on working parents. "Adding children's voices to our national conversation about work and family life," Galinsky claims, "will change the way we think about them forever." Perhaps Galinsky overstates her point, but children and teens do have much to contribute to our discussion of families. In the following article, Kansas high school student Jeremy Mitchell compares media portrayals of traditional families to his own experience. Jeremy composed this essay as part of a media literacy class offered by the Duke Talent Identification Program.

Families: Traditional vs. Modern, Round 1 by Jeremy Mitchell

In the wake of the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, the media has begun criticizing modern families. Perhaps the media is right and today's families actually are deteriorating. On the other hand, perhaps the traditional family wasn't all it has been hyped up to be.

In the 1950s the media "created" a family for the television sitcom "Leave it to Beaver." In this particular portrayal the traditional family consisted of a father, Ward; a mother, June; and two sons, Wally and Beaver. Ward's job was to raise money for and protect the family, as well as run the family in terms of every day life. Ward was responsible for paying the bills and making major decisions. There was no aspect of life that Ward did not control. June was in charge of running "household" life. She cooked, cleaned, took care of the children, she did dishes, washed laundry, vacuumed, cooked all meals, and saw to the proper upbringing of her children, although she left the discipline up to Ward. However, she had little say regarding how the overall family was run. Wally's only responsibility was to get his education until he became old enough to participate in athletics in which case he did so. Beaver's responsibilities were basically the same, although he had much more free time than did Wally because he was the younger of the two.

This portrayal is only one side of the story. Media also makes bad portrayals of the modern family. In the early 1990s the American Broadcasting Company created a sitcom titled "Grace Under Fire." This sitcom was about a divorced woman who is being forced to raise three children on her own. This woman goes to work all day and then slaves to cook dinner and do house work at night. Her children are old enough that had they been in an actual "modern family," they would be the ones cooking dinner and doing chores in order to help their mother cope with the pressures of being a single mother. The media uses this sitcom to convince the people that when a couple gets divorced, the single mother is the only one who suffers. But my own experiences show that the children are affected just as much.

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