From: slarsen@berlin.helios.nd.edu (susan larsen)
Newsgroups: soc.women
Subject: TV Single Parents and Whose Values?
Date: 1 Oct 92 15:06:00 GMT
Article-I.D.: news.1992Oct1.150600.4313
Distribution: na
Organization: OUC, University of Notre Dame

I've been thinking about Dan Quayle again (what are daytime 
nightmares called?) and his trashing of Murphy Brown as a 
single mother role-model on TV.  It struck me that if any 
group on television is massively underrepresented and are 
portrayed in a negative light it is the single mother. It 
also strikes me that if Dan needs a scapegoat to blame for 
the fall of civilization, he needs to look a bit further 
back in tv history....... 

Ever since Steve Douglas joined the world of appropriate tv 
families with his three sons, dog and live-in male-nanny, the 
television audience has been presented a steady stream of 
single men parenting young children:  The Andy Griffith Show, 
Bachelor Father, Family Affair, My Two Dads, Courtship of 
Eddie's Father, Flipper, Full House.  We've also been treated to  
single fathers parenting not-so-young children:  Bonanza, Empty Nest, 
and the recent Crossroads.

I wracked my brain to come up with shows featuring single mothers 
and I shook out The Partridge Family, Julia, Lucy (in various 
incarnations) and Scarecrow and Mrs. King.  As for adult children, 
well Mama's Family comes to mind.

It's been quoted several times here on the net that ninety 
percent plus of single families are headed by women, but you 
don't see anywhere near that percentage reflected in television 
families.  And, until recently, most of these single 
parent families were headed not by divorcees or never-marrieds, 
but by widows and widowers.  The funny thing is, though, you 
never saw those widowed mourning for their lost spouses, or the 
kids mentioning the deceased parent.  No pictures, no fond 
recollections, it is as if the dead parent really wasn't all that 
important to the lives of the remaining family members.  And 
since the dead or missing parent in a majority of these shows 
were women, it strikes me that the powers in tv-land were trying 
to tell us that mothers weren't really all that important to the 
lives of their families.  

I took a look at some of the more current shows, the ones that 
actually acknowledge that divorce happens and children are born 
out of wedlock: Hearts Afire, Blossom, and Baby Talk.
It is my understanding that Murphy Brown has friendly feelings 
towards the father of her child.  I am not clear what role, if any, 
this guy is playing, but on the shows I've caught, Murphy hasn't 
said anything ill of him.  In Hearts Afire, John Ritter's ex-wife 
has been painted in an extremely poor light, by references to her 
stripping him of his possessions, leaving him and the kids for a 
lesbian lover, and other traits we have seen associated with the 
trademark "evil ex-wife."  I caught Blossom once, and I am unclear
as to the story line, but the episode I saw had the dad berating 
the absent ex-wife for being possession-oriented.  Baby Talk, 
a show that was mercifully cancelled, pre-dated Murphy Brown in 
featuring a single mother by choice.  In one episode where mom was
forced to deal with the father, she trashed him pretty good, but 
the father was shown in the episode, unlike the episodes of Blossom 
and Hearts Afire that I have seen.  I guess these ex-wifes are so 
evil that the producers are afraid to personify them by actually 
casting the parts.  

The prize for over-kill of a single, unwed mother, though has to go 
to Moonlighting.  Never have I seen a character punished as severely 
as Maddie Hayes was when the actor Cybil Shepard became pregnant.  
Maddie was transformed from an intelligent, intuitive business woman who 
fought back from financial ruin (the show's premise) with spunk and guts
into a dithering fool running away from life's realities.  She received 
the ultimate television-land punishment when the baby she was carrying 
miscarried.

Murphy Brown gets trashed by Dan Quayle for glamorizing unwed mother-
hood.  There's loads of glamour in puking her guts out, getting caught in 
doorways, sweating like a prize fighter, screaming out pain-wracked 
gibberish while delivering, not having time for even a shower in 
the early days of motherhood, being torn apart by guilt, and eyeing 
nannies and co-workers suspiciously fearing they are child snatchers.
Remember, Murphy's trials are occurring in 1992, years after divorce rates 
and unwed motherhood started escalating in this country.   If Dan Quayle 
and the fundy right are casting about for a true family-values villian, 
I would nominate Steve Douglas.  After all, he hit the scene in the late 
fifties, that shining era of true family values, and Steve made it look 
too easy rearing up those three high-spirited lads while holding down a 
glam job as an aeronautics engineer.  And the man never shed a tear 
over the demise of the two-parent family.  

Sue Larsen
slarsen@berlin.helios.nd.edu
Newsgroups: soc.women,soc.men