Most TV moms still look more like Happy Days' Marion Cunningham than today's working moms. The conflicts and compromises that shape so many Americans' lives in their roles as parents, spouses, daughters, sons, and wage-earners simply do not affect TV women or men. The study concluded that television offers a skewed depiction of American's lives. Prime-time television shows few instances in which work and family responsibilities collide. Few TV characters have children or other family obligations.
Most programs center on either the workplace or the home, without much overlap between the two.
Just 26 of 820 adult TV characters in the study had children under age six. While employed mothers are scarce on TV, employed women are not. TV women tend to be defined by their family relationships more than TV men. Marital status was clear for 57 percent and parental status for just 39 percent of male TV characters. Fourteen percent of adult TV characters are over age 50, while 38 percent of the nation's adult population is over age 50.