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Working Mothers on TV

© Maureen Fleury

In the early years of television, we saw mothers such as Donna Reid or Harriet Nelson or June Cleaver who worked in the home and greeted their husbands at the door wearing lovely dresses, aprons and high heeled shoes. They lived in nice homes and did a little bit of charity work or belonged to ladies clubs.

On the other hand, there were struggling families such as Lucy who lived in a rented apartment and she was always spending her allowance on clothing or get rich quick schemes. In the later series, the Ricardos ended up buying a house in the country.

What kind of problems did these mothers face? We saw episodes on homework being washed in the laundry, windows accidently broken by a baseball, cookies baked for the PTA meeting stolen by the kids, or burning the roast beef. In fact, in one episode, Lucy was spanked by Ricky because she was a naughty girl.

As women's roles in the real world changed, television started to create a new kind of mother. What were the changes? We started to see TV mothers going out to work. These shows depicted various circumstances as to why a mother had a job.

There were widows, such as Alice. She moved to a new location and managed to find a job as a waitress at a diner. She was faced with being the sole source of support for her son. Divorced mothers, such as Anne in "One Day At A Time", lived in a rented apartment with her teenaged daughters and had to prove to her ex-husband that she could do it all on her own. She already had a good paying job in an ad agency and managed to support her children on one income.

Mothers who had husbands with low paying jobs had to go out to work in order to help support the family. In "Good Times", Florida worked as a housekeeper and her husband was a laborer. They lived in a low-rental district in the city. She worked to keep their heads above water. Roseanne worked most of the time in blue collar positions and changed jobs often and so did her husband. They didn't live in a real fancy home, and it seemed they kept gaining more dependents!

Professional women with established careers continued to work after having children. This was apparent in "Cosby" where Claire was a lawyer. Her husband was a doctor and could have comfortably supported the family but she chose to stay in the workforce. They lived in a brownstone apartment in an upscale urban neighbourhood. The same with "Family Ties" where the mother was an architect.