The representation of parents in comedy productions tend to focus on jokes that involved the father of the family, leaving him in a bad place. Something that has been growing compared to its counterparts in the past.
Today’s parents, then, receive more ridicule for their clumsiness, ineffectiveness, lack of sensitivity, intelligence, etc. Mothers, on the other hand, became the targets of ridicule less often.
Antiquated trope
New studies based on ‘quantitative content analysis’, a common research method in communication studies, analyzed 3 4 family-focused sitcoms that aired from 1980 to 2017 and randomly selected two episodes from each a. Then, 578 scenes were isolated in which the parents were engaged in ‘disparaging humor’, meaning that the parents were making fun of another character or making fun of themselves.
Parents were the targets of humor, criticism, or parody in more than 50% of relevant scenes in the 2000s and 2010s , compared with 18% in the 1980s and 31% in sitcoms from the 1980s. ninety.
Sitcoms, however, are not reflecting reality. At least if we take into account the radical turn of the wheel that many parents have executed.
National surveys from the Pew Research Center show that, from 1965 to 2016, the amount of time parents reported spending on childcare nearly tripled. Today, fathers make up 17% of all stay-at-home fathers , up from 10% in 1989. Today, fathers are as likely as mothers to say that parenting is’ extremely important for your identity. ‘ They are also just as likely to describe parenting as rewarding.
Of course, not all comedies portray parents as incompetent parents. Still, while television performances will likely never match the scope and complexity of parenting, the writers of sitcom productions seem to have gotten caught up in an outdated trope. Either that or they’re just looking for politically correct applause .